Trip to Matsuyama, 3-11-2013, Day 2

After the warmest and darkest night's sleep I've had in a long time we had a nice breakfast including the famous orange bread which was quite good.  After packing up and saying goodbye we took off.  It was a much colder day, especially with the wind but the wind must have blown the pollution away because the sky was a beautiful blue.  Yeah!

 

Our first stop was to see some Tobe yaki - pottery made with a special white/pink type of soil from the area (Tobe).  I think it's also a style since everything was quite thick and fairly heavy.  And the traditional colors for the glaze are blue, green and white, although they are expanding the color spectrum these days.  We stopped at a shop where you can also make your own, either just painting or actually using a wheel, and they will ship it to you when it's done.



Tobe Yaki

Sinks in the restroom of the shop.





The pillar is covered in Tobe yaki tiles.


Next stop - fields of ume (Japanese apriocot/plum).  Misato (the Sueda's daughter) had told us that there was an ume matsuri (festival) that weekend.  There were no longer festivities going on but the trees were in full bloom and beautiful.  We spent an hour or two walking around.

These are orange trees.

 

A haiku poem, must have been written as
part of the weekends festival, there were
a few here and there attachted to trees.

 

After a wonderful time wandering around the ume fields we found a very nice udon restaurant and had lunch.  Sorry - I forgot to take a picture before we started eating.  But we all had udon with beef, scallions, bonito flakes and a poached egg.  The broth was a little sweet - the whole thing was quite unusual but good.

 

 

 

Then a stop at the rest stop to pick up some more orange bread since Hiroko's dad requested she leave the rest!  And while we were there we tried the orange soft cream and the milk flavored one (which is like vanilla without the vanilla...).  The orange was really delicious.  It reminded me of my favorite natsu mikan (summer orange) soft cream I used to get in my Japanese 'hometown' of Shimoda.

We had a nice trip back - the scenery was much better with the blue sky - and that was  the conclusion of my weekend.  I've now been to the 4 prefectures of Shikoku so it's on to other places.