7/19 Shikoku Karst

Another item that was on my Japan Checklist was an area in the mountains on the island called "Shikoku Karst." It's hard to describe what a karst is but it has to do with limestone that was dissolved that leaves other stone exposed. It's an area with more rocky terrain than usual. Now, the Shikoku Karst is a high grassland area with many boulders just laying around. People like to go up there to enjoy the scenic views. It lies just inside Kochi prefecture on the border with Ehime.

This expedition was between Tokuoka-sensei, a student named Noa, and myself. I think that we met up at the university to take the the school van, aka "NOAH." I think that we drove up to Kumakogen first, and there we grabbed some lunch. There happened to be a bakery, so we bought some bread. I didn't get too much, because we were going into the farmers market as well. There I bought one of my other top three favorite Japanese foods, takikomigohan! It seemed that I could only get it went I went out of the city. It's rice that is cooked in some broth with some vegetables and sometimes meat thrown in there.

We kept driving up the road and had lunch. We managed to see some amazing sights. There was this cliff face that was exposed at the end of a curve in a river that we all took a picture of. We got out to take pictures. There was another place where we stopped, it was a vista point for a "Yanadani Canyon." There was an old building that had apparently been a market of some sorts back in the day. We were given an impromptu lesson on leaves there.

We kept driving until it felt as if we were diving upwards into a sea of fog. We had left the hot, known-world behind and were entering a new world of limited visibility and cool weather. Then we stopped, and made our way onto the observation deck, and had a great view of.... fog. We were able to see a smidge of the massive canyon that lay hidden, but that was it. We checked out the visitor center named "Karst Terrace" and got to learn more about what was actually around us. It was all in high-level Japanese so I wasn't able to walk away with too much.

We drove further into the grassland and encountered some pretty flowers and a... tuk-tuk?? Apparently there was some service up there running it. A little further up there were some cars stopped on the side of the road and people were looking at something. So we decided to join them. It was a nice view of some cattle out eating grass surrounded by boulders. One of the cows was right up to the fence for us to see. Tokuoka-sensei took a picture of us taking pictures of the cows. I don't know if I still have it but I could probably get it. I turned around and saw him so I posed, but he said "more naturally!" So I turned back around.

We kept going and more and more boulders started appearing as if they were growing out of the grasslands. We made it to the top and there was a large wind turbine running blowing wind down to Matsuyama to help cool the city (just kidding). We got out of the car and some cattle were being fed right in front of us. The area we ended up at was called the Mezurudaira Plateau, and there were quite a few more visitors up there with us.

I bought some ice cream. It was good.

From there we were off to head back. We actually saw a Japanese monkey slightly off the road on our way back.