Lake Biwa: 03.25.2018 – Day 8
SUNDAY FUNDAY – Sunday morning in Japan – it’s TRAVEL DAY!
We started off the day by waking up somewhat early (7:30ish); this is our last morning in Kanazawa. We packed, got ready, and checked out of the hotel. We dragged our luggage to a local Starbucks to get breakfast. I got a Meat Cake and David got a Espresso Cake. Due to the long upcoming train ride and the additional hassle of having all our luggage, we wanted to plan accordingly by making sure we purchased lunch beforehand. I stayed at Starbucks with our luggage, while David ran to grab some foodies around Kanazawa station for lunch. Kanazawa didn’t have many places in the station to get a normal “bento box”, so David ran to a local mall that had a supermarket inside. I told David I wanted a simple sandwich, because all of these bento boxes in Japan have so much stuff in them that sometimes its hard to identify what is in them, if you know what I mean. So with this information, David purchased meat and a package of sliced bread (contained 6 slices). All of the other bread the supermarket had was extremely thick, almost the thickness of Texas toast. The bread David ended up purchasing is thick but not that thick. Since I wanted a sandwich there were no sides, so David ended up getting me a bag of chips and ONE Koala chocolate filled cookie snack bag.
David’s Version: I went up to the counter to check out with all the items I was going to purchase. The cashier immediately spotted the single Koala snack bag and started frantically making hand gestures to show small vs. big. She kept pointing to the Koala. I ran back to grab the other 3 bags and she calmed down. She put them together with her 2 hands and showed me as she scanned the whole thing. Oops. The price was so low, I thought you should just buy one.
Another fun fact about the supermarket was the bagging. They have separate counters for bagging. She gave me one plastic bag and all of my products back into my hand cart. She then pointed to the other counter. She watched as I placed all of my items into the bag and left the hand cart. I guess she was bored, because I was one of the few people buying food at 9:30AM on a Sunday.
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Once David was done shopping, he met me at Starbucks so we could start heading to the train for Kyoto. While finding the platform for our train, there was a lot of confusion trying to find the “Thunderbird” section. Eventually, we found the train and got settled on the train and started our lunch. All worth it because we got to see beautiful views from the train while traveling.
Our arrival at Kyoto station was the start of the many transfers we were about to experience in today’s travel: We took a train from Kyoto backtracking to Katata station (which we passed through on the high speed train). We then took a bus from Katata to our hotel in Lake Biwa.
Once we arrived at the hotel, we unpacked and relaxed. During our relaxation, we attempted to make Sakura tea with the Sakura petals we purchased on the tour with Chie. We found out that the packaging contained salt and not sugar. Therefore our first brew was basically just salt water. David then read the instructions on how to properly steep Sakura tea and its a two step process. First, soak cherry blossom flowers in warm water. Once the salt is removed from the petals, take the petals out of the water and place in a new cup of boiling water to steep. I do not believe we have this down to a science yet, but since we purchased a couple containers of it we can hope we make it better in the States. While David was working on the Tea, I was taking pictures of a falcon that was flying right outside of our room. David thought it was funny because it sounded like “Duck Hunt” from Nintendo.
At 7:00PM, we started to get hungry and decided to go downstairs to see what the front desk recommended for food. The front staff identified there was no food options “near by” the hotel. They identified that we would have to travel a short distance to go to any restaurants. We proceeded to ask if they had a shuttle or taxi that we can use since we don’t have a car and they said they do not at this time. Shortly after we realized transportation was quite slim, they took out two keys and said the Bikes are complimentary to rent for rewards members. David and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders and said at the same time “that works!”
The bikes had an automatic front light and locks but they locks went through the wheel with no chain, really cool. The nearest mall was less then a 10 minute bike ride. We showed up and locked the bikes and started walking through the mall to look at our food options.
Right before we picked a place, we ran into an arcade area for kids, David thought the lamb on a bike was really funny! We also found a puppy store and of course we had to stop to look at the puppies. If I ever get an opportunity to take home a Shiba Inu in the States I totally want one! The puppies we saw were super expensive, about $3,000 USD each.
Afterwards, we found a place to eat in the mall that had Udon noodles. The waiter recommended one dish and then David picked another. Like standard Japanese style restaurants, the menus have a lot of pictures, so we communicated with points and grunts.
During dinner, David started just touching and pushing random items, in turn he ended up pushing a call button that had the waiter come to our table immediately. I tried not to laugh really hard and shake my head at him at the same time, Hilarious. After dinner, David and I went to a Supermarket that was attached to the mall, to pick up a couple snacks for the room. Once we were done, there we head back to the hotel with our bikes and turned on the movie Hitman’s Bodyguard (It was a AAA status for rating, we would totally recommend it).
Another successful day! Till tomorrow…
