Nagahama & Hikone

Day 249 – It’s OK, women can eat “Men’s Pocky”

Before we left the hotel we asked the hotel receptionist to book out next night’s hotel accommodation for us.  We told her it was at Mt Fuji and gave her the telephone number to ring.  After a lot of oohing and ahhing she hung up the phone and asked if we knew the place we asked her to book was on top of Mt Fuji.  We explained that we did know and assured her that we were quite capable of getting from Nagoya to the top of Mt Fuji in a day.  She didn’t seem convinced, but she rang back and made the reservation for us all the same.

First stop on today’s day trip was Nagahama, known for it’s artistic glass industry and old style shop houses around Kurokabe Square.  We spent a couple of hours wandering around the shops before having a delicious chicken and raw egg curry at a little restaurant on the main street.

Me sampling some rice crackers, shortly before buying some rice crackers and quickly eating a whole packet of rice crackers (good breakfasts are hard to come by in Japan).

Some of the arty glass stuff.

After lunch we got back on the train and headed to Hikone, famous for its 16th Century castle which is considered (apparently) to be one of the finest in Japan.  On the train we accidentally befriended a rather strange man who kept unsubtly taking photos of Erin with his mobile phone, weird.  Thankfully he got off after only a few stops.

When we got off the train it was the middle of the afternoon, stinking hot, with not a cloud in the sky.  We hopped from shade patch to shade patch as we headed toward the castle.  The first thing we had to do when we got there was climb a lengthy set of stairs (thankfully in the shade) and then cross a drawbridge (cool!).

 
In the garden there was a guy playing a lute type thing, he was quite good.

Genkyu-en, the nice gardens to one side of the palace.

On the way back to Nagoya we were in a bit of a hurry to change trains at Maibara (due to a late train, my goodness such things don’t happen in Japan do they?) and accidentally ended up on the Shinkansen heading the opposite direction back toward Kyoto.  Luckily Erin realised at the last minute and we jumped off just before it pulled away from the platform.  It did however mean that we had missed our train going the other direction.

Erin used the time waiting for the next train to do some blogging and sample “Men’s Pocky”.  Shouko later assured us that it was acceptable for women to eat Men’s Pocky, so Erin had needlessly made me go to the convenience store counter to buy it for her!

For dinner we headed back to the same Okonomiyaki restaurant, this time opting for the two person set menu, which included an interesting concoction called Monjyayaki.  Essentially they cover the hotplate in finely chopped veggies and seafood, and when they are cooked pour this soupy stuff over it and mix it all together.  To eat it you use a little spatula to scoop up the veggies and seafood which are now covered in this slightly thickened soup.  Yum.  The set menu ended with some green tea ice cream.  Yum again.