After our cultural explorations on the first day, on days 2 and 3 we set out to experience some of the beautiful nature around Okayama. The first trip was to a cave called "ikurado", in fact quite a big cave. Or maybe I should better say "long", because parts were really narrow, which quickly reminded me of the disadvantages of being a western guy: my body size! Our friend Keiko-san also joined us on this day, and even drove us around with her car. This made it easy to visit two other quite remarkable spots: One of the nice Okayama beaches, and also a viewpoint on top of a mountain, from which we could see the bay, including the big bridge leading to Shikoku (the smallest of Japan's 4 major islands). A tasty Sushi dinner concluded this day nicely.
The next day, our plan was to travel to Onomichi (1 hour from Okayama) for biking. Onomichi is starting point of an "island road", meaning a series of small islands that are connected by bridges, ultimately connecting the main island Honshu with Shikoku. The islands and also the bridges have trails made specifically for the purpose of biking, so I thought this sounded like a good plan. The only thing I had forgotten about was that it was Golden Week, and we were not the only people having had this idea. So, when we got there, all the rentable bikes were already gone.. Having learned about this, we decided not to let this ruin our day, and went on to explore one of the islands by ferry and bus. The island was an extremely quiet place, I almost couldn't believe this was still Japan. We visited two places here: A quite nice flower garden, but more impressively a small castle at the very top of the mountain. What made the castle special was its completely being embedded within wild nature, quiet different from the castles I had visited before.
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