tsuwano-yamaguchi-osaka

On Sunday, we awoke to the whole town covered in snow. As one of my Flickr friends said, "Looks like a toy village with powdered sugar poured on it." Sure did.

There were many other sights to be seen in Tsuwano but either they were out of the way or closed due to the snow.

Since we had some time before the train ride back to Yamaguchi, Satoshi thought we should kill some time at a museum in town but I didn't want to get my shoes & socks wet like the days before, so I convinced him that with the weather the way it was, we should try to get back to Osaka as soon as possible.

I also convinced him that we should take a taxi from our hotel to the station. It was a good call too because the roads were packed with snow.

As we rode in the taxi, we saw many people shoveling again and the driver explained that most of the trains weren't running the day before.

Here's a view of a train heading towards Tsuwano, somewhere under all that snow is the platform.

We fell asleep along the way, but I think it took us about an hour and a half from Tsuwano to Shin-Yamaguchi.

Since we had some time before our Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Osaka, we stopped into Santouka for lunch.

I had seen this place on our way to Hagi and thought it was the ramen place that I see Kirk & Dennis talk about on their blogs, but it wasn't.

A little bummed but still hungry, I decided to go with the Santouka Go-Go Don...550 yen (about US$5.50), this was a chicken katsu don. Usually you can find tonkatsu (pork cutlet) don, but chicken katsu is kind of rare.

I liked this but there was too much rice for me to finish it.

Satoshi went with the Curry de U-don...670 yen (about US$6.70).

This starts with rice at the bottom, a layer of grated yamaimo (mountain yam), a layer of udon then it is covered with lots of curry.

He said it was good but wouldn't rush back to eat it again, I didn't taste it, so I guess it was just okay.

We also found a local cider, Choshu Ji-cider.

Fizzy and flavored with natsumikan (chinese citron). This was good.

With all the cold and wetness, Satoshi's shoes gave out on him. The picture doesn't do it justice it was goners!

It was cold and wet but I got to see snow, lots of it (though I was afraid we may get frost bite).

I'm glad we went to Hagi and Tsuwano and wouldn't mind going back again, hope you enjoyed our adventure as much as we did.