Tatsuta Ryokan on the Izu Peninsula

Gorgeous day today. As we drove from Shizuoka to Izu, Mt Fuji was our constant companion out the passenger window and my propensity for iffy high speed landscape photography reasserted itself in spades… This was Mr K’s preferred shot, complete with Shinkansen in the mid-ground.

We’d had quite a warm day – somewhere in the low 20Cs all day, but as we neared Izu and entered the mountainous villages of the peninsula, the temperatures dropped considerably, and with it, the autumn leaves were more prevalent. It’s interesting how you can see which slopes of a small valley are the coolest.


Our last weekend in Japan for this trip, thankfully we only minimal transport work this weekend (unless our Middle East clients start arcing up on Sunday just for shits and giggles!) and two nights of rest and relaxation, fun and frivolity in the beautiful Izu Peninsula staying at Tatsuta Ryokan.

I saw this ryokan on a travel vlog and thought it looking lovely. Beautiful ambiance and a welcoming atmosphere. Sometimes it feels a little hit and miss when booking places in languages you are unfamiliar with, but I seem to have won here.

This was booked months ago, and I honestly forgot what type of accomodation I had booked for most of this trip,so it always felt like a wonderful surprise when we arrived at our ryokan stays. Here, at Tatsuta, because we are having guests on the second night, I remember booking a larger room with the private onsen bath, but damn… this room is palatial!

It’s quite difficult to capture the size of this room – between the bed space above and the living room space in the picture below, is also about another six tatami mat of floor space? I also wish I could adequately convey the amazing smell of this room – the fresh cypress of the timber work, the tatami mats, and the fresh breezes coming in the large windows to the river… it’s intoxicating.

I noticed this quaint device by the bed… cute touch. 🙂

And of course, I’m starting to feel that no night in Japan is complete without your own private onsen bath on the balcony… just the sight of it is enough to make you start to relax.

We also had a generous provision of coffee, hot tea, cold water, snacks and an amenities kit full of more pookie than you can poke a stick at…
Toothbrush, razor, hairbrush, tabi socks, shower cap and so much more. Most of the ryokans have provided loads of amenities like this – the packaging always gives me pause though!

The view from our room of the Nekokoshi River.

First things first of course we had to shower and then get in for a soak in the tub. It was amazing. The water was about 40C and felt fresh and clear. After that we did a little unpacking and cleared away some work before checking out the ryokan’s other onsen baths. There were four other private onsen baths we could access – and they all had door locks that were electronically monitored so you could scan a QR code and find out which baths were free. This bath was directly at the end of the corridor on our floor, and we had time so we thought we’d go for a second dip before getting ready for dinner. It was lovely – and I imagine four or five people could enjoy this space together quite easily. This is the view from the ryokan’s riverside restaurant on the first floor… just beautiful.

Looking all relaxed and ready for another delicious kaiseki dinner. The menu is predominantly Kawadoko cuisine in this part of Japan (not entirely sure what that means, but I am writing it down so I can hunt for it later). The starters were as impressively presented as they were flavoursome – there was an umeshu aperitif, sakiwan golden soup, boiled rockfish, pork hachimanmaki, forest boar liver, and tengyo nanban (I need to look that one up too!).
The sashimi was fresh kingfish from Ito port, and scallops.

And as per what is now becoming quite the habit, I tried a local junmai saké with the meal.

This was the little boiled rockfish – very fishy, with a very thick consistency, a bit like octopus, but not really.
There was small box covered with decorative paper in the first picture that I hadn’t noticed, and when I did uncover it – more sashimi! Yellowtail and tuna, so fresh and delicious. Amazing… I really am not going to have Japanese food for months after I get home, it just won’t measure up.

Next course, we were back to cooking our own shabu-shabu of delicious golden sea bream and specially prepared tofu.

We were also served this interesting ‘boiled fish’, when we asked our attendant what sort of fish it was, he haltingly replied, ‘Errr, red fish’. 🙂 I’ve since discovered it was known as kinmedai in Japanese which is a Splendid Alphonso to the English speaking world. It was served boiled in a light soy and was very tasty – though I did heave most of the raw ginger off the top… it was just too much!We were also served some tempura seasonal vegetables with wasabi salt – I never thought I was overly fond of tempura…. in Australia it tends to feel heavy in oil, and the one time we went for tempura in Asakusa with a Japanese friend, Amané, she took us to her favourite and she claimed ‘best’ tempura restaurant in Asakusa and I honestly didn’t like it that much. But the ryokan meals we have had have served tempura that is light and delicate and doesn’t taste like heavy deep fried food at all.We discovered that Izu is really well known for their fresh wasabi – and we also discovered, when you grate your own wasabi and not using the squishy over processed stuff you see most places, it is more flavourful and less hot. Very nice.Dashi broth heating for our rice set course – The rice set came with more red fish, sesame, miso pickles, nori, wasabi, and coriander (thank you so much for the heads up on the devil’s weed!), then of course you pour some broth on once you have loaded up your rice.Ta-da! Super tasty. They gave us a large pot of rice and said to call if we wanted more rice – but after such a large meal, I nearly had more condiments than rice in my donburi. Thankfully, with these multi course kaiseki meals, the dessert/sweet courses are usually simple and small… I say ‘thankfully’ because many Japanese abhor waste when it comes to food and it is considered rude not to clean your plate – if you are at a buffet and choosing food for yourself, it is VERY rude to take more than you will eat.
Dessert tonight was some local Fuji apple, a couple of well chosen grapes, a piece of brown sugar pudding, and some sort of slightly cheese-layered-cake thing. Looking very relaxed and chilled there Mr K.

The restaurant as we were leaving – each table has blankets under the table top and heaters under the table. We were also given large fluffy Japanese parkas that we could wear if we got too cold, but seeing it was quite a bit warmer here than Takayama and up in the snow near Nagano, we felt a little too warm!

Having dinner by the stream was lovely – though I have to say the water was a bit loud for quiet conversation. I imagine in spring this area would look completely different and the river wouldn’t be trickling past, it would be roaring! Waking up to this in the morning is something I could really get used to.

Took this snap of Mr K enjoying the view from the onsen bath before we went down from breakfast. 🙂 I reckon it’s a pretty safe bet that 2,000JPY he is thinking about work on Monday already.
You can see the dining ‘room’ by the river so much easier to photograph in the morning – it is gorgeous here. It was chilly this morning so we rugged up a bit and settled ourselves in beside the river.

Breakfast full of all good things again – egg and a piece of boar bacon, miso soup, rice and condiments (below), pickled veggies, yoghurt, and green tea all beautifully laid out.

The donburi condiments box for breakfast is full of exciting and some unidentified things. 🙂 Beans-of-uncertain-preparation (?) at 12 o’clock, mushrooms in soy at 11 and 1, some slimy umami fishy things (on the middle left), some miso-ish onion flavoured something (on the middle right), seaweed dead centre, wasabi and bonito flakes!

We also had some grilled fish (local whitefish and some sardine) to heat along with some boar’s speck, which was really an interesting flavour – super gamey bacon. I’m getting used to cooking with the chopsticks and have even mastered removing the fish bones from the morning’s grilled fish offerings, with my chopsticks. The miso soup here was excellent – one thing travelling around to so many different areas throughout the country is you rapidly learn that not all miso soup is made equal! Nor is all curry or all ramen.

Oishi!

The morning light really brought out the colours along the riverbank…

We are off to explore the Izu Peninsular today, in particular some interesting road infrastructure and how they’re integrating their tourist transits from rail through to other passenger transport options (‘cos that’s how we roll!).

But this post continues because we stayed here for TWO days and on Saturday afternoon, The Boys arrived from Tokyo! I have so been looking forward to sharing this lovely ryokan experience with them. These guys have known each other since the first grade and this is their first holiday together like this. They’ve been in Tokyo all week and are now hitting the countryside and road tripping to Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kanazawa, Takayama, Nagano, Fuji and back to Tokyo… but this is the only ryokan/onsen visit they have booked (in fairness you can stay in ryokan at all price points, but places like this one aren’t all that accessible for your average early 20s, budget conscious, backpacker types! They all look great and super uncomfortable in their samue… I’m sure a bit of saké will dispel the discomfort quick smart.

When they first arrived, I was busy re-packing our suitcases for our transit home tomorrow, while Keith took them to one of the private onsens so they could figure out how this whole thing works. Which suited me perfectly as I got the bath on our balcony to myself. We all scrubbed squeaky clean, got dressed and made our way down to dinner.


We had a significantly different menu to last night – still served out in the lovely open air river-side dining room… this time a table for five was made up for us.

We started with a yuzu aperitif, and the appetisers tonight were – ginko tofu, simmered sweet potato, tengyo (smoked salmon) with cream cheese, beef with myoko.

On the side was some more beef and green karachi egg in some delightfully delicious sauce made of shitake mushrooms. I have no idea what else was in this, but it was fabulous.

Tonight’s sashimi was two kinds of Ito port fish, and various kinds of wives, (translations provided by google, they don’t always makes sense?), Amagi natural shrimp

The Boys enjoyed grating their own wasabi – very novel.

…and very serious business

A small selection of tempura vegetables – this one had a large piece of sweet potato that I happily swapped for Mr K’s mushrooms… though not passed between chopsticks of course!

Amagi Shamo special wasabi hotpot that you make into a kind of porridge… the soup is made at the table and we were each served up some rice into a bowl, broke about three decent sized eggs and whisked it up and then mixed fresh egg through our rice. Added pickles, miso paste, wasabi, spring onions, and other things to taste, and then add soup to cook the egg… it’s time consuming table side but was really tasty. There was also a savoury egg custard made from tortoiseshell and yuzu paste (?), and some grilled swordfish with magnolia leaves, but I got busy with the cooking of the hot pot and failed on the photos. 🙂 Dessert again was lovely and light and simple: almond pudding, with orange and local melon.

All up a fabulous meal with lots of very traditional Japanese flavours to try… which is a good thing because it sounds like these guys have landed themselves twice in CHINESE restaurants since getting here – and there is zero excuse for that! Japanese food is amazing… I have no idea why you’d opt for Chinese!

After dinner, we all went back to our room, (which all up was about four times the size of the room the Boys were sharing), because of course we had accumulated more saké than I could take home, and Mr K had left over beer and snacks we thought they could demolish or take with them for the rest of their trip. An impromptu work meeting transpired over saké…Less so as the night went on… 🙂

See? Way more comfy in their samue after sufficient application of sak̩. We managed to polish off quite a bit Рwhich was nice, I knew I was buying more than I could consume or would be allowed to take home.

I also gave them a crash course in ‘which saké to buy from which convenience store’. LOL… – 7/11 to stock up on cold Hakutsuru, Lawson’s for affordable and reliable good, Tatayam Junmai, and FamilyMart? Well, FamilyMart is a bit of a crap shoot on what you’ll find at any given store. 🙂

Breakfast time, we met The Boys down by the riverside. Tamago, pickled yam, miso soup, an egg custard, and another donburi set with all the amazing condiments. I have no idea what this dish was in the top right… but it was delicious and full of rich umami flavours – unfortunately the breakfast didn’t come with a menu, and our attendants skills weren’t up to a translation.

This morning’s donburi condiments consisted of whitebait, pickles, seaweed, sesame, bonito flakes and dashi or soy sauce. It was kinda cool to be old hands at the Japanese way of serving dinner now – and to watch the confusion as The Boys tried to figure out what the hell they were eating.

Breakfast miso soup should be a thing back home, I think. I’m gonna turn it into a thing when I get back. Miso soup for breakfast… can’t think of a single reason why not to. Oh okay, other than the fact that the readily available miso soups at home are nowhere near as good as here!

More grilled fish and sardines – plus a weird little chicken popsicle thing that tasted a bit of yuzu…

… but all too quickly, breakfast was over and it was time for us to try and hit the road for the long drive back to Tokyo where we had to return our rental car to Haneda and then meet a driver to take us to Narita (short but annoying story omitted here, where Qantas is the villain*)

We had a marvellous interlude in the mountains hanging out with the kids before they continued on with their adventures and we head off to travel home. This is the good stuff… the best stuff, really. Making memories that last a lifetime.≈

*Villain is probably being far too harsh a term for these circumstances; we booked return to Haneda back in April, but from today onwards, all QF62 Tokyo to Brisbane flights will be going Narita to Brisbane, not Haneda to Brisbane. We’ve known about it for months, so the only inconvenience was two hour transit across the city and the cost of a private transfer to haul our arses and our luggage. *shrug*

Izu Peninsula

We had the day free to explore the Izu Peninsula today and mostly what we discovered is that we needed a week, not a day. 🙂 And Izu goes on our list!

It is less than a three hour drive to circumnavigate the entire area if you take the highways and toll roads, but we decided to tootle around the back roads so we could explore the sleepy towns and quieter areas more. It’s a beautiful area known for attracting artists and writers, very mountainous with staggeringly gorgeous and dramatic coastlines and even some sand beach areas which are quite popular with people in Tokyo for short breaks. One of the first things we navigated to get onto the roads we wanted was this impressive elevated spiral road system, called the Kawazu Nanadaru Loop Bridge, that brings traffic up or down a steep embankment that probably used to have very dangerous switchback roads. It’s located on Route 414 that connects Namuzu to Shimoda and is a 1km bit of road with a height of 45m and a diameter of only 80m… it corkscrews the traffic uphill counterclockwise and downhill clockwise and feels really weird as you get a 720 degree view as you go down through two full loops.
Architecturally it is very impressive; it was opened in 1981 after an earthquake quake collapsed the old road that was full of hairpin turns in 1978. Very cool.

Our first stop on our little tour of the peninsula was the Mine Onsen Daifunto Park – a small park focused on it’s impressive geyser that regularly (and I mean, very regular as it appears to be on some sort of deliberate timed release schedule), spews 100C hot onsen water 25′ into the air. I’ve seen geyser in Iceland and New Zealand, but of course the Japanese have their own way of doing things so this was nothing like the bubbling up of Strokkur or the boiling mud of Rotorua… first, Daifunto Geyser has a cool mascot with a geyser on his head! Does Iceland or NZ have a mascot? No. Boring!

And they’ve built a mine shaft over the geyser to control where the water will be expelled from… at the bottom of this structure is a place to boil your eggs. Yes, the little shop here will sell you some eggs, that you can boil in the onsen water and take to a space to sit and eat them. I don’t know why, it’s just something they do!We didn’t have to wait too long for it to go off, only about ten minutes, and I chose a safe place where the ground wasn’t wet to wait and take pictures.

But so much for that! As the boiling hot water started to spew out of the geyser I think perhaps the wind was now coming in a different direction from the last eruption and I got soaked. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the boiling hot water had totally cooled by the time it fell onto me and I found myself pelted with freezing cold water.
Naturally I had to beat a hasty retreat. The eruption lasted about a full minute or so.

After leaving the 414 at Kawazu, we were spat out of the mountainous roads at Kawazu Beach. From here we would be following the coastal roads around the peninsula.

The scenery went immediately from mountains and autumn foliage to dramatic craggy coastlines and rocky outcrops. Unfortunately, the locals must be immune to the beauty of the coast as there weren’t many places where you can pull over to safely take photographs. So my speed landscape photography had to suffice in many spots. Kawazu, Kamo-gun-Hama. I’ve made a point to recall the name most of these spots so I maybe come back and map out a future itinerary. 🙂
Nawaji

We drove past some amazing and gorgeous coastlines with pretty little rocky islands just off the coast. But the first place to safely stop was the Shimoda – Shirahama lookout which overlooked… the town. :/ Still beautiful, and nice they have gone to the trouble of planting palm trees to frame the view – why, people?

I sauntered past the vending machines, vaguely looking for a Coke Zero – but of course the vending machines here didn’t have any, (I don’t know why, but sugar free options aren’t readily available here?). Anyway, it was quite cold today and I noticed this weird offering – there was Kirin milky tea available nearly everywhere, but this one was special Caramel Tea Latte, and while it was bound to be absolutely loaded with sugar it was only 140JPY and I thought, why not?

Tried my hot Caramel Tea Latte and almost immediately asked Mr K (whose pockets were bulging with coin) back to grab another. It was just the right amount of sweet, warm and delicious on a count day and I was so glad I hadn’t found these earlier in the trip when we were up in the snow! One and one to take home was more than enough I think.

We continued our drive an wound around more of the beautiful coastline – it is a really beautiful part of the world.

Shimoda Port

Izu Shirahama Beach… now I have seriously dropped a pin in this spot. Not because I want to come back here for a beach holiday (Hello? Australian!), but because there are some lovely ryokan/onsen hotels here that have stunning views over the coast.

I could definitely handle an onsen stay with a view like this…

Further around the port nearer to Shirahama, we saw one of these pirate ships, which I thought were usually in Hakone piloting tourists around to try and see Fuji on a clear day… it looked really out of place.Minamiizu, Kamo-Gun

Stunning – even in this overcast moody weather, the light is so beautiful

Nishiizu, Kano-Gun… this was a delightful little bay spotted with many beautiful little islands on the horizon, but of course there was not a single place to stop and take photos. Damn, will just have to come back! I imagine the sun rises here are spectacular.

After this we continued on around the Minamiizu coastline for a while…

… before heading inland to take a road towards the famous Hagachizaki Monkey Bay Park. We did drive to the entrance of the park, and had a poke around but decided not to go in – it had a depressing 1990’s Barcelona Zoo feel about it, and I didn’t want to go gawk at sad contained monkeys in Japan. I could explain that further, but suffice to say, occasionally you find a ‘tourist attraction’ that just saddens, rather than enriches.

The drive around the area was still very pretty though.

After leaving the monkey park are we found ourselves taking one of the windiest mountain towards I think I have ever been on. In a lot of places it was barely one lane wide and had plenty of mirrors on the hairpins so that you had some hope of seeing someone coming towards you, but felt pretty hairy nonetheless!

I took some video of this drive, that I will try and upload somewhere and add in later (if I remember to), but even driving at low speeds, you could feel your body being thrown around in your seat.The forest was beautiful and cool to drive through, lots of autumn colours sprinkled in amongst the trees.

At one point we were wondering how the area was being used for forestry with such terrible and narrow roads. We drove past this plant/factory right near Yugashima, (couldn’t’ make out from the maps what it was for) and couldn’t imagine how the machinery and equipment was ever brought in here.

Nishiizu Kamo-Gun Ugusu Lookout

From here it was time to head back to the ryokan and wait for The Boys to arrive. We had been following their progress (thanks to technology – invasive and pervasive as it is these days) for the afternoon and could see they were not far away now. Can’t wait for a night hanging out with the kids, enjoying a lovely dinner and some saké,

Migiwaya in Yaizu, Shizuoka

Work was pretty full on today – we were looking at integrated transport solutions in Nagoya and then had to make our way to Shizuoka which took longer than anticipated… we have found the SatNav in the car to be variously reliable. It gives us decent information on route options and is usually accurate on the cost of tolls, (which are seriously prohibitive considering they barely save you any time at all on some occasions), but we don’t think is always operating on real time traffic data. We have had a couple of instances where the tolls route had a lot of congestion and ended up taking much longer than the no tolls route would have taken. C’est la vie. Live and learn.

We stayed for the night at Migiwaya in Yaizu Harbour in Shizuoka in a lovely little ryokan known for the fresh and crystal clear onsen water. We had a quiet little garden villa at the back of the properly in a tucked away secluded little spot.

The room was enormous – I think these newer ryokan establishments have realised how people from the cramped larger cities of the country enjoy a bit of space for restful and relaxation.

The living room was also quite large – had enormous closets and the lovely little half height rocking chairs that were really comfortable.

The tea making space was well equipped and the fridge stocked with complimentary beer, highball and non alcoholic drinks.His and her yukata for the stay.and his and her towels. The blue is for boys, and pink is for girls really is ubiquitous. Outside was a lovely deck overlooking a private garden. Not as established as some gardens but will be lovely in a few years as the plants mature. Dressing room:Bathroom:Snackage and drinks: Before scubbing off the road and into the onsen. It was a very warm 41C – which probably only felt warm because the ambient temp was closer to 20C than 10C this close to the coastline. The water really is crystal clear, and while not as soft as some others, was lovely and refreshing. After a couple of dips in the bath (in between getting some work done) it was time to go for dinner. Here was the menu for the evening, laid out in a lovely autumnal design:

Appetisers of wheat bread and persimmon mixed with walnut paste, roasted duck, smoked salmon, Japanese radish, red turnip pickle and citrus seasoned grilled fish. So tasty.Maguro sashimi – this was delicious. Lovely three different cuts of tuna of varying grades. <3 Big fan! Had to try the local saké of course – cute little saké jug.Shimonita leek soup. Followed by a house speciality – deep fried tuna cheek. This was possibly the most flavourful cooked piece of tuna I’ve ever had in my life. I’m not super fond of tuna once it’s more than lightly seared, but this was fantastic.Local fish with Chinese cabbage served with seaweed sauce.Simmered Shrim Potatoes.Marinated steak with malted rice paste.

Steamed rice with fried Sakura shrimp, served with miso soup and pickles. It’s interesting to see how the flavours in miso soup change so much from region to region.

For dessert, a small brown sugar pudding and some local fruits.

Another delicious meal, and so beautifully presented… 10/10 would dine here again.

After dinner we had a reservation in a different, larger, private onsen… so we made our way down the garden paths to a private little cabana-like space. It had a double dressing room, a double shower room and this lovely large onsen. Only we found it to be rather too well lit and took care of that pronto…much nicer without a spotlight overhead, and just the garden lights left on.
This was actually an odd space to be bathing in – it has all the appearance and feel of privacy, but probably had the actual privacy of a tent! People couldn’t see in, but you definitely got the impression with the open air space that your voices would carry, though the ryokan was not full and we saw only two other parties at dinner.

After this it was time for a much need, good night sleep with the sounds of the ocean not far away. We both woke up bright and early – our deck faced predominantly east, and even though we had remembered to close all the blinds, we found ourselves waking early. Never mind, that just gave more time to have another soak in the onsen on the deck before breakfast in the dining room.

Breakfast that comprised of a cast of a thousand dishes!
Grilled Japanese horse mackerel with fish sausage and wasabi.Tuna sashimi for breakfast! How decadent.Tamago with pickled broth sauce.

Plus a bunch of other delicious things – they seem determined to fill us up at breakfasts here, which works well – if you skip lunch!
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SCMaglev and Railway Park Nagoya

The SC Maglev and Railway Park is a museum owned but the Central Japan Railway (JR Central) which opened in 2011. The park has 39 full sized railway vehicles, including a Shinkansen carriage and the shiny new Maglev train. It’s a pretty swish building – with SFA in parking… the public parking is across the road but is literally a 4km drive in a massive spiralling loop to get to said car park.
Anyway once inside, it felt kinda like the NASA centre where they display the Space Shuttle Atlantis at Cape Canaveral… all dark and the trains are lit up – whaaaa! sHiNy tRaINs!

“This is a train, there are many like it, but this is the one I got to see.”
So quoth Mr K. Right before he reverently whispered… “Ssshinkansen…”. Yes, he is a proper train nerd. Gotta admit they are super shiny and riding them is very cool. You don’t feel like you are going that fast at all but the landscape speeds by.
I had to admit, I didn’t know the Shinkansen was capable of doing 443kmphr… I thought they topped out somewhere around 300kmphr as they tend to operated somewhere around 280kmphr… I dare say this is for safety reasons and designed to allow for the conditionals and/or possible weather impacts along the least optimal parts of the track.
Then of course is the Maglev trains that everyone can’t wait to see roll out in some time in the next five years, as it is currently not quite expected to meet the 2027 opening date. (Though can you really ‘roll out’ a Maglev train?) 🙂 Sleek! The first track is 296km from Tokyo to Nagoya and had a budget of 7 TRILION YEN. The extension through to Osaka is scheduled for 2037..

And this thing goes so fast it could nearly fly. Oh dear lord, all I think of when I see this is: humans are not designed to stop suddenly at that sort of speed… just let that one stew a little.


The Great Hall of the museum is full of rolling stock from the last century – pretty interesting for train spotting types.

The museum also had plenty of interactive exhibits where you could buy tickets and use them in train station ticket machines, you could switch tracks, lift and lower cars and stuff and heaps of interactive fun stuff for kids to get amongst.This was one of the kids play spaces upstairs above the Great Hall – all shoes off an it was hard to get a shot with no one’s kids in it. They were running around like squirrels all hyped up on catnip.

In the back of the Great Hall:

Also beside the Great Hall were some cool exhibitions relating to the history of railways in Japan. The Kanto Regional Development Bureau built the first railway in Japan in 1872 and offered the first services between Shimbashi and Yokohama. It’s kinda crazy to think that this was barely five years after the end of the Edo period and the decline of the Shogun’s which we think of as being late medieval in a lot of ways.

This piece of rock was part of the Takanawa Embankment was part of a 2.7km track that was laid for the first railway line in 1870. The embankment was discovered in April 2019 when JR East was excavations to lay foundations for improvements to the Shinagawa Station.

There were also some nods in the history section to some of the men instrumental in conceiving and bring the Shinkansen projects to fruition back in the 60s… Shinj Soga and Hideo Shima. Unfortunately most of this section was in Japanese and I didn’t get much out of it.

Other than these and a pile of work related gobbets – the other impression I took away from the train museum was somewhat social or anthropological in nature. I saw Japanese children behaving badly! For the first time ever – and there must have been about five of them… throwing tantrums, screaming, crying, refusing to walk, talking back to their parents and basically behaving like little brats. I figured it was because they were hyped up; trains! Woo-hoo! And perhaps some of them didn’t want to leave and their parents were having difficulty getting them to cooperate.

But Mr K had a different theory… you see to get to the train museum from the aforementioned car park that is very inconveniently located across a very busy four lanes in each direction highway, you also have to walk right past the bright and colourful entrance to Lego Land! He thinks the kids were chucking a wobbler because they *didn’t want to go* to the train museum, not because they didn’t want to leave! He might be right!
Literally, their parents are walking them straight past this massive bright looking toy shop, to go look at trains… lol.

Nabano no Sato Illuminated Gardens Nagoya

The Nabano no Sato illuminated gardens are a ‘must visit’ when in Nagano so I figured we needed to go visit. Given it was all happening after hours, it wasn’t too hard to set aside the evening to go out and see them. The gardens are actually attached to an enormous plant nursery and they have been lighting up paths and expanding on the attraction for years. At 2500JPY per person for the entrance fee, it’s not so cheap to just wander around and look at the lights, but it weirdly includes 1000JPY per person in vouchers that you can spend inside the park…

… and there are multiple restaurants (and even a loosely German style beer hall) and gift shops contained in the park where you can spend your vouchers. It’s almost like ‘here, buy a ticket and we will give you a modest free meal with it). The park consists of acres of displays, comprised of millions of twinkly lights… or fairy lights as we tend to call them in Australia. Having read up on the place before coming out here, we arrived just before sunset and had a bite to eat- from what I’ve read and now from what I’ve seen, if you go wander through the park first if you want something to eat a bit later, you’ll be lining up for ages to get seated in any of the park’s restaurants. The place was BUSY – and the 5400 space car park was no where near full.

I had a seafood dorai dish that was like a mornay, but at the same time tasted nothing like a mornay. 🙂 Mr K ordered a park katsu curry that was served in a huge cube of bread with a miso curry and egg. The curry was really tasty… miso curry is a popular thing in the Nagano region.I also ordered some saké – because well, every time I look at a menu and there are no diet soft drink options, I think ‘I’ve gonna have the sugar, I may as well have the alcohol!’. This is the FIRST time ever that I have been served hot saké in Japan. Honestly, all the brewery and saké shops, and restaurants we have been to – the saké is, by default, chilled. With this one exception. Which got me wondering why… I actually asked for some ice to cool it down and see what it tasted like, as while it was hot all I could pick out was the heavy tone of ‘this is alcohol’… and yeah, it was not sweet, not dry, not citrusy, not floral, it was just kinda bland. So I can see why they heated it up. Through the large park is an enormous stream of hot onsen water lined with beautiful Japanese maple trees. There was a public onsen for bathing if that took your fancy, as well as further in a very popular onsen foot bath which had crowds of people using it. The stream made for some glorious opportunities for reflection photographs. But it was very hard to capture the beauty of the scene… Though I repeatedly tried to! So many photos of the same subject. 🙂 There was also an enormous lake which led up to what looked like a Christian church – an yes, you can have weddings out here, or just come out and having wedding photos taken in the park. It’s popular all year round for the autumn leaves and also for the cherry blossoms and massive begonia fields. Attempt 53 at trying to captures the reflections of the autumn leaves in the lake…

A little better…

Then there was the huge 300m long tunnel of twinkle lights which seemed to be selfie haven for visitors…It was actually really pretty which got me wondering why the hell do people like twinkle/fairy lights so much? What bower-bird like instinct is driving this?

According to WebMD – the ultimate source of reliable medical and psychological information on the entire internet (lol) – string lights or twinkle lights can make us feel more connected to one another, boosting one’s mood and make us feel more hopeful.

The reason they seem to make people feel happier has to do with the release of dopamine apparently – and is fairly heavily connected to memories of colourful holiday lights making us feel good as children. There’s actually a type of colour therapy called chromotherapy where people with anxiety and depression are encouraged to spend time in spaces with coloured or decorative lights to pump up the dopamine.So we’re not all just a bunch of nutters flocking to a Nagoya plant nursery for no reason – we’re psychologically drawn to them. 😉 #sciencebitches

At the end of the big long selfie tunnel was an enormous field with pathways meandering towards three huge pyramids. Why pyramids you might ask? Well, I know I was wondering and nothing I saw gave an answer.

Probably something mundane, like large temporary structures are more stable when they are triangular or something. 😉

I kept wondering though (because I’m ever the pragmatist and quite the glass half empty kinda gal) how crap this must look in the daylight if my neighbour’s yards are anything to go by when they have their Christmas lights up!Ahhhh… a tunnel of love hearts.In front of which you can get a professional photograph with your sweetie. Another tunnel – this time made to look like draping wisteria.But the most adorable was for last – the long flower tunnel leading back around to the lake… there were two little boys running around with us in tiny little Santa suits. Their Mum chasing them with a large camera trying to get a Christmas photo of her little darlings. They were so excited and happy and much to excited to sit together for more than a fraction of a second for poor Mum to take their photo. They were so cute!

Waiting for the lights to change making the tunnel look like it was made up of different flowers! Magical. 😛Obligatory selfie…

And then it was time to make our way out of the park. It was well worth a visit, even if it is quite the most Japanese-twee touristy thing we have done this entire trip… much better than a Robot Restaurant imo. 😉