Japan 2010, Day 9

Saturday, March 20, 2010

We woke up for breakfast at the lodge, and took the provided 9:30 shuttle service to the station. We again left our bags at a coin locker in the station, and did a bit more exploring.

A view of the mountains coming up from the JR station

We checked out Inari Shrine and also a temple, Kanon-ji, which housed a statue of Kanon that Kuukai had carved on his way through the area. We then went back to the station, picked up our bags, and left. I called this tavern (Kayabukiya Tavern) that was famous for having monkeys as waiters to try to get in  a reservation for later in the day, but couldn’t get a hold of them, so gave up on it. We instead made straight for Mito. Upon our arrival, we headed to the Mito River Side Hotel and checked in. Chris stayed in the room and worked on his FFXIII costume, while Arnond and I scouted out the Comic Market locations around town and also stopped in the local Animate. We returned to the hotel to meet up with Chris for dinner, and took one of the suggestions of the Comic Market Special 5 in Mito (CS5) catalogue on a place to eat. We went to a nice katsu place, which had totally delicious katsu. We tried the Mito-style version, which involved katsu infused with ume and covered in natto, both of which are local specialties. The play of the natto against the ume was very good, although eventually the natto did get to me and I was almost throwing up by the end of the meal.

The delicious Mito-style katsu meal

We then stopped at a convenience store, where I picked up a pencil for CS5 planning, and we returned to the hotel. I was doing some laundry, so Chris and Arnond threw their clothes in too; that kind of sucked because our experience with Japanese dryers has been that they take a long time to dry clothing, and it takes even longer to dry jeans, which both Arnond and Chris had. I was up rather late that night, but I did take that opportunity to plan for CS5.