Japan Road Trip: Okayama to Hiroshima

We set off from our Michi no eki in Kayou and onto a day of nature adventuring with some spots in mind that we found off the map the day before :) We definitely got super lost this day and despite writing down the kanji and trying to follow signs, we kind of just fluked our nature adventures :p We ended up at Makido caves, a limestone cave system and also a beautiful nature walk that left us breathless. I wrote in my notes we visited Maniwa, Kamba falls and rashamon, which includes a 40m limestone arch! 

We also went to Niimi Chiya hot springs and it was the first time we had tattoo issues. It all got a little lost in translation but the girls at the desk (although kind of horrified about us having tattoos) were super helpful and ended us giving us keys to a private disability onsen, so it worked out in the end.

Afterwards, we said goodbye to Okayama and drove to Hiroshima prefecture, where we would do something super fun the next day! The town we ended up in was called Takehara and they had their own historical town so it was fun to roam the small but pretty and ghost like streets :)

I found out those balls (above left) are made with cedar and called, sugidama

Sake makers would hang up a fresh green sugidama in November or December, right after they pressed sake made from the new rice harvest. Customers knew that a few months later, when the sugidama turned completely brown, the sake was ready to drink - source

Japan Observations from my scribbled notes

         - iconic white cranes, flying among rice patties  
                             #sojapanese
         - people in cars pull up anywhere even if unsafe to do so
         - a michi no eki can be almost empty yet a car will always pull up beside us

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Japan Road Trip: Nagano

The next day we were bound for Lake Haruna, Ben and I had visited the lake before in the summer but since it's so beautiful we definitely though it was worthy of a winter visit as well. Boy oh boy, that one decision to include snow in our holiday (without snow tyres!) wound up to be one of our worst decisions of the trip. Driving up steep iced hills, in a car, is now guaranteed to give me mad doses of anxiety!

Despite being our worst decision, it was so incredibly beautiful to see the snow covered towns. It was Ben's second time to see snow in his life and I'm not too far behind him so it was pretty special :)

Unfortunately not lake Haruna, we had to turn around on the road up to the lake - argh, I still clearly remember that ordeal. Japanese roads are extremely narrow with no safety pull off zones. We're in a campervan, going up a mountain and finding ourselves sliding and then completely bogged. Ben literally had to push us out of the snow and around so we could head back down - stressful driving 101! In between the stress we did manage to fall in love with how pretty everything was!

If anyone knows what these mystery bags are that we saw dotted along the roadside, I'd love to know!

Since our luggage had to be light I pretty much wore this outfit 90% of the trip, I had mad plans for Ben and I to be in matching outrageous outfits - I was leaning towards 80s neontracksuits and then, I got on the tracksuit route and then I was super inspired by my friend Alex who works for Adidas (I always see her awesome outfits pop up in my Instagram feed) and thus I somehow ended up with this outfit :p Ben remarked I looked extremely gangster, so I ended up swapping out my black beanie for a my cute Twinkie chan cupcake hat later on :) Good call Ben!

The theme for the next few days seemed to be us having super scary slippery ice road encounters trying to get away from the snow and then retreating to a Michi no eki, to calm down and try to figure out our next plan. I did suspect at one point our holiday would be restricted to snow filled photographs :p

A fun side note Michi no Ekis have stamps, with each station having its own unique design. Unfortunately most of them kept their stamps inside their office complete with normal office hours and since we usually rocked up after 6pm and left before 9am I only ended up with a handful - still a fun endeavour!

On our fifth day, we decided we weren't going to attempt anymore up hills without some chains on our tyres, so our plan was to hit the service station and use our feeble Japanese skills to try and fix our big problem. The first service station was run by a sweet old man who took us inside and put us next to his heater whilst he tried to understand what the heck we wanted. He ended up writing us this note below (still no idea what it says) and told us to head to another service station. That turned out to be a dead end, so were the other seven servos and home department store we tried. We kind of worked out that if you lived in such a snow heavy town, you'd simply have snow tyres and thus not need chains and therefore the town had no need to stock them.

I can only imagine this reads, 'crazy gaijin need help"

The very last service station on the edge of town, before the big scary hill (the hill we'd managed to come down but feared so much going back us) was our last hope. We told ourselves, if this was a dead end we'd just attempt the hill and put our hazards on if things went pear shaped - gulp! I don't think I'll ever forget the lady we met at this last service station, with our broken communication between us she pointed to the sun and made actions that the snow would melt. She gave us a map and pointed to an onsen nearby and told us to go have a nice relaxing bath, wait till the afternoon and by that stage there would be no more snow on the road and we'd be fine without chains. If I didn't believe in angels beforehand, I surely did after that encounter. The onsen was amazing and despite hyperventilating and wanting to cry as we got closer and closer to the hill to ascend it, the servo lady was absolutely right, the snow had melted and we were on our way to the penis festival in Aichi - to be continued!

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Japan Road Trip: Tatebayashi

Our first night in our campervan was spent sleeping in the City Hall's car park, which backs onto Tsuusuda river in Tatebayashi. The banks of the river is home to many street cats so it was fun to get to wake up and pat cats.  Since it was super cold, some of them even came and sat on our laps - definitely hard to get up and walk away from that!

On a sidenote, five years ago, at this very park I was standing back just watching Ben do all the patting.  That event became a big stepping stone in helping me over come my fear of cats - so it's a special spot for me :)

When we visited it was also time for Tatebayashi to hang their carp streamers (koinobori).  Tatebyashi actually holds the Guinness World Record for having the most displayed at one time - go Tatebayashi :)

An amazing thing about homeless cats in Japan and I think is a prime example of Japanese people's amazing kindness is all the street cats we encountered on our trip were really well looked after. They had shelters, fresh food and water and for these guys above, someone had even come around and aired out their blankets for them with new blankets put into their box.

We were also lucky to coincide with a dog show happening at a nearby field :)

I went and checked out the website above, I can't understand it but there were some amazing gems in the collection section.

 The lady above was literally vacuuming her dog's coat.

Afterwards we headed off to see my friend Teruko and her three kids, Haruna, Hiroto and Yuto. It was so nice to pull into her house and have them all run out and greet us!

Ben taught them to play paddocks which they picked up straight away - such smart kids!

Teruko is an amazing cook and made us Ben and Fee friendly food - such love!

Haruna made that Lino cut cat painting you see above, I was saying how beautiful it was and then she gifted us with it *gasp* so special, it's now framed and living in our lounge room!

I think Hiroto stole my camera for this portrait of his little bro Yuto - told you they were clever!

 Farewell Committee!

That night we stayed in our first Michi No Eki, aka roadhouse in Haruna. We had an app in our campervan to find the nearest one which turned out to be a really helpful tool for travelling around Japan :) 

There was also an app to find the nearest onsen (public bathing house) which we visited that night. I might explains onsens, in depth, a little later but one thing we found out straight away is if you bring your own towel and face cloth/modesty towel the price is usually cheaper. Onsens will typically have a vending machine next to the front desk with the selections written in Japanese, I quickly learnt the symbol for person and took some educated guessed for the rest. This onsen had one price being slightly more expensive and since we didn't know this meant towel hire we hit the cheaper button and found out the hard way - luckily shirts make okay substitutes for towels :P We eventually hit up a 100yen store and bought our selves a towel and a facecloth so we could save the towel rental for the rest of the trip :)

Onsens were definitely one of my favourite experiences, at the start I had really little concern about my small back tattoo, although I did know that tattoos in onsens are frowned upon and often forbidden due to their association with Japanese Gangs (yakuza). My tattoo is so small and with my first onsen of our trip being so pleasant (a bunch of older ladies came to my rescue when I couldn't turn on the tap) I completely forgot about having my tattoo. Ben and I had a few tattoo rejection encounters later on and then after that I became super paranoid and didn't love onsens as much - I guess ignorance is bliss after all :p

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