After this post, I may have to take a break and catch you up to more recent happenings in my life, but for now, onward and upward! Let’s continue the recaps of my recent trip to Japan.
Off to Kyoto on a very fast train!
Day 11:
Breakfast was “meh” as the day before.
We checked out of the Lamp Light Books Hotel and got some blister bandaids for me before going to the train station. Louie and I had some confusion about which train to take and then we ended up having to stand for most of the trip from Nagoya to Inuyama, which was not great. It was about 40-50 minutes of a ride, and we did get to sit by the end of it. The good thing was that our hotel ended up being literally right across the street from the station in Inuyama and we easily dropped off our bags. We were staying at the Hotel Myu Inuyama Experience, which was the first night of our walking tour, and seemed like a really nice hotel, but we would have to return later after check in time.
We got on a bus just on the other side of the train station that took us to our destination for the morning, Meiji Mura, an open air museum! The bus was easy to ride and we got there shortly after it opened, at 10 am.
Truth: my feet were hurting but we enjoyed walking from house to house, from building to building. The place was huge with various different areas, all filled with houses and buildings and even bridges from all over Japan and brought there to show. The rooms often had displays of various artifacts too, sometimes only in Japanese and we needed to use google translate. Sometimes we had to take our shoes off to enter and others we didn’t–it depended on if there was a tatami mat or not.
Shortly after noon I was suddenly very hungry so we found a place to sit down and eat. Unfortunately we had to wait in line for about 40 minutes, and then the food wasn’t very good. Not my finest decision.
Omelets with sauces: Louie’s had tomato and mine was a brown gravy.
We wandered around some more after lunch: some highlights included the Old Imperial Hotel Lobby designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and a machine building with various machines Louie loved.
You might be asking, how were you planning to walk the next day if your feet hurt so much. Well, yes. I was wondering that as well! But remember, Louie and I have a motto in our relationship, which is, work harder, not smarter.
Anyway, finally I was just beat, so exhausted. Louie ran off to hit another place and meet me though, because he was able to walk much faster and he wanted to see a few more things. Meiji Mura is a huge park and we could have probably spent a few more days there and still not seen everything! It was really amazing though, and very enjoyable.
Louie almost couldn’t find me then, and I really wanted us to catch the 3:30 bus, and then, we did! But we had to stand the whole way. Like, it was totally packed, and it absolutely sucked to stand up but I embraced the hardship and we did it.
Then we went to check in: there was a bit of confusion as I was supposed to get some things at check in from the tour company and they weren’t there! But then the hotel staff realized that the stuff was already in our room: bear bells, guidebooks, and luggage tags.
At this point, we were both exhausted, and poor Louie was also feeling sick from his cold, so we just rested up in the room for a bit and went to the onsen. The onsen was really nice: it had indoor and outdoor pools which was delightful! I enjoyed both sides–the outdoor water was a bit cloudy as well from the minerals, and that was nice.
Around 6 or so we went out to find dinner. We had trouble deciding where to go because I was struggling to walk with my blisters and tired feet, but we settled on a place that was perhaps highly rated on Tablelog (could also just have been another place entirely, there was no way to know), but it was friendly and looked like a cool place. They had ramen and beers and didn’t speak English, and seemed to be in a temporary building with plastic walls. The cooks were outside when we got there and encouraged us to come in, so we did!
After dinner we walked to 7-11 to get cash and ice cream and then we happened upon a good pharmacy where Louie was able to get some more cold medicine. We actually got to talk with the pharmacist, which was super helpful.
Sunset from the room that night.
And that concluded our day in Inuyama. The next morning we would be starting our 5 day walk on the Nakasendo Trail, so I’ll save that for my next post!