On Saturday afternoon, we went to the nearby city of Kurashiki with our new friend Shirley who lives in Okayama. There is a lovely old town built around a canal with good restaurants (we really enjoyed the food and company at the Santa Cruz Kitchen) and a really good art museum featuring work by some really famous artists (Ohara Art Museum). Our visit also coincided with the annual summer festival so we kept running into people dressed as demons and the like, and also people dressed in summer kimonos (yukata). Click to enlarge the photos.
On Saturday night Neil cooked us dinner at his place and we shared a nice evening with Neil, Shirley, Keiko and Aya.
On Sunday we wandered around the city of Okayam in the morning, visiting the famous gardens, the municipal museum and the castle.
We found a lovely Italian Italian restaurant for lunch. Jazz music was playing and people read books at the counter....were we in a Murakami novel?
We were so relaxed that almost forgot why we had come to Okayama. Our presentation was at 3pm and we arrived early to set up. I think it went OK. Everyone was very nice and asked lots of questions about our work so we were pleased. We stayed on to see another presentation about a student newspaper which was very good. The folks in Okayama do this kind of thing once a month and were surprised to learn that we never do this in Nagoya (we are always up mountains at weekends - you can't do everything). After the presentations, we had time for a beer in a German bar with everyone before heading off to the station to get the bullet train back to Nagoya.
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