Hello everybody!

I hope you're all doing fine. As mentioned before I'm trying to cut down my online time which is ONE reason why I haven't posted often lately.
I'm changing some things in my life, but it takes time and keeps me busy (and thus away from the internet and esp. LJ). I'll post more about it some other time. A lot of stuff and thinking needs to be done.
Don't worry, once I've figured some of these things out, I'll try to post more regularly again. Hope you understand.

Although my spring vacation was just a bit more than 1 month ago, I barely can remember it now. I hope I can do a proper report nevertheless looking and my crappy notes that I took back then.
Hopefully the photos also will help my memory.

This time I didn't travel any huge distance at all and mainly stayed in the Chugoku area (the most famous prefecture there is probably Hiroshima, but I didn't visit there - this time). However, I started in Shikoku, one of the 4 main islands of Japan.
I've been to every prefecture there, apart from one: Kagawa! And so, I decided to visit it this time for good.
I started in Marugame (mainly because of the caslte, of course). It's supposed to be surrounded by lots of cherry blossoms trees which look awesome in spring (read: early April) - but this year ... everything is/was different!

Enough of my talking, here we go!~

Marugame (March 31st 2011):



Crossing the Seto-Ohashi Bridge from Okayama to Kagawa. It's a loooong bridge for vehicles that connects the main island Honshu with Shikoku.



Sorry for the crappy photos, but that's all I could do out of the train. It's such a pleasant ride with an awesome view!! So many tiny islands, boats, ships etc.!
Another interesting fact is that the train runs below the other vehicles! So cars etc. were above us!! You'll see that from another perspective in one of my other entries soon.



One important thing you should know about Marugame is that there's a rent-a-cycle shop close to the station and it costs only 200yen for the day!!!!!! (you pay 500 and get back 300 when you bring the bike back)
After waiting in front of the tourist information center at the station which was still closed (grrr), a guy in a suit (probably 5-10 years older than me) started talking to me, because he also had to wait for it to open.
He asked me many questions, a lot of the typical "oh, you're a foreigner in Japan"-questions, but also other stuff. He offered to take me to the castle in his car, but after we both heard from the now opened tourist info that there's a cheap rent-a-cycle option, I prefered to use that instead.
I love having a bike. You're free and do not have to depend on bus schedules etc.! I'm on my own bike every day anyways.

So, I grabbed my bike and was off to the castle. It was easy to find and not far away from the station.
Picture above: Marugame Castle from far away.



It's a short hike up a hill, but then you have quite a nice view over Marugame.



Saying that there were no sakura at all is not true, but you had to search REALLY hard for them and it was always only some branches anyways.



Once I found some, though, I couldn't stop taking photos of it! It's like a treasure hunt, really ...



The reality looked more like this, though. Yet to bloom cherry blossom trees everywhere. You needed a lot of fantasy to imagine how awesome it COULD look! *sigh*



So, it was also difficult to get any shots of the castle WITH cherry blossoms ^^; .... :(



Well, it's a castle with cherry blossom trees .... just without the cherry blossoms ... haha ... -__-;



Not quite yet.



Stump on a wall?!



Still looks like winter, huh? I took these photos knowing that they wouldn't look nice, but it was out of frustration ... which is also the reason why I'm posting them now, although they're really not good at all!



This looks much better :)



Inside the castle. As you can see it's one of the few original castles that hasn't been reconstructed (yet).



View from the highest floor.



I guess with perfect weather conditions you can see a lot more.



You can also see Okayama Prefecture and the Seto-Ohashi Bridge on good weather days.



Not really on that day, though.



To get at least a BIT of spring feeling!



Marugame is a very nice, small, quiet city directly at the ocean and with a small nice castle.
Would definitely be a city I could imagine to live in.







Iinoyama, also called Sankuki-Fuji for obvious reasons ;)



Cherry blossom buds + castle = not so nice?!





It was time to leave the castle again, but not before taking some more photos of the few cherry blossoms I spotted.



And I really wanted to have a photo or two with the castle and pink blossoms, so ... ^^; ..







[imagination on] Woah!!! Everything is pink! Isn't it beautiful??!! [/imagination off] .... (￢_￢)





Of course the castle park is famous for its cherry blossom festival and lanterns were all over the place ... just the cherry blossoms didn't want to take part this year, I guess XD ... :/



On the bottom of the hill to the castle there's this small souvenir shop, but it's special as it's also a craft hut where you can watch people making fans. They are famous for Marugame (not folding fans, but uchiwas!)



Last shot of the cherry blossoms and off I go.



Goodbye castle!



On my way to my next destination. I just had to take a photo of it!! ^-^ It's a juku (= cram school).



*lol*



Wow, now it kind of feels like summer?! o__O;...



My cute rental cycle ^-^



Marugame fans.



Finally arrived at my next destination: Nakazu-Bansho-En （中津万象園）, a really beautiful and quite big Japanese garden.



They had a cosplay (?) shooting on the bridge and had to move when I wanted to pass XDD





Even without cherry blossoms it was a nice garden with many things to discover.
It was really hot. No cloud, blue sky and the sun is quite strong in April already, so I was glad that I had my sun protection cream with me! :)







And I spotted some single cherry blossoms after all!! Mwahahaha!~





Bamboo!!!!





Couldn't stop taking photos of that red bridge ;)







And even more red! This time lots of gates.



The red gates lead to an Inari Shrine.









Pseudo-Fuji in the background.



One last shot of the red bridge and I was off.



On my way back to the station I stopped a few times to take some random photos.







It's spring after all! :)



Found at the gate of a random temple.



Found on the floor at the same random temple (T____T) Quite fast as always, but I still managed to take a photo of it T__T ...



And back at the station again. Still noon time!





Leaving Marugame to go to my second big destination of the day: Kotohira!
Quite hungry at that point, but eating had to wait!

Part 2 of my first day will come up soon in a separate entry. It's just too many photos to squeeze them all into one entry, I guess.

[Poll #1740971]
Thanks for reading and staying with me although I don't post so often lately.