Hallou~
It's time for antoher "travel entry" - I won't be able to post anything the upcoming week, so I figured it's better to throw one in now ^-^; That has to be enough for a while!!!　

After leaving Hiroshima in the early morning I went by Shinkansen to Fukuyama which is already the next stop anyway.
Afterwards I also went to Onomichi (wich is so awesome and I definitely have to go again one day!!) just to leave early to go to Kyoto to meet up with my friends and start our Kyoto adventure ;P

Fukuyama and Onomichi (April 4th, 2010):



When I arrived in Fukuyama it was still early (before 9am). I put my luggage into a coin locker and went straight to the castle.
The castle is right next to the station, you even can see it from the station (as I've seen it so many times while passing by in the Shinkansen I always wanted to go there anyways and spring is just the best time for photos! :D).



The weather was also quite cooperative that day and because it was so early there were almost no people yet (^-^)v



See? Nobody!! So nice! :D Especially after the crowds in Hiroshima and Miyajima!
I went around the castle for a while to take some more photos because the museum inside was not yet open.





I wanna have a hanami there!! (*-*)





Finally it was time to go into the castle.
That sign's warnings are quite funny. I guess there are many drunk people around the castle during spring time (because they're having hanami there?!)



Photos inside were not allowed which was a shame because they really had some interesting artefacts in there!!
If you have the chance to, you should go INSIDE and check it out :D
As always, you have a nice view from the top floor of the castle!



I forogot what that grey building was, I think an art gallery.
Then, there was also quite an awesome Catholic(?) church!



Outside again, I'm walking around the castle to get some more photos (360° XD)



I really like the green in this photo!



It's really a nice castle and easy accessible!
If you have some time and you're on your way from Hiroshima to Osaka/Kyoto/Tokyo (or the other way round) you can consider dropping by :D

After that I went back to the station where the "tourist information" was finally open. I got some information about Fukuyama and decided that there's not really anything worth staying any longer and jumped into the next local train to Onomichi.
I thought that Onomichi is quite a small city and figured that there wouldn't be too many people. But I was shocked when I got into the train, it was CROWDED!! And they all got out at Onomichi Station XDDDDD
Well, it was Sunday, sakura season and beautiful weather plus spring vacation ... what was I thinking??!!! GAH! XD Furthermore it's one of the 100 best cherry blossom spots in Japan (^-^;;) ....



The cute tourist bus. I didn't take it. Almost nobody did. The things I wanted to see were all easily accessible by walking anyways.
This time I decided to do the Temple Walk. You can walk there from the station in only a few minutes and then turn left where it goes up a hill (Mt. Senkoji). There are a lot of temples, shrines, pagodas, nice views, cats etc. awaiting you.
Maybe if you hurry you can do ALL the temples/shrines in one day, but .... I didn't even make it to half of them, but I didn't care!
Another thing you could do in Onomichi is rent a bike and go over the only bridges that connect Honshu (the main island) with Shikoku where you can actually walk or ride a bike. Other bridges don't allow that.
The scenery and small islands you will come across while riding your bike must be awesome!! I definitely wanna do it!! Maybe in autumn?! :D
Anyways, let's go on ...



Still down at the main road, I spotted this building that looked like a small castle. In fact, it's a museum!!



While approaching the hill (aka Mt. XD) I saw this tiny cute house and couldn't resist ;)



And then I was already on the "temple walk" path. As long as you had a path paved with these kind of stones you knew you were still on the right path XD



I can't remember the name of each single temple and I think it's not really important. There was not really a famous one, but many tiny cute and interesting ones and I just took photos of my various discoveries there :)



A Japanese graveyard.



Sooo~ beautiful! (*__*)



It was really awesome! I already fell in love with Onomichi at that point.





Onomichi is said to have a lot of stray cats. Maybe because there were so many people that day I didn't get to see that many ;o;



But whenever I saw one I had to stop and take some shots (^-^)>



I just thought that sign was funny/cute!



There were some sings with cats and stuff. I didn't have enough time so I didn't bother figuring out what the signs etc. said, but actually Onomichi has a Maneki Neko museum and I didn't GOOOO!!! AAAHHH!!! *headdesk*²³²³



The whole road was full of those cute sings!!! I wish they were up for sale!!!! (*_*)



For a cat lover like me that ALONE was paradise (=^ ・^=)





I don't know how fast other people were able to walk from temple to temple, but I was extremely slow!! Everything was so beautiful, so I couldn't resist and had to take tons of photos and just stay for a while and stare at the awesomness ^-^;;





Sakura trees even on the main street!! (*__*)v



Random shot of something I thought was cute.



Btw. you could have also taken a ropeway up to the top (where the observatory is), but after my ropeway experience a day before in Miyajima I thought I should walk up and that was good because later I saw how many people stood in line XD
Also, I was able to discover so many beautiful things on my way up!! :D



For example, this awesome cherry blossom tree!!!!!!!!! (*___*)
One of the most beautiful trees I've ever seen! There were sooo many people around it, taking photos, it was really difficult to get the whole thing on a photo without any people XD



The higher I went the greater became the view!!! I love cherry blossoms + ocean!! Perfect combination!!!! <3333



That's about halfway up. And I just came from temple #7 (out of 25!!! XDDDD)



From then on the view really just got better and better!!



I'm in paradise!! ;o;



Maybe I should consider moving there?! XD



Sorry, I'm spamming you with the same sort of photos, but it was just so beautiful there!



And as always ^-^ this one was actually really cute!



And that's the awesome view you have from the observatory (in Senkoji Park) from the top of Mt. Senkoji (*_____*)



I took a short break to eat some nutritious bars (not exactly cereal bars, they don't really have that in Japan) and then I went back down again.



Stopped by at Senkoji Temple (千光寺). That one was probably the best and most interesting one I came across that day.



They're quite small on this photo, but see those really tiny white figures?
These are Niko Niko Jizō dolls!



Back down I went to some more temples. I didn't have that much time left, though.
It was about 3pm at that time and I wanted to leave Onomichi around 4:30/5, so I'd be able to arrive in Kyoto at around 7/8pm (because that's the time I promised to be there XD).



Hey, there! You're not a cat, are you? JK! XD



I love the huge "holy" trees in some Japanese shrines. Just awesome!!





That's the crowd of people standing in line for the ropeway (I mentioned earlier).



As you can see I went to quite a few shrines as well, so no wonder that I didn't get to see all the 25 TEMPLES on the list XD



But who cares? As you can see there are interesting things to discover anywhere (^-^)



And what was awesome, they were practicing for some kind of festival here with daiko (drums) and everything. The echo you could hear even from far away. I stayed there quite a while. Finally I gathered up the courage to take a photo of them while they took a break and that guy in the white shirt saw me and started posing for me! XD So embarrassing!!!! XD





Huhu, didn't expect to meet yet another cat (^-^)v



Back at the station I checked the time and saw that I just missed a train and would have to wait quite a while for the next one.
So I asked the very nice lady at the tourist information if there was any DeoDeo etc. close by because I still needed to buy a new cover for my lense (that I lost the day before in Miyajima -__-; ....)
There was one, but they didn't have any!!!!! And it was quite a walk from the station and my feet already hurt and I was in a hurry to catch the next train and it was hot and .. ARGH! XD
In the end I went into a very small camera shop. They had a Pentax lense cover thingie, not the one I wanted, but did fit, so I took it ^-^;;
Then I hurried back to the station.



I checked the train time once again, bought my ticket and waited outside next to the sea. It was really beautiful there (*__*)v

I went back to Fukuyama by local train. Got my luggage out of the coin locker, rushed to the Shinkansen St. to catch the next train to Kyoto St.
This time I didn't buy any reserved tickets at all btw. I never do that nowadays unless I'm going from here to Tokyo or another really long-distant route ^-^;;

I met my friends in the hotel outside of Kyoto (Ootsu City). We checked in together and went back to Kyoto St. to have dinner together:



Going out to eat with 4 people that have never been in Japan before and one of them who doesn't eat fish at all and meat only in special cases, is REALLY difficult XD
I was really HUNGRY, though, because I didn't have lunch at all that day (yet again ^^; ....)
I was able to persuade them to try Tonkatsu and luckily all of them liked it! Even the friend who usually doesn't like to eat meat (^-^'') ...
And I LOVE Tonkatsu!!



So, as you can see I ended up in Kyoto where I spent 5 days together with my friends. I've been in Kyoto before (for about a week) in September 2007, but let me just tell you that spring is different after all :)
You'll have to wait a bit longer for the next travel entry this time, sorry (^-^*)>
Hope you enjoyed it!

CU all again soon!
。・:*:・゜★,。・:*:・゜♪☆LOVELOVE('∇^*)☆♪。・:*:・゜★,。・:*:・゜☆