{"id":1321,"date":"2024-05-23T13:52:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T13:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/?p=1321"},"modified":"2024-05-24T04:33:52","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T04:33:52","slug":"japan-20-kurashiki-day-at-the-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/?p=1321","title":{"rendered":"Japan #20 – Kurashiki – Day at the Mall and Sushi with Erez"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kurashiki is a city of approximately 500,000 people. From a tourist perspective, they are known for the Bikan Historical Quarter, which has a picturesque canal, surrounded by intact historical buildings filled with quaint shops and eateries. The Japan Guide website describes the area as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“During the Edo Period<\/a> (1603-1867), Kurashiki<\/a> was an important point along the distribution route of Japan’s most important commodity, rice<\/a>. Large quantities of rice from the surrounding area were brought into Kurashiki and intermediately stored there in storehouses before being shipped to Osaka<\/a> and Edo<\/a>. Because of the city’s importance in the rice trade, Kurashiki was put under direct control of the shogunate<\/a>, and the city was even named after its many storehouses (kura).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canals were built to allow boats and barges to navigate between the city’s storehouses and the nearby port. A central section of the city’s former canal system has been preserved in the Bikan Historical Quarter (\u5009\u6577\u7f8e\u89b3\u5730\u533a, Kurashiki Bikan Chiku). “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is also known for being the manufacturing centre of 70% of all denim produced in Japan. There is an area called the Kojima district that even has a History of Jeans Museum. In the Bikan Historical quarter, there is a Denim street where there are several stores selling Japan’s best selling creative denim designers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also around the station, is a huge mall complex and then next to the mall there is a giant outlet mall. The mall itself had several mature trees that the mall was designed around so they would not have to cut them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a rule, I am not a fan of malls, but this one was a cultural experience. In the mall there were many restaurants, an arcade, a food court, a toy capsule store, a cat cafe, and many retail stores. Around the mall there was green space and fake green space where there were many people of all ages just hanging out and socializing .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There was also a public piano open for anyone to play. Here is a student who played for quite a long time – apparently this is anime music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Erez is thinking of travelling for close to three weeks after his contract is finished, so we went to the Mont Bell outlet store and bought him a proper backpack. I may take one of his monstrous hockey bags home for him so he can travel lighter. I think his other bag weighs 9 kg even when empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After the mall we went out for sushi together – finally!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Believe it or not, that was my quiet, down day. I was fighting off a bit of a headache. Perhaps my frenetic travel pace and lack of sleep was catching up to me. I even took a nap in the afternoon \ud83d\ude42 Seeing Erez and eating sushi definitely ended the day on a high note. I am looking forward to seeing Norie and her daughter Maria tomorrow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kurashiki is a city of approximately 500,000 people. From a tourist perspective, they are known for the Bikan Historical Quarter, which has a picturesque canal, surrounded by intact historical buildings filled with quaint shops and eateries. The Japan Guide website … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.koren.korenscreativearts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}