Day 8. A lazy day and much needed. So not much to report. But more light shopping (constantly amazed at the variety of packaged food … in a very good way), some more onsen relaxing (in two days we haven’t seen another westerner use it). Topped off by more ramen.

We thought we should try supermarket sushi. And we are impressed (certainly at that price £5!)

The high quality drinks are also hotel freebies so no complaints here. (Cheapskates I know!)


We have an early ish start in the morning as we head to the art island of Naoshima. We have a room booked at the art hotel there (super lucky as we were able to plan a trip for the one day they had free when we looked in February). And we’re planning on taking only an overnight bag, leaving our cases in the vast numbers of luggage lockers at Okoyama station.

Although the art islands are close to the city, to get there is two trains, a ferry and a (free) hotel bus. We are hoping that the whole trip is about £5 but whilst we’ve been using Google maps a lot, we’ve realised it doesn’t cope with Japanese timetables very well. In this case, it said we could leave at 0740 or 1100; whereas in practice the trains and boats are at least hourly. We saw something similar coming back yesterday. Just a reminder that everything you read on the internet isn’t always true

I don’t bet but we are anticipating everything running to time and smoothly.