Kochi
A nice Hotel sure does make for a nice city.
Our previous day in Matsuyama was long - we didn't drive out of town
until nearly 4:30 and arrived in Kochi after 6pm. As far as I can
tell, most Japanese travelers prefer to arrive in hotels well before
dinner so they can visit the bath and unwind - it's us crazy foreigners
that arrive shortly before dinner. The hotel we chose in Kochi (
Sansuien) was high end - 18,000
yen a night a person - roughly $800 CDN a night for the four of
us. We received the 4 servant welcome as we came off the hotel
and had a dedicated serving person for tea and rearranging the room.
Dinner was
of course
wonderful. Foreigners I suspect are fairly rare and three
vegetarian foreigners are even more strange. Our meal came with a
knife and fork - the first time in 7 weeks of visiting Japan I
have been given a fork to eat Japanese food. (We later received
chop sticks when it became apparent we were distressed at trying to eat
bite sized Japanese food with such a crude tool.)
Like other high end meals, the meal is designed to combine different
textures and flavors so each bite is unique. To make this meal
different, it included breaded asparagus and an egg omelet as well as
the usual Japanese treats.
Mark (the only meat eater) did well
- lots of
sashimi. For the
following evening Gabi changed our order to include fish for her - she
was didn't want to miss another night of great fish. We settled
into what had become our nightly routine - memory card adapters came
out and the days digital catch was downloaded onto Eric's Powerbook and
then reviewed. I wrote in my journal, wishing I could see what I
had captured.
The Sunday Market
The next morning we awoke to rain - one of the few rain days on our
whole trip. It would take a pretty fierce storm to keep me from a
market, so we borrowed umbrellas and walked the few blocks to the
outdoor market. The market was about 6 city blocks long and
covered up a road that is part of a divided road the other 6 days of
the week.
Each stall is roughly the same sized and fairly specialized - perhaps
just earth vegetables or mushrooms or bamboo shoots.
There weren't many, but there were a few food stalls. All the
food
was designed to be eaten while walking. Everything was meat, but
I would have loved to partake.
There were a few non food items also for sale. I quite liked the
Japanese candy and the knife stand, but my favorite was selling live
flowers with the roots still attached, kind of like a nursery here.
I
could have spent more time shooting pictures, but I was obviously
wearing on my travel companions. We walked back to the covered
mall so Mark could do a little shopping but stumbled into a
parade.
The music was loud and very catchy - I could have burned another roll
here, but Velvia (ISO 50) really isn't the film for shooting a dance
number indoors.
Tosa Washi Village
I
have a soft spot for Japanese paper (Washi). Other than
overpriced small sheets in stationary supply stores, it's actually
quite hard to find in Japan - there is a much better selection around
my house in Vancouver that what I have seen in Japan.
Tosa Washi Village
was a rare find - a place where paper is actually made at the art is
evolving. They make paper with local materials in a wide variety
of forms. The flat book paper we see here is common, but they
also make highly textured papers for wall art, entrance curtains, and
in one case, a wedding dress.
The
complex itself is more than just a paper place - it has a hotel and
training facilities so they can offer courses and summer camps.
They had a large waterwheel out front and we walked around taking
photos. Unfortunately, I left my camera in multiple exposure mode
and managed to take 16 exposure of an ocean cliff side drive on the same
frame - loosing all of them. In the big scheme of things not a
bad loss (I shot about 40 rolls of film on this trip), but I was sorely
disappointed.
Dinner back at the hotel was again amazing followed by a soak in the
hotels baths. This hotel had 16 washing stations - while the
pools weren't as large as other hotels, this hotel took top billing for
bandwidth. Also special to this hotels baths - they had a
"waterfall station" where two streams of water fall from the ceiling -
you stand underneath and let the water pound out your back. In a
twist of irony, the womens bath was one floor directly above the mens
bath - if you stood outside the mens bath, the women could watch you
from a concealed position, but the men had no such observation
point. Again, no cameras allowed.
Tags: Japan(30), market(16), produce(10), food porn(4), street food(4), costume(3)
People: Mark(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Trips out of the Country > A Third Trip to Japan > Kochi
Beautiful pictures! I have been living in Kochi for a while, and I recently started a travel/review site for the international community (for residents or travelers a like). We have a variety of topics we're trying to focus on, so please do take a look. If you'd like to write a little blurb on your trip to Kochi, and attach some photos, I think it would be a great addition to our site. Please send me an e-mail if you're interested.
Nate
Sunday, December 12th, 2010 at 22:30:22
Last Modified Saturday, January 21st, 2023 at 23:41:37 Edit
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