Lake Hamamatsu and Sakume
We had a looong way to go for this leg. Phil really wanted to try the famous eel that Rin and Nadeshiko eat in episode 3 of season 2, so we added this to our itinerary. We also decided to stay at 365BASE like I did last time I was there. You can read about my experience of the place from last year here.
On the way we had lunch at Vie de France, the least French bakery ever. Still yummy though.
We dumped our stuff at the hostel and headed out to the Eel place, Sakume.
That last leg is on that single track single carriage railway. But when we got off the Tokaido line at Shinjohara to our horror, it was closed! We faffed about a bit trying to work out what to do. None of the taxi apps Phil tried worked. I decided to take a leap of faith and try and phone the number by the taxi rank. In very very broken Japanese, I tried to order a taxi to pick us up. We waited. And waited. And just when we were about to lose hope, a taxi rolled into the station car park. Saved!
It was just as I remembered it. I think there were more Yuru Camp posters up too. But the shelf of exclusive merch was gone. Maybe all sold out or something.
We got ordered our eel boxes and watched the chef prepare it in front of us, alive and squirming.
And it was delicious.
Just outside we stopped by the station to take some pictures of that cow toilet lol
The plan after that was to hike to the spot that I failed to reach last time I visited Sakume, to get that night shot of Hamamatsu on the season 2 poster.
The walk up there wasn’t too bad. If it weren’t for the occasional cobweb and massive spiders blocking the path ;_;
But as fate would have it, about 200m before reaching the top, our path was blocked with thick foliage. And we didn’t want to find out what terrifying creepy crawlies were lying in wait for us to wade through. So we decided to turn around.
Guess I’ll have to come back again sometime.
It turned out that the section of the single track railway going eastbound from Sakume was open, so we took it to go back to our hostel.
A Techno Festival in the Forest
After having a very nice sleep in proper beds, we woke up early yet again to catch a shinkansen all the way to Osaka, and then a bus took us to the location for the festival in the middle of the foresty mountains in Nara. I won’t go into too much detail but basically, it was cool. Good sound system, good crowd, good vibes. I’ll let the pics speak for themselves.
Chilling in Osaka
After the festival, Phil’s trip had to come to an end so we said our goodbyes. He took the shinkansen back to Tokyo to catch his flight the following day, and left me in Osaka. And that’s where I’m typing this up right now. I’ve booked a hostel for 3 nights but might add on another. Just chilling. Gonna use this time to catch up on the blog (which I’ve done lol) and I’ll also get all the screenshots and finish up the planning for the season 3 locations. But it looks like it’s gonna be wet, maybe I’ll miss out on camping. Idk. I’ll figure it out.
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