I’m feeling a bit better today, but I think that’s because I was able to sleep while traveling.

There was a bit of drama at the Tokuyama Toyoko Inn before we left this morning. There were police there and it appears one of the patrons lost a drier full of clothes. The driers are TINY and it couldn’t have been that much. I would have probably cursed a blue streak and then gone to Uniqlo for new clothes, especially a tiny drier’s worth, but the guy appears to have called a half-dozen cops and the manager of the hotel instead. He looked a little off and there was a Mercedes-Benz idling outside, so I wonder if he wasn’t a gangster trying to shake down the hotel. I suppose we’ll never know.

We left Tokuyama on the Shinkansen at 10:30AM and got to Okayama at 11:30. We spent most of the day with my sister’s friend Yumi, starting with lunch at a soba restaurant.

It was kind of weird after being in the gangster hotel, but most of the guys in the restaurant appeared to be of the same ilk and were with women who were at least 25 years younger. I did not fit that pattern. However, I did take a random picture of an old train locomotive in a park.

After lunch we drove about an out to see the world’s oldest free school.

The main lecture hall with lots of people wandering through looking at empty rooms.

We took Yumi’s fancy car with the sliding side door.

We got back to Okayama to do more shopping. We had dinner at an udon restaurant.

We’re at the Toyoko Inn in Okayama (one of three near the station) and it’s a lot livelier here than it was in Tokuyama/Hikari. A LOT livelier. The bookstore (I didn’t even see a bookstore in Tokuyama) is open until midnight on Sunday night, for example. Man my family is from the sticks.