Shimanami Sea Route

This last Wednesday was a national holiday (Labor Thanksgiving Day) and since the Japanese government doesn't observe holidays to Mondays or Fridays, everybody got the day off in the middle of the week. I took advantage of the holiday by going on a bus tour of the Shimanami Sea Route (shimanami kaido) with some friends.
It was quite a beautiful trip. There are a series of bridges starting in Onomichi that connect the main island of Honshu to Shikoku. Along the way, we stopped at Kozounji Temple and had a nice bento lunch. The town is famous for octopus, so everything in the lunch had something to do with octopus: octopus rice, octopus tempura, raw octopus in a kimchee sauce, and eel (well, the eel was trying real hard to be just like an octopus).
The last leg of the trip involved walking across the longest of the 8 bridges. It was a gorgeous day and I got some nice pictures. The trip was sponsored by a local college's international student program, so there were students from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Some of them spoke English, but mostly we all chatted in Japanese. Quite an interesting day.
As a side note, I had official Thanksgiving dinner with Mel, Jason, and Asuka at a yakiniku place. Then, on Friday, I had a second "Thanksgiving" dinner with some other American JETs (and a few conspicuous New Zealanders) at a Mexican restaurant in Hiroshima.
As another side note, for all you other sumo fans, Asashoryu just won the November basho. In doing so, he becomes the first ever sumo to win all 6 basho in a year, the first ever to win 7 in a row, and the broke the 27-year-old record of 82 wins in a single year (out of a possible 90, he won 84). Amazing stuff.