Meeting an Old Friend

Recently an old friend of mine came to Japan for a trip with his partner. We had not seen each other for about 12 years, but he got in touch and wanted to catch up. He decided to spend 3 nights in Okayama during one of my weekends. While we were friends in university in New Zealand, he was originally born in England and has been living there for almost as long as I have in Japan. It was interesting to see how he has changed since we both moved away from NZ. We had a great time and were able to visit many places.

On their first night here, it was a workday for me. I was only able to meet them at night. We went out for dinner and had yakitori downtown. They looked exhausted as they had climbed Mt. Fuji only two days earlier. Nonetheless, they were happy to go to a local place for dinner rather than a chain or somewhere well-known. The next day, we did a lot of Okayama tourist activities. Okayama castle, Korakuen, and Bikanchiku. Sadly, it was rainy in the morning, but we spent some time inside the castle and managed to get to the garden when the rain had settled a bit. On that day, the lotus flowers had started to bloom so it was lucky timing. While in Bikanchiku, I took them to an udon shop. This trend of getting them to experience different Japanese foods continued throughout the weekend as that night we went to a yakiniku place. On our last day, we had sushi and tsukumen.

On our last day, we did not spend much time in Okayama. We went over to Himeji. Himeji castle is probably my favorite castle in Japan, so I wanted to show it off to them.  At the time we were planning to go, the England vs Mexico world cup game was live, so my friend insisted on watching it during the train ride. Amusingly, the other foreigners we saw on the train and even the platform at Himeji were also staring at their phones and watching the game. Despite raining in the morning again, it managed to mostly clear up once we reached the castle. My friends were impressed by the size, scale and craftsmanship. We managed to spend a lot more time there than I expected so we ended up just coming back to Okayama, doing some shopping and having dinner.

Overall, it was a fun weekend, and a great chance to catch up with an old friend. He said he hopes to visit Japan again in the future. Hopefully I can someday visit England as well.