At the beginning of March, Carly and Margaret—friends from Toronto—were in town for a short visit. We only had one afternoon together but we had a fabulous time, enjoying okonomiyaki (お好み焼き, a kind of pancake with all sorts of savory stuff mixed into the batter), ginger-ale flavoured Halls cough drops, and the “balmy” 6°C-with-snow-flurries weather. Domo-kun was witness to it all. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find any of the seasonal passionfruit flavoured kit-kat bars. Maybe next time.
We took them to Kokura Castle, which is a replica built from concrete in 1959. The castle is quite picturesque and boasts one of the largest paper-doll dioramas in Japan. The diorama is a model of a Kokura as a traditional Japanese castle town, complete with townsfolk and markets, feudal lords, stray dogs, Christian missionaries, ninjas, and an assortment of other nefarious characters. Kokura being a coastal town, the diorama even has people catching blowfish in the Kanmon Strait.
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