07-05-09 Through the cities and into the country
Posted in Trip North on 07/25/2009 09:51 am by ScottLong, tedious walk today. We took a long break at a bath house where we also grabbed lunch. Besides that, we pretty much just followed the highway north.
I am constantly amazed by how many pachinko parlors there are in Japan. It doesn’t matter how big the town is, you are guaranteed at least one pachinko parlor and chances are it will be busy! I tried pachinko once. I lost $10 in about 1 minute without ever figuring out what was going on. But apparently some of those players can make a living off the game.
Towards the end of the day we left the city and came into some countryside. I like walking by the rice patties much more than the urban sprawl. It’s also cool to see how much the rice has grown since we started back in May.
We stumbled upon a sweet shrine at one point. We asked if we could camp there, but this shrine is a designated national treasure, so no vagabonds allowed.
A few kilometers before getting to our current camp, we snapped this shot. How cool is that? A Gundam made of granite!
We are now in a roadside rest area, camped off to the side of the parking lot. It’s supposed to rain tonight and all day tomorrow. Our target for tomorrow is Hikone, which apparently has a cool castle and old style shopping street.
