already taken us 3 to 4 hours to get to Tokushima. We got on the next local and headed toward Naruto city. The guys were tired from the night before and we didn’t get enough sleep on the trains. Cuyler, Marlon, Rishi, and Brian were sitting on one side of the train and to me…. They looked like a band posing for an album cover. Haha
We arrived in Naruto city around 11am and take a local bus to go to our destination. Tokushima is hella famous for their Awa Odori Dancing, a citrus fruit called Sudachi, their unique style of ramen, 
and so forth. One of their main attraction is the Naruto whirlpools. My friends and I travelled for hella hours and came all the way from Niihama to see these whirlpools. We actually have never seen a whirlpool before so we were excited. Brian described our image of whirlpools the best by saying that it would be one giant toilet flush in the middle of sea. He was very excited that he was ready to go and swim into the whirlpool so he could take a bathroom break in it and be flushed away. Haha… We finally arrived at the whirl observation station and at this time… it was like 12:30ish? We were very hungry, but I thought hunger could wait since we were about to see some whirlpools!
We pay an entrance fee and walk under a bridge. We walked for quite 
some time and checking out the view below us. As we do, we are hit by bursts of winds. It started to get hella windy and cold as we walked closer to the whirlpool. After a 20 minute walk fighting the strong winds, we get to the main observation deck and see the whirlpool for the first time. And…. Our first reaction was…. WTH? We kept on staring down at the water and we kept on looking for a whirlpool…. After a couple of minutes, we noticed that the small swirls in the water were the whirlpools. We all imagined whirlpools to be very huge and would be swirling constantly in the middle of the sea. After reading so many folklore stories about 
sailors on the high sea and their battle with whirlpools….. I totally imagined a giant whirlpool that would engulf anything! When I heard there were boats that would take you close to the Naruto whirlpool, I was like that’s hella dangerous! “Why would anyone want to go close to one!?” But I now knew why it was possible to view the whirlpools so close…. They were small swirls that would appear briefly and disappear.
So my friends and I stood there little disappointed and looked for “good” whirlpools. When we saw a whirlpool that swirled longer than 5 seconds then that was worth taking a picture or video of.
We spent about 20 minutes doing this and after we had enough of the strong winds and the cold weather… we headed out of the observation deck to catch our bus. We all thought…. Wow…. Whirlpools are kind of lame. Along the way, we found an ad for Sudachi ice cream and seaweed ice cream. It looked disgusting, but I was determined to try it.
We left Naruto station and headed toward Tokushima city to catch some lunch. We ate a specialty dish which was udon served in a large wooden tub. I like to call it “tub udon.” Since it wasn’t enough, we decided to seek out for more food. We found CoCo’s Curry and I asked my friends to help fulfill a dream of mine. Four years ago, I visited Japan and I had CoCo’s Curry for the first time. Back then, I tried out a curry that had a spice level of 5 out of 10. From my memory, I was sweating and crying in terms of how hot it was. When I noticed that I was only suffering at level 5…. What would level 10 be like? So I had this weird desire to try it out whenever I got the chance to go to CoCo’s Curry. But it was my desire to share this level 10 curry with other people. My friend and I enter the store and we cram into a 4 seater booth. The waitress takes my 
order for a level 10 pork curry and asks…. “Is that all?” as she notices that there’s 5 other foreigners with me. She chuckles and walks away and brings my curry. We all grab a spoonful of the curry and take a bite. We all sit there in silence and go… “What the heck? This ain’t spicy at all…” Haha…. I guess level 10 was not as hot I would assume to be. The curry did have a small kick, but the spiciness was more of lingering feeling where the spice would stay around for awhile and dissipate. After finishing up some lame spicy curry, I left the restaurant saying to myself.. “What a lame dream that was….” Haha
We weren’t satisfied with our meals so I decided to show the guys some Japanese sweets. Cuyler needed some coffee as well so I took them to Mr. Donuts and had the guys try out some Pon De Ring. A very chewy donut with a sweet glaze. Their comment on the donut was a thumbs up! After getting an unsatisfactory feeling from eating the udon and curry and getting disappointed from viewing the whirlpools, we found one thing that was worthwhile! Thank you Mister Donut and Pon De Ring for being deliciously awesome! Glad it made our Tokushima adventure a little interesting. =D
We looked around the city more and after we realized that there was nothing else to do…. We took a train back to Takamatsu station in Kagawa. It took us about 2 hours and it was like 6pm when we got back. We got out of the station and I must say that I was quite impressed with Takamatsu. Usually, when you exit out of a station… there’s nothing nearby and nothing exciting to look at. But Takamatsu was amazing. The station is pretty large to begin with and the city looks like the future according to how my friends phrased it. If you check out the picture, you will see what we are talking about. The buildings were huge and something you would find 
in Tokyo or Osaka. We checked out a mall nearby, but discovering that most of the stores were closed. It was a Monday so it couldn’t be helped. We also found a street musician or singer singing her heart out and I felt so bad for her…. In terms of how bad she sang. She was very off key and her voice screeched. My friends and I agreed that she wasn’t the best street singer we have heard.
We left the station area to check out the city and we decided to do a cheap dinner. We went to Yoshinoya and had some beef or 
pork bowls. They were hella delicious and the best part was it was only like 600 yen! How awesome! I wish our Yoshinoya in the states were cheap and delicious as Japan. What happen to ours!? After getting our rice bowls, we went back to Niihama to pack up, rest, and get ready to go to our next destination.
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