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2006-04-japan
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2006-04-12
Second day in Matsue is very grey and wet unfortunately. Spoke briefly to a Swedish couple at the ryokan. They were travelling around with a little baby and staying at an inn with no bed or bathroom in the room was a bit too much. They were going to the tourist bureau at the station to find a western hotel and I went along to see if I could organize the next couple of days. However, the bureau only did Matsue and the travel agency inside the station was closed today. Dang! The lady at the tourist office did find me the number of the tourist office in Amonohashidate to book a hotel. But she suggested that I could do it in Amonohashidate tomorrow as well. It is in the middle of the week so hopefully it will be alright. Otherwise, I will go see the sand bank there. Oh yeah! and travel on to Osaka.
The people that run the ryokan suggested that I go to Adachi Museum of Art. The museum is also well known for its gardens. When I got there it turned out you can not actually go into the garden itself. That is a first! You can see it from the museum, through the windows. I guess even the grid is part of the garden and can not be walked on without disturbing it. It is a very beautiful garden though, nice rocks, plants and ponds. Against a backdrop of green hills/mountains. And there were a couple of spots where you could take pictures outside. The museum had some very nice paintings by Taikan Yokoyama, I especially liked 'Mountains after a shower' (from Twenty Scenes of Mt. Fuji and The Sea 1940). They had some interesting ceramics as well. Most exhibits were from late 18-hundreds and 19-hundreds. Except name and title all signs were in Japanese so I did not learn much.
I had some soba at the station, questioned the tourist office some more, got some more cash in case I need it for hotels the next couple of days. Japan is very modern, very advanced, in many ways, but credit cards are an exception and not accepted in many places. On top of that it is not that easy to get cash, most bank ATM do not accept foreign cards. Fortunatly the post office ATM does accept my Canadian bank card.
