Japan 6.2 Walking around the town of Tottori

   Our days in Tottori were forecasted as rainy days.  Our first full day I decided to keep us around town.  We took our umbrellas and walked to a toy museum, WarabeKan.  This is what we saw along the way.

As we walked past this statue, I commented to Miles that this depicted the story of The Ugly Duckling.

  The toy museum had pretty cool architecture.  There were a handful of vintage toys on the second floor, but the highlight was the third floor, which was chock full of display cases of toys.

  Just a few minutes down the road was the Jinpukaku Mansion, which you couldn't enter, but you could walk around the gardens.  We followed the path up the hill, which led to the Tottori Castle Ruins.  There wasn't much to look at with the ruins, but the view of the city was nice.

    We had to retrace our steps back down, and we walked to two temples.  The first was Kosenji, a simple shrine, with an interesting display that had Mickey Mouse shirts.

    There were many flowers in the small garden areas that were a part of houses, in the residential area that we were walking through.

I have no idea what these were.

The typical concrete ground flower pot.

  The last stop was at the Kannon-in Buddhist Temple.  I peaked my head inside and was greeted by a woman that was in an area that actually looked like a kitchen.  Maybe she lives there.  She asked me to pay a fee and then she brought me into the back, which had a lovely view of a garden, and served me tea.  Miles stayed away due to the bugs, but I took the opportunity to go out toward the water for some photography.

  We walked home, and passed an interesting set of buildings and a change in the city landscape.

It has been a long time since I had seen a phone booth.

  That night Miles requested that we return to the Udon Restaurant, so I happily obliged.  We both ordered the same dish that we had had the night before.