Day 3 -- Okayama Castle, Onsen, and Karaoke

Today was very busy, and I am extremely tired. It's about 3 am right now, and I only just got back to the hotel.

We started today by going to Korakuen Garden, which is behind Okayama Castle. Okayama Castle and Korakuen both belonged to the lord who ruled over the area in feudal times.  The scenery there was very pretty, and there were a lot of interesting facts about the landscaping and architecture.  For instance, at when the  garden was first made, it was designed so that from a certain summer house, the lord could see the whole garden. Then, at some point, one of the newer feudal lords decided that flat places are boring and had a hill made in the middle that's about 6 meters tall. Additionally, buildings nearby are not allowed to build past a certain height, and thus are unable to see into the garden because of the thick trees surrounding it. The garden's layout and design was said to represent the lives of a samurai, as well as a common man, which sounds very poetic and would probably make more sense to me if I knew more about flowers. The only thing I know is that a common metaphor in Japan is that samurai were like cherry blossoms in that they could have their life cut short at any time (or something like that. What I do know, is that this garden was pretty. It also had some endangered birds (red headed cranes, I think). Now, normally I try to not upload too many of my photos. This place was so amazing, I'm making an exception. See for yourself:

The garden led up to Okayama Castle, which is where the Feudal Lord lived. The inside offers various interesting things to do, such as dress in traditional clothes:

Who is that dashing samurai?!

Seriously though, I think I should change my hair to this style. It's so me.

On the left is Michelle from our group.

We all dressed up, one guy and gal at a time, but I don't have nearly enough space to show everyone. Sufficed to say, it was awesome.

Making traditional ceramics: 

That turned into a cup eventually

And, somewhat oddly, Naruto promotions. Go figure.

After the castle, we set out to a Kaitenzushi restaurant. For those that don't know, that's a sushi shop where you pay by the plate and take dishes off a conveyor belt. Here's what that looks like:

Shrimp Tempura

 Later, we visited an onsen (bath house). For those who don't know, an onsen is basically where you wash yourself off, and then get into a big, warm pool of water, whilst completely naked (non-coed, obviously). Some, like the one we went to, have many different types of baths. We tried most of them, but to name a few, there was one where you walked around (with foot massage beads of some sort on the bottom of the pool), an individual bath (about the size of a stout rain barrel), and an outside bath. There was also a sauna and a cold bath, though the sauna was so hot I had to leave almost immediately. I could barely breathe! We briefly jumped in the cold bath, which quickly became the frigid bath. Overall though, we had an amazing time.

For reasons that I should hope are obvious, there are not pictures of the inside of the onsen, and the outside was fairly regular. I wish I could show pictures of just the baths, because they were all very interesting, but I'm pretty sure some naked people would've been pretty angry with me.

Later that night, 6 of us (1 Japanese person and us) went to Karaoke (in Japanese, pronounced kah-rah-oh-keh) which was, not gonna lie, pretty rad. Here are some pictures of that. I have a video, but I'll spare you my shrieks.

All Americans who hadn't already heard it seemed to get a kick out of a popular song by Kyrary Pamyu Pamyu called "Pon Pon Pon," which is possibly the catchiest song ever. You can look it up (or click here), I'll wait.

…

The music video's pretty weird though right? I don't really get it either. Still, long after Karaoke finished (well over 3 hours, and well past 2 am, we meandered back to our hotel, everyone humming or singing the "pon pon way way way" part.

Oh you didn’t' look it up the first time? I told you I'd wait. Sheesh.

Anyway, even though we are in the city, no one ever felt unsafe, and there were lots of people very comfortably walking home alone. This was about 15 minutes away from the college on foot, so it isn't really like in the US where if you go a stone's throw outside of a college, you might just find a meth lab. Of course, not the whole US, but my point is it surprised me how safe everyone felt in the city at 2:30 am. 

Anyway that's all for now, more when I'm not dead tired.