Kochi 19th April

 Welcome to Kochi, one of the cities on the large island of Shikoku (very closely adjacent to the largest island of Hokkaido, and connected to it by bridges). No tours booked today, so after a light breakfast this meant going ashore to explore.

The shuttle bus dropped us in the middle of town, then we walked a block to buy tickets for the My-Yu hop-on, hop-off bus. This is not particularly a tourist thing, it’s mostly used by locals but it was promoted on board as a convenient way to get around. Of course as a regular local bus service (I suppose all buses are really hop-on, hop-off), it’s not geared for a sudden influx of hundreds of foreigners. So a bus official encouraged some of us to get on a different local bus going to the same destination, just via back streets and not the major tourist locations.

So we took a local bus out to Katsurahama Beach. We only had about 20 minutes there, because we didn’t want to be stranded a long time waiting for the next bus.



Then we too the My-Yu half way back to the city centre and got off at the Makino Botanic Gardens, named after a prominent Japanese botanist. These turned out to be not large, but lovely with dense planting and periodic glimpses down the hillside towards the city. The large glass conservatory full of rainforest plants was particularly beautiful.



Adjacent to the gardens is the Buddhist Chikurin-ji Temple. There is a prominent five storey pagoda, but many other buildings in serene, moss-covered grounds. All this kept us occupied for a couple of hours.


Unfortunately, by the time we got back to the city centre Lynn had stomach pain and was feeling quite unwell, so we took a shuttle bus back to the ship, arriving mid-afternoon. Lynn's pain continued so we ha a quiet evening.

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