Daylight

October 22

My first bath in a japanese tub.

The bathroom is closet-sized. The whole thing is one big molded plastic piece with a drain in the centre of the floor. You're supposed to stand in the middle to scrub down and hose off before you get into the cute little square tub to soak. It's very efficient.

After a cup of green tea and some Japanese TV, we scamper off to church with Dave. The song lyrics are good practice for reading hiragana. These very warm and friendly people fed us a lunch of beef donburi, with persimmons and oranges for dessert. This ends up being the only home cooked meal we get in Japan. I'd really like see more of what people eat at home compared to restaurants.

  After lunch Dave takes us to a fishing village on the outskirts of Fukuyama called Toma No Ura. There's a ferry that goes out to a little island where you can camp or stay at a hotel. It's very pretty, and populated by Tanuki (raccoon-dogs).
  
In Japanese folklore, these little creatures are powerful shapeshifters and tricksters. All over Japan we see ceramic tanuki at the entrances of shops, like the beckoning cats, but a main feature of tanuki statues is an enormous scrotum reaching to the ground. Apparently, it signifies good luck. Studio Ghibli produced an anime about tanuki called "Pom Poko", which I haven't seen yet, but now I understand why the cartoon characters can use their scrotums to parachute.

Back on the mainland we see fisherwomen with wind-burnt cheeks cooking something that smells delicious. I hesitate to ask for a photo and the opportunity is lost. At the local store you can buy bags of dried sea slime for 500 yen. I tell Matt no. James gets a salt-flavoured ice cream cone. It just tastes like vanilla to me.