I snapped a few shots in Shikoku that have no real good place elsewhere, so I've combined them together here.
Let's start with this single-car diesel train I saw in Takamatsu. It's not often that someone living in Tokyo gets to see a single car train, and everything around here is electrified. I've been on a few diesel lines in Japan, but there aren't too many remaining. And one-car trains are pretty tiny when you think about the huge eleven-car trains that arrive every two to three minutes on the Yamanote Line.
Art. There's a bowling alley in the background.
The chicken is a mascot called Bary-san from the town of Imabari. He is holding a ship and has a crown that looks like the Shimanami Kaido, a toll road which is a series of bridges connecting Shikoku and Honshu via Imabari. Shimanami Kaido is the only route to Shikoku which is possible to be walked or biked, and is on my itinerary for some unplanned future trip. At 70 kilometers, it'll be quite a bicycle trip so I won't be taking it lightly.
I'm not sure what AKB48 is doing in Shikoku, but I don't know how I missed the girl in the costume standing at the far left. I wonder what she was doing there too. Both photos above were taken at Matsuyama Station.
Finally, here are two pictures of Takamatsu's mascot "Hyoko-tan". Well, I say Takamatsu's mascot, but really she's the mascot for Hyogo-machi, the covered shopping street in Takamatsu. It's quite a long shopping street (like most others in Japan) and is a good place for tourists to get noodles and souvenirs and kill some time out of the hot sun or rain. I stayed at a hotel just off of Hyogo-machi so I used it as my walking route back to the train station.
