After a long week of work, a long weekend in Shizuoka!
I have never been to this part of Shizuoka, but always when I come through here by Shinkansen going to Kansai, I admire the rolling hills with tea fields.
Originally I had reserved also a Hotel in Hikone on Biwa Lake and was actually more inclined to go there, mainly because I was thinking that the koyo around Biwa lake must be really nice and because I wanted to go (again) to Miho museum. However, weather forecast for this area did project some rain, while the weather forecast around Shizuoka seemed to be sunny all four days.
I was really busy at work this week so stayed to work late on Wednesday and thus did not get up very early, but in a relaxed way and then set out to cycle to Tokyo station. As customary, I did not get a reserved car. Actually, there were no seats available in reserved cars anymore but instead I took an unreserved car which wasn’t even full and got an easy place to put my bicycle and departed a few minutes after arriving at the platform. However, I had no time to buy lunch at the station and recently there are no more food sellers on the train. So once I arrived in Kakegawa , the first thing was to get some lunch. I had seen that there was a castle, probably rebuild, and decided to get some conbini lunch and eat in the park of the castle. I don’t actually know if the castle has a park because when I got there, it seemed like one needed to get an entrance tickets to even get close to the castle. So instead, I had my lunch in a square below the castle.
Then I set off along a small river with the typical small street/bicycle lane on both sides of it. Instead of taking a direct route from the station to my hotel, I took a route that was recommended on the webpage of Shizuoka prefecture that went through some apparently very famous tea fields. So famous that on the flank of one of the mountains, they wrote the character for tea 茶 with some vegetation. I didn’t get close enough to check what kind of vegetation they used, but I would hope that it was tea plants.Taking a picture, however, wasn’t easy as the mountain was already in the shadow.
I little bit further along I came through a high plateau that seemed to be the mecca of tea.
From there one could even see Mt Fuji in the distance.
From there it was a long, gentle descent nearly all the way to my hotel. I don’t remember how I found this hotel but essentially it’s in the middle of nowhere. A Japanese nowhere. Which means there are actually a lot of other buildings around like supermarkets, gasoline stations, private houses, vegetable fields, car repair shops… A cacophony of buildings and empty spaces, which don’t form anything by itself.
Somehow I got the bicycle room. Which is a room with enough space for a bicycle, but also a very strangely shaped room. My room doesn’t have a window, or actually, it has one, but the window is in the toilet.
I had arrived early enough to see the last hour of the Kyushu sumo event before heading to the hotels big bathroom and get a relaxing hot bath before going out for dinner.
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