Wakayama

...it shore be...


The weather lately has been very mushi atsui (humid). It's so nice to duck into a cool place. Today we traveled to Wakayama - a new city for me. Before we left Okayama, we gals posed with our $3 Okayama peaches:





Our train rides (we had 2) were only an hour each - not so bad - and they even had pandas on the back of our seat trays!





We seem to be staying in what we gals like to call "skanky town". No one get alarmed! It's just a very club oriented/industrial area and nothing like a skanky town in the states.

Before our show this evening, Dina and I walked and checked out the Wakayama Castle.


Bridge to castle grounds



Hungry Koi under bridge



Wakayama Castle



This cute old man spoke decent English and told us about the 400 year old tree above him, and some other info as well =)



400 year old tree



It is so amazing to me to walk on the same ground as people from hundreds of years previous, and it's ironic to have such an old treasure in the middle of a metropolis city.


Cool stone walkway/steps up to castle



Tea Garden



We didn't actually go into the castle because we had limited time, and we wanted to see more import things : namely the small little zoo on the castle grounds! There were so many cute animals that I can't post them all here. I will load all my pics into my flickr account and post a link so you can see all. Here are just a few:


View of zoo aviary



Baaaaaaaa



This emu hissed at me




Our show tonight went very well. We shared the stage with the amazing Eji Kitamura, who is a well known clarinet player. I've had the pleasure of working with him the last 2 years with the Billy Vaughn Orchestra. He's 80 - and an incredible musician....and so kawaii (cute!).


Old Time Club - our stage



Eji (w/his manager) at sound check



After our show, the club owner treated us all to a wonderful dinner - oishii!


Daily Dina Dt Coke pic