Day 4 - Yamaguchi - 12 Dec 2016

We set off at 9am after our breakfast at Smile Hotel.

Our first destination was the Karato Market. We merely walked around the market, bought some local snacks and then headed for the Shimonoseki Aquarium.

The Dolphin show was entertaining, albeit it was conducted in Japanese and only for 15 minutes. Of course, the kids roamed around the Aquarium and admired the different species of fish. Somehow, to me, it felt therapeutic to watch the school of them swim in the Aquarium.

We left the Aquarium about noon and drove for about 10 minutes to our lunch destination - Kaikyo Restaurant Shizuka. It was one of our most expensive meal (thus far) in this trip - about 13,000 Japanese Yen - but it was totally worth it. We had beef set meal and it was just incredibly awesome.

After satisfying our tummies, we set off for the Akiyoshido Cave at about 145pm. The drive was about one hour. After getting our cars parked, we walked quite a distance before we reached the ticketing counter. After purchasing the tickets, we continued our walk for about 15 minutes before we arrived at the entrance of the cave. As we were about to continue our journey into the cave, Le got a little emotional about walking into it. Perhaps, it was the "darkness" that looked frightful and thus felt intimidating. Hence, our family decided to drop the idea of exploring the cave while the Loh's family and my mum-in-law carried on the walk.

There was a tiny pavilion near the entrance of the cave. Emma and I just spent some wonderful time playing with the kids. We did silly things and played silly games. However, the smile on our kids' faces and their laughter were more than enough to assure us that the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. To be honest, this was the best time of my day, seeing that the kids were really happy.

We proceeded onto our final destination of the day which was our hotel accommodation at Hotel Matsumasa. It was Ryokan style of rooms. We arrived at about 545pm. After checking in, we got ourselves ready and met the rest of them for dinner, which was at the hotel itself.

After dinner, Emma and I went for a stroll. It was drizzling slightly. We walked into Lawson, got our drinks and then walked back to the hotel.

After shower, I went over to my brother-in-law's room to have snacks and whisky. It was a wonderful (and relaxing) time spent, just chatting about almost everything under the sun, from religion to politics etc.

By close to midnight, we called it a day.