7/12/22 Weds: Woke up at 7am and departed at 8am towards Karato Market, which was a 1.5h drive away. It was also the first time we hit the toll booths as we crossed to Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi... paying 2450 yen for toll tickets on the way there. From what we observed, the sky almost always look gloomy on cloudy days but it doesn't rain.
We crossed the Kanmon Bridge over to Shimonoseki and parked at a free parking lot opposite a shrine. At first, we just thought that it was spacious, who knew that to our disappointment, Karato Market was closed today, albeit it said 'opened' on Google maps!
My dream of eating lots of fresh and cheap sashimi and sushi was gone that morning haiz! We saw a few other people who stood around the area, probably all disappointed by the fact that it's closed. Well, we haven't eaten breakfast, and Potato saw Kanmon Wharf opposite to it, so we tried our luck there. There were a number of restaurants there, but not many stalls were opened at 9+, 10am, but we found one called奇兵队that opened at 10.30am. We ordered the kaisendon (5940 yen for three) and though it's not the freshest of sashimi, I was hungry so I still finished it.
We took the chance to walk around as more shops opened. *Fugu is apparently the specialty there, but we did not get to try it after all, though we did buy some snacks shaped like a Fugu haha.* Pretty views of the sea on the deck too!
Jess and I shared a matcha ice-cream (400 yen) and both the taste and texture were really good~ shiok to have ice-cream in the winter haha!
We drove over nearer to Kanmon Plaza and walked the 780m-long Kanmon tunnel connecting Honshu and Kyushu. It was for both pedestrians and cyclists to cross. We started walking at about 11.45am and completed about half the distance, stopping at the intersection between Shimonoseki and Fukuoka.
All three of us felt like the tunnel was shaking a little as we walked, albeit it's situated approximately 58m below sea level. After turning back, we drove over to Kawachi Wisteria Garden (toll: 1130 yen) but it was closed. There were not much blooming flowers around for tourists to see in early winter I reckon. Drove over toそば処花ぐるま (toll: 540 yen), a homemade soba and Airbnb place that I chanced upon online. Sadly, we had no luck with late lunch here too. We bumped into the owner lady when we found her place at 2.15pm or so and she was about to go out. We talked using simple English and this was her young female cat.. very active.
Arrived at Nanzoin Temple at 3+pm and it was a serene and tranquil place. The laid down statue of Buddha was huge too. We went up and down stairs to explore the site and saw different figurines of god too. We went to Murata at 5pm and they gave us a reserved table (6pm) because we were very early for dinner. Jess had hot soba with tempura, I had cold soba and tempura and Potato ate their tempura don and loved it haha! I insisted we have to try their lime soba (Sudatchi) which was hot. The taste was unique, but not too bad. Dinner was 7000 yen. I think we left there in about an hour and went back to our Airbnb with snacks and tidbits bought from Kanmon Wharf and the Familymart near us. We all enjoyed the mentaiko chips a lot and I liked my sweet peach Suntory too. Driver Potato was too tired and retired to bed early that night while Jess and I watched some skiing videos on youtube using the projector in the Airbnb... cool.
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