Day 63 — Kochi - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

November 4, 2025

Day 63 — Kochi

Well we are starting to fall behind on the blog posts. Busy few days with lots of camping, making it hard to stay on top of posting. I’ll make this brief.

It was a day off, so a good chunk of the day was TCB, taking care of business. Laundry, blog posts, catching up on administrivia, exploiting the breakfast buffet to the full extent.

The fun part of the day consisted of a walk to Kochi Castle, another of the 12 remaining original castles. We enjoyed both the walk to the castle — Kochi seemed to have a fairly relaxed vibe to it and some interesting stuff for the eyes of amblers — as well the castle.

The castle itself was set on a hill in the centre of town, as these things often are. The cool part about Kochi’s castle is that it still retained architectural features around the perimeter of the keep. Essentially the bits that converted the castle from fortress to palace.

After the castle, we continued ambling, and ended up at a fish market food hall, where we got a sashimi and sushi lunch.

Adding to our sign collection — earthquake and tsunami threats

Like Hakodate, Kochi had a trolley line as well

After our TCB morning and mid day amble, we gathered energies for a meal out. Our izakaya from the night before was closed (only Tuesday, of course), so we ventured into another one nearby. This one was way trendier — it was larger, with a younger crowd, and the Pogues blasting at high volume. We managed to get a table (Japanese style), then engaged in figuring out what to eat. The menu was indecipherable by Google Translate, the waitress spoke no English, and it took some bumbling effort in everyone’s part to get dishes heading our way. What we got was good, as a random assortment of things from a hip izakaya would be. A savoury mushroom custard, a warm salad of asparagus and tomato, a hotpot with tamago chunks, and an assortment of skewers, including what might have been gizzard, we’re not sure.

Anyway, that will have to do for this day. We have a fair effort ahead tomorrow then a day off, so hope to catch up a bit more soon.

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Julie HughesJust heard about 6.9 quake in northern Japan - are you far enough south to miss it (tsunami warning cancelled). Also - HUGE typhoon hitting Phillipines - it is south of Japan, buth the edges could make your days kind of miserable.
Just a Mom's concern :-)
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2 months ago

Tom BrocklehurstTo Julie HughesThanks. As people who are outside most of the time, we are relentless and obsessive checkers of the weather. And tsunami infrastructure here is, shall we say, robust. Anyway, we are having a sunny day off here in Matsuyama on western Shikoku. Another castle visit prefaced with a hotel breakfast buffet!
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2 months ago