Kintai Bridge
On one of the public holidays, of which Japan has many, Sachiko, Kana(a friend of ours), her son Tomoki and I went to visit the Kintai bridge. The Kintai bridge is a traditional Japanese bridge near the city of Iwakuni. It cost 350 yen to cross the bridge but I thought since I was being a tourist I'd do it. The bridge itself sits on large stone pillars standing in the river. The bridge is made entirely of wood with the only iron being strictly ornamental.
There are parklands around the area with small ponds full of carp, some traditional buildings scattered around the place and some fountains. Up on a mountain nearby is the Iwakuni castle. We didn't go to the castle, just looked at it from a long way off.
Nearby the bridge are some shops. Two of them were selling ice cream and had an amazing variety of flavours. There were some very strange options such as Pumpkin, Soy Bean, Ume Boshi(Pickled Plumb) and Garlic. Of course being the idiot I am, I picked the wasabi flavoured ice cream. For those who don't know wasabi is Japanese horseradish. Despite the better judgment of my 2 Japanese companions I went for it..... well how many times in your life do you get to eat wasabi ice cream? It looked like vanilla ice cream with little green chunks of mint. The flavour on the other hand.... was nowhere near as bad as it sounds. There was only a slight wasabi flavour hanging around the whole thing, but only occasionally would you chomp on a little chunk of wasabi and get a real zing shoot through your mouth and sinuses. If you want proof that I ate it I have a picture of a mostly eaten ice cream and 3 people who can independently confirm that I did.
After seeing the bridge we went off and had dinner at a famous Japanese restaurant. It's in a traditional Japanese house and everyone seems to know about it. Dinner was fried chicken, skewered with a slice of bamboo. Around the walls of the house/restaurant were suits of real samurai armour. Here Sachiko, Tomoki and I are between 2 suits of armour. When we finished the meal we walked around in the gardens around the house. There were tables set up all around there too as the restaurant extended throughout the whole garden.
That was the end of the day so that's all for this page.