|
Japan 2017: The lonely Sakura tree
posted : Sunday, April 30, 2017
Day 2, as KH called it, was "nature road trip day".
Weighed options pre-trip and decided that it is most convenient to rent a car, while not sacrificing too much from an economical standpoint. Saves time and allows us to cover more places too. Totally on board with the idea coz I always enjoyed driving in a foreign country (provided traffic is not too crazy). And it is surprisingly affordable.
Woke up and set off early, supposed to reach car rental place at 7 but we got a bit lost as usual so we were slightly late. Got our ride from Toyota rent-a-car, it's a Toyota Sienta and the car was in top condition! Staff not exactly the friendliest (maybe behind her face mask she was smiling but couldn't get the vibe) but very efficient in explaining all we need to know and offering options like insurance, decals to indicate that we are foreign drivers (so that locals will be more forgiving towards us), what to do in case of accidents etc.
七早八早出门
Looking bright and cheery considering we haven't repaid sleep debt.
Toyota Rent-A-Car!
Our ride for the day!
All ready to go!
ETC is like their version of Smart Tag. Except that I think it worked better in terms of detection. Got excited every time we passed by one which doesn't make sense coz it means we are paying sheesh.
Saw Mt Fuji along the way!
Tourist Info Centre! Honestly, it's a good day for sightseeing because of the clear skies, but at the same time it's coldddd.
Kawaguchiko Station
Short drive to the jetty
Us at the jetty
Go for cruise first
富士山下
A bit dark coz focus was on Mt Fuji in the background
Back on land, dropped by this place
Cheesecake what?
Ropeway next
Our ride
The lengths people go to get a good photo..oops that's San.
We were in luck apparently. Mt Fuji doesn't always show it's peak.
Small shop on top of the hill
Love
Us!
Behind the scenes lol.
There's still Musical Rainforest to go but we decided to skip it, considering we have another 3 hour drive coming up and daylight is short. Originally intended to go to a tempura place recommended by the tourist information center staff but we ended up settling in Family Mart (again) since we were a bit behind schedule.
Off to Kawazu! Seaside town about 3 hours from Tokyo and plan was to go there to see Sakura. In actual fact it wasn't Sakura season yet (it's late winter) but apparently Kawazu has species of Sakura that bloom earlier than usual and we saw on insta that some of it had bloomed, hence the decision to add it to our itinerary. Car GPS wasn't very smart though and pointed us to a route through a small town which is full of traffic jam so we switched to Waze which took us through a big loop so we ended up reaching Kawazu at about 4.30pm, with only about an hour of daylight left. Oh side note, car does have other smart features such as ability to detect that you have encroached into other lanes and issue a warning, which was kind of annoying sometimes.
"Ooooooohhhhh this one can Instaaaaa"
"Wah sekali that's the only tree"
Tourist Info Centre
Was still in a post-Goblin mode at that time so keep getting these Goblin references
Grilled sausage and pork from this stall
Train approaching Kawazu station
Street signs
This ought to be full of sakuraaaaaaa
This toooo
Made our way seaside
Asked Stel to help me take this while I run around in circles. Limited success coz duno why I repeated my pose throughout
Dabbed
Back to THAT sakura tree after nightfall when everybody else have left
In somewhat a repeat from lunchtime, decided that we rather rush back to Tokyo so that we can return the car before 10pm in order to avoid incurring overnight parking costs so decided to skip dinner at Kawazu. Sensible coz parking costs aren't really cheap, we spent some time throughout the day looking for free parking places. Also coz we hadn't really figured out how overnight parking works.
Back in Tokyo in good time, refueled (spent some time figuring out how that works, too, luckily we were at a pretty ulu one and there weren't impatient customers behind us. Wait maybe it's a pity coz they could have helped us). Also spent lesser on petrol than we anticipated. Drove back to the car return point (which was different from the collection point), parked, then got surprised by the super efficient staff who appeared out of nowhere =.= The returning process was also simple. Loving the Japanese' efficiency level.
Returned the car
Hunted for a dinner/supper place nearby because everybody is pretty much against settling meals at Family Mart at this point hahahah. There's actually plenty of nice looking eateries around our AirBnB and we settled for this place called Shin Udon. Still had to queue even though it's already past 10pm, and as usual it's hard to get tables for a big group like ours so we split up again. 
At Shin Udon
Dipping udon noodles which again is so flavourful
And that's it for Day 2!
|
