5/5-5/6 Kochi

May 5, 2025

For a while, I had known that I wanted to go visit the city of Kochi on the south side of the island. It was always described alongside imagery of the ocean and the legendary Sakamoto Ryoma. So, I went and invited my classmate Jeremy, and Kim. Kim invited another guy from Korea, whose name was Hyunmo. On one day, we met up in my dorm room to discuss plans, which you can read about it in a previous post. The one struggle we had was finding a place to stay, as it was peak season and the four of us seemed to be a large group. We could not find any hotel online, even Junko tried to help us. It turned out fine, because Hyunmo actually found an airbnb listing in the city. It was a hostel, but we all got to share the room.

The day of, we went to the Okaido shopping district at about 7:30 with our one-night luggage. We bought tickets for their high-way bus that claimed to get us to Kochi city in only 2 and a half hours. I was taken aback by how nice the Kochi train station was, even though it was kind of small and doesn't connect to many parts of the island. We all used the bathroom, and immediately put our luggage into some lockers. We boarded a bus that was supposed to take us to Cape Katsurahama, the most famous place in the prefecture. It is a long beach that overlooks the Pacific Ocean and where a large statue of Sakamoto Ryoma stands, still facing out to sea. 

Sakamoto Ryoma was a samurai who advocated for the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent modernization of Japan. He grew up in Kochi, and is remembered as their hero.

We arrived at the area, and man was it packed. There was tourist shopping, a huge (by Japan standards) parking lot, and tons of people. Then we went immediately to see the famous cape Katsurahama. We spent a minute looking at the huge statue of Ryoma facing the ocean, then scrambled down the stairs to the beach. We took tons of pictures, and tried to get as close to the water as possible. There were some pebbles, but it was fine. I took my shoes off and got in the water a little bit to try to take some pictures with a pose like Tatsuro Yamashita did, when all of a sudden I heard a whistle blowing and a security guard looking at me.

I was taken-aback, but he was trying to let me know that it is dangerous to be in the water. I was embarrassed, but I told him thank you, and I put my shoes back on. We took a group photo, and went back up to eat cause we were starving.

There was this place that had burgers, and we decided to try that. We waited in a line that felt like forever, and the others left to go look around. I stayed in line and grabbed their food when I was ready. It gave me time to prepare for another trip. Then they came by, we ate, I thought the burger was alright, and at last is was time to go to the Katsurahama Aquarium. 

The aquarium was kind of small, but they totally made up for it with how much stuff was packed in! It seemed to be focused more towards kids, but it as absolutely fine. There were little fish tanks inside and outside, and activities everywhere. The signs were also really well thought out. One of them told us to chase away herons, another with a "scary" photo of a sea turtle telling us not to pet them as we could get bit, and one saying not to pet the seals because they bite, even though they were the gosh darn cutest things you could imagine.

Kim wanted to try every experience, so he got some feed for the sea turtles, which I admit was cool, and then he tried out the "Dr. Fish" attraction where you could let little fish nibble the dead skin off of you. To my surprise there were some California sea lions which were playing, maybe a little too hard. You can see the video for yourself.

We passed through the gift shop on our way out, and I got some things. On our way out I had to use AI to explain who Sakamoto Ryoma was to Kim.

We then went to the Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum, which was really interesting. We weren't really allowed to take photos of the things in there, but we still got some. There were a lot of things relating to the Tosa Samurai domain, Sakamoto Ryoma's life, the American culture he experienced with John Mung, and movies. Unfortunately I couldn't quite make out a lot of the words, but it was enjoyable. At the top was an excellent view of the ocean and surrounding area. We walked back to the shopping area, looked around for souvenirs, and waiting in the tremendously long bus line. After waiting for at least half an hour we got on, but had to stand the whole time. It took about an hour, but we did make it into the city. That thing was packed like sardines.

Probably the biggest takeaway I had was not from any of the scenery or animals, but from a Japan Coast Guard poster. It made me remember that the US Coast Guard exists.

15 minutes later we arrived at the hostel with our luggage. The problem was that we were on the back side, in some kind of garage. I think we found an entrance and walked through it to the front. We checked in, received our key, and went up to our room. The building and insides looked very run down, and apparently weren't in a very good part of town. But our room and the showers were nice and clean. We put our stuff away and got all clean, but it wouldn't be long because we had to go eat dinner.

We were recommended to go to the Hirome Ichiba market where we could get Kochi's most famous specialty food, katsuo-tataki. It's a type of tuna sashimi where the ends are seared slightly and has rock salt seasoning. It is delicious. It was absolutely packed inside, but we needed to find seating first. We had someone wait in line for food, and someone find a table. We asked this family if they were about to be done, and they said yes. They said it would be fine for us to take it when they were done. So we waited and then sat down. Kim went and ordered a ramen, which was delivered. We then got our order of katsuo tatakis, and other sides. It was good, as expected.

When we left the whole mess, there was a shaved ice stand outside, which we all decided to try. Mainly because it was Summer, and that is a Summer staple. We got to see them cut the ice right in front of us. Even though all the "flavors" were only separated by color, it was still good. A couple minutes later when we were walking down the main shopping street, we ran into a guy who was teaching his dog to ride a skateboard. You can see the video below. Then, a couple minutes later we rain into my classmate Ren Ishida from Matsuyama! It was crazy, but we were super glad to see each other. What was even more crazy was that we found a poster advertising a casino.

At night, we decided that we wanted to go get snacks. So we walked through the neighborhood streets to the closest convenience store, and bought a ton. When we got back, we tried to watch anime, but because it was on a phone it didn't turn out so well. Then we went to sleep!

May 6, 2025

In the morning, we decided that we were going to go get coffee at Starbucks and breakfast at Mr. Donut (Dunkin Donuts) and head back. I think that I brought some donuts back for the others, and that it was just Kim and I. On the way back I bought a protein drink from a convenience store, and we ate our breakfast at the hostel. I am an early riser, and the others aren't, so when I got back they were just getting ready.

Once we got our things and were headed out, we stopped to talk again to the owner. With a laugh, he told us that there isn't really much to see in Kochi, and since we went to Katsurahama we had pretty much seen everything. On our way out he let us take some umbrellas because it was raining. No need to return them. It was kind of funny how he was so honest with that. 

We were on our way to Kochi castle, treading up the hill in the rain. It was a cool view. There wasn't anything too special with the castle, other than an exhibit on village life generations ago. I got an excellent handkerchief in the gift shop, which I still use today. 

Back at the bottom of the park, there was a huge group of Australian or Kiwi tourists. It was fun listening to them talk. It was like some tour group or something. 

Next we were off to the Makino Botanical Garden. This was on the opposite side of town, so we took a taxi all the way there. In Japan, there is no Uber. It is illegal to drive people for compensation outside of an official taxi company. So an app was created called "Taxi GO" or something. You can do the same thing of requesting a taxi to drive you somewhere, even what kind of vehicle or company. A guy comes and picks us up, and drives us 20 minutes to the entrance. Keep in mind, not only was it cloudy and raining, but it was hot and humid.

The Makino Botanical Garden was very nice. The buildings were new and fancy, and there was a lot to see. We spent out time going through everything. We even found a grandpa sleeping on a bench with a small radio player on. The conservatory was excellent, with tons of different plants inside just like the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco. I don't remember too much, but Tomitaro Makino was a botanist who came to like plants more than people, and he lived in the Kochi area.

The gift shop was really nice, and I had to restrain myself from buying everything. So, I bought nothing. There were selling succulent plants with an inaccurate English translation of "Bizarre Plants."

We went back to the shopping district. One of the famous things of Kochi is the show "Anpanman" (Bean Bun Man). The creator's hometown is Kochi, and so there are tons of Anpanman themed things there. NHK was actually advertising a tv program based on the creator's life. 

We made it back to the main shopping street, and I brought the group to meet up with someone I knew, Masaki. He was one of the guys I met at Christian camp, and I asked him he we could meet since we were visiting his hometown. When I saw him I very enthusiastically went up to say hi, and we asked each other how we'd been. He wanted to take a group photo, so we did. We weren't quite sure where else to go, so we just decided to walk to the Yosakoi museum. That is a famous dance from the area, which you could see in one of the first blog posts I made in May, We went inside, looked at tons of costumes, and even got to try it out for ourselves. It was hard.

As we were walking he took us to a tourist shop and said that we absolutely had to try some things. They were Tosa sweet bean cakes, or something like that. Masaki bought them for us, and to his insistence I tried it. Later on he told us that there was a drink that is very popular called Gokkuri-kun, which is made from the yuzu citrus. I think he also bought some for us to try, which he absolutely didn't have to do. He was so nice.

We then were going to go to a hot-spring, but decided against it. Masaki lead us to a shopping area which he said was popular and had lots of souvenirs. We took a bus quite a ways, and then walked over to this inside shopping building. Inside we went to this place called "Imo-ten" (Potato Heaven) which sold tempura sweet potatoes. We tried em, as always it was good, then we went and had dinner at a small noodle restaurant in the same building. We went into the large farmer's market right there, and looked around. I bought 2 packs of Gokkuri-kun for my classmates. By that time it was getting dark and rainy, so we had to start heading back to the station. Masaki was the first to get off on his way, and then we