It’s time for Golden Week once again! Not much new to add that I haven’t written about here and here, but if you want more you can always head to the hitchhikers guide to the universe–I mean, wikipedia.
This year, in order to help jump start the dying economy, the gov has cut the highway fee to just 1000 yen, or around ten bucks. What what–highway fee?! Yeah, basically all highways are toll roads here. I’ve never driven on them, but I understand they are quite expensive to use. But now it’s only ten bucks. As you might imagine, this has led to more people using them. Many, many, many more. So many, in fact, that the news reports that most of the day is one really long traffic jam.
That was before Golden Week. For Golden Week, traffic is expected to increase even more. The help combat exploding bladders, the gov has installed an additional 666 port-a-potties along the sides of the roads. (yes, 666. I can only guess someone in the Japanese gov hates Christians… or is Satan, whichever). I’d sure hate to be the guy that has to clean them.
I’m going to Shikoku this year. I’m taking the night bus there rather than the train. It’s cheaper. Also, trains were fully booked about a month ago, so I missed buying my ticket. My hope is the roads are less busy at night.
Looking at this map above, Shikoku is the 2nd island from the bottom, nestled right between Kyushu (w/Nagasaki) and Honshu (big island, w/Tokyo, Kyoto, Mt Fuji, etc). It is known as being much less populated and more rural than Honshu. Everyone I tell my travel plans to expects me to get lost, because (according to them) no one will speak English and I will never be able to understand the Japanese dialect spoken there. Sounds like an adventure!
I’m planning to see a few places while in Shikoku. One of them is Dogo Onsen (hot spring), which is
