Day 18 (Aug 16) - New sights in familiar sites

I cannot recall exactly, but I believe it was sometime early January. I was scrolling on Facebook and an advert caught my eye: a picture of a scenery that imitated Salar de Uyuni (Salt Plains) in Bolivia, save it was during sunset. Upon further reading, I found out that the picture was taken at a beach in Shikoku.

I was already planning to go back to Japan this summer, but that scenery spurred me even more to go back. With Typhoon Krosa, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to venture to the beach, but fortunately train services were back to normal. I actually gave up going to Shikoku for half the day, until "re-finding" my resolve to see if trains were heading down to the area.

But to start off my day! We headed to Onomichi to view the city from the top of a mountain. We missed it the first time, since I wasn't aware of an observatory point until we got back to the station in 2017. The hike to Senkoji Park (where the observatory point was) took about 40 minutes from Onomichi station. The path was quiet, with very few people. The ascent was mostly stairs, which meant I was pouring with sweat when we reached the top. The view was amazing from the top though.

We took a rail car back to the base, since I didn't want to walk all the way down. Once we reached Okayama station, it was to venture to the Pokemon store that we couldn't go the day before. Aeon mall was certainly different compared to Thursday -- their were throngs of people walking within. It took us to find the Pokemon store, probably because I didn't expect it to be so small. Disappointed, we walked to the supermarket once again to shop for lunch.

After a few hours, it was off to visit the beach. The journey started with a train ride to Shikoku Island, followed by a transfer to a local train. I was feeling anxious with the 3 minute layover time we had, but fortunately Tadotsu station is relatively small and that trains were only a few tracks apart. Once we got to Takuma station, we looked for a bus that would take us to the beach. Being that it's Shikoku, English is sparse. Fortunately, my Japanese went from absolute-scrubby-noob to absolute-noob: I was able to ask the bus drivers there whether they stopped at the beach or not. Once we found the bus, we boarded it to see that it was filled with people. It was funny to see, when we arrived at the bus stop, everyone leaving the bus except for one person who I assumed was a local.

At first glance, it looked to be a regular beach. It didn't help that the skies were partly cloudy and that sunset was still about 40 minutes away. The beach spanned about a kilometer, and there were probably a few hundred people on the beach. Fortunately, we were able to grab a few shots. After fiddling with an image I shot, I managed to make it into something that I like.

The colors are definitely more saturated than what it really looked like. Here's the unedited version.

After taking a few shots, we took an earlier bus back to the station. In hindsight, it might have been better to spend more time at the beach, because we had to wait nearly 90 minutes for our train back to Okayama. At times, my brother and I were the only ones at the station as we sat there on our phones with flies and other insects flying around us.

Once our train arrived, it was about a 50 minute trip back to Okayama. Since most places were closed at nearly 10 PM at night, it was convenience store food for dinner.

Overall, a day in which we visited familiar sites to see new sights. I was glad to see Chichibugahama beach in Mitoyo city, and it might be something I would consider visiting again. However, I probably would look to booking a hotel nearby... trains were too few and far between at night. =P