Have you ever returned to a place after many years only to find that it's not quite as good as you remembered it? To make matters worse, how about if on the return visit your brought a long some of your family members because you felt it was a special place you wanted to show them? This experience happened to Ritsuko, when we (Ritsuko, me, mum and dad) went to see Kurashiki. Ritsuko had visited there more than 12 years ago, and it was a place she really wanted to show us. When we got there it was almost like a Ghost Metropolis. Now I've seen small cities in rural Japan become run down, due to economic hard times, but Kurashiki is a city of more than 400,000 people and it even has a bullet train station nearby. Even the area around the central train station had many shops vacant! Many shopping arcades where very run down, more so that I've ever seen in Japan.
The photo on the right is part of an area we came to see in Kurashiki which is a historical district, even in this photo if you look carefully you can see the street's not so pristine. Actually, area around the famous canal is still pristine and it was worth seeing, but the rest of the city looks sadly depressed.
When we got back to the train station, I decided to take a look on the other side of the station, because I noticed an interesting clock tower. Then to my dismay did I happen to see the demolition of what looked like it once was an attractive amusement park going on.
Earlier on the same day we made a stop at Okayama to see the famous Korakuen (garden) which is pictured on the left. Okayama seem to be doing much better economically that Kurashiki, but still rather quiet compared to what where used to seeing in the cities around here (i.e. Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe).
BTW on our way there I finally got to ride on the 500 series Shinkansen (Super Express aka “Bullet Train”), so I've now ridden every kind that run (or have run) on the Tokaido/Sanyo line. These are the 0, 100, 300, 500, 700 and N700 series. It's taken me 11 years from my first Shinkansen ride in 1998.