We woke up fairly early once again and enjoyed a canned coffee I bought from the vending machine outside our accommodation, before heading to Lawson to get breakfast foods. I got a miso soup and a lovely spicy salad type dish with pickled daikon radish and cucumber, as well as a rice ball and another coffee. We went back to the room and enjoyed our breakfast foods. 

We ventured out a bit later to go to Don Quixote to show Harith how awesome it is. Don Quixote is a many level shopping mega centre with EVERYTHING and a serious attack on the senses. On the way back to our accommodation we stopped at a lovely looking temple and a little Inari shrine that was in the middle of a parking lot, and completely surrounded by tall buildings. 

We relaxed at the accommodation for quite awhile, until close to 12:30 when we decided to take the bus to Meinohama ferry terminal, to take the ferry to Nokonoshima Island. We walked a short distance to the bus stop and took bus 302 all the way to the ferry terminal station. The bus ride took us over some giant bridges and through some shipping ports where ships were being built. I would guess that the bus took many 20-30 minutes. 

We disembarked at the ferry terminal and went inside to buy tickets on the ferry to Nokonoshima. We purchased tickets from a vending machine inside the terminal. It cost 460 Yen each for the return journey.

The next ferry would leave at 1:15pm, so we walked down the pier to look at the waves and watch the fishermen at work. At 1:15pm we boarded the ferry and went up to the second level. It was very windy, but it was a warm day (28 C) so the breeze wasn’t too cold. The entire ferry ride was ten minutes long, and we disembarked close to the half hour. 

We then walked to a small temple called Eifukuji that had a really lovely daruma (prayer doll) shaped statue with a crazy menacing face.

We also saw some graves maybe? Unsure what they were, but they were a series of rocks set into the cliff side, shaped like tombstones.We then walked to the historical remains of some kilns. The mounds of earth almost resembled burial mounds, but they were actually kilns used for firing pottery and clay.

We then walked up the hill towards the museum. My plan was to walk to the field of seasonal cosmos on the other side of the island, that was my whole reason for wanting to visit the island of Nokonoshima, but Harith really didn’t want to walk in the 28C heat. Jives and I usually walk a lot on vacation, usually spending the majority of our days walking, but we didn’t want to force this on Harith. So we abandoned the effort…. As the next bus to the cosmo field was in a few hours. We walked back down to the ferry port where we waited for the ferry while enjoying a beer and a lovely peppery bag of chips. I regret not just walking to see the cosmos on my own. Oh well, next time?

We took the 3:00pm ferry back to the mainland. This time the ferry was much fuller, so we stood at the back of the boat, watching giant fish leap out of the water, and skim along the surface like skipping stones on a pond. 

Back at port we took bus number nine back to a nearby metro stop. The bus was full of school children, one was reading a library book of manga with great focus. 

We then took the subway to Mandarake. For some reason Jives’ Suica card hadn’t been registering on the buses so we briefly had to describe to the metro attendant where our journey had begun (in Japanese). 

We arrived at Mandarake and explored for at least an hour. Jives couldn’t seem to find anything he was looking for. Afterwards we took a bus and then walked back to our accommodation. We were going to go for vegan ramen, but everyone seemed too tired, so I took a stool shower (the traditional Japanese way) and went to bed by 9pm.