May 11, 2008 - Imabari, Japan

We spent today site seeing around the city of Imabari. It was a beautiful day and we again did a lot of walking around. We walked through another open air mall. Everything was extremely expensive.

Our next stop was the Imabari Castle. This was about a 500 year old castle that was built to house an army and the governor of the area. Today it is a museum that has a ton of ancient artifacts.

We spent a couple of hours touring through this castle. The had a bunch of suits of armor that were worn by the ancient warriors that protected the governor.

These were some really small people. Based on the suits it appears that these people were about 5 feet tall. This is probably being generous.

The castle also had a bunch of artifacts from the area that included a fossils, shells, preserved fish, and stuffed animals. JC was quick to point out this giant clam.

In the afternoon, we set out to the ocean. We arrived at the ocean pier and found dozens of people fishing for really tiny bait fish. We are not sure if they were going to use them as bait later or if they were going to eat them later.

The Japanese people will pretty much eat anything that comes out of the ocean! We have found that out at some of the various meals that we have had. Just about everything has some type of seafood in it! Thomas even found a bottled water that tastes like fish!!

Here is an example of what you can purchase a local grocery store. This was a packaged whole ugly fish.

After we watched the locals fish for a while, we headed out to the end of the pier and a small light house. The light house was really small and was probably pretty old, but it did give us some good views of the city!

Here is a shot of JC and I at the light house and another shot of a huge bridge.

I have a lot more pictures of the city of Imabari. I will post these later.

Tomorrow we head to Sumitomo Heavy Industries to start the inspection of our reactor. This will be a great learning experience for all!