Travel day today. Hard to leave Miharashi Tei – the place we were staying. It was super cool there and we met some lovely people too. Will definitely miss this place. The sun was shining today too (always happens on the day we leave) so after breaking we nipped up the stairs behind our accommodation to the temple above for some last minute views with blue skies.

After enjoying the views we went back to our room to pack up and check out.

When we left we gave a clip on koala to the guy at the accommodation- we always try to give at least one to all the places we stay at. We noticed there was an old dusty one on a fan by the window so we said now he has a friend.

We had to lug our suitcases down the big hill. Luckily we found a sloped path and didn’t have to rely on the steps. We saw some cats – they were getting a brush and some food from a local man. The stray cats are well looked after around here.

We made it down the hill with our luggage eventually…

And we took one of our suitcases to Yamato takyubin to ship it to our accommodation in KitaKyushu. This way we will only take one suitcase with us to our next destination- best idea ever!

We stopped for a coffee at a tiny cafe called Pour Espresso- the barista was friendly and let us take our coffee cups out to the benches in sun. Imagine anyone letting you do that in Perth 🤣

Then we got on a train bound for Kurashiki. We are actually staying in Shin Kurashiki for 2 nights but our accommodation isn’t really near anything too exciting so we decided to spend the afternoon exploring Kurashiki before checking in.

When we got to Kurashiki we needed lunch so we walked up the “historical district “ to see what we could find – and we found all the things. Also this town is known for denim – and omg there is denim everywhere! They also have blue beer and other “denim” themed products. We got some delicious onigiri for lunch.

And we looked at lots of shops and saw so many cute things and crafty things and arty things… too much stuff!!! Had to stop for a peach flavoured ice cream.

There were too many things to see so we will very likely be back again tomorrow.

Had a matcha latte break a bit later in the afternoon.

Then we thought we had better start heading to our accommodation so we started walking back to the station – we went a slightly different way and found the canal that we had forgotten about and I took this photo.

It’s kinda cheating with photos around here – it’s pretty hard to not take a good photo.

Back on the train to Shin Kurashiki (2 stops) and then we caught a taxi to our accommodation. Bit of a strange location but the accommodation is insanely nice.

We didn’t book dinner at the ryokan so we headed on down to the local supermarket and had the best time ever buying all sort of delicious treats for dinner.

And that’s about it for today. Apparently tomorrow is my birthday- I had totally forgotten until earlier today!