Hamamatsu Festival

So last week was Golden Week, a week long holiday in Japan where almost everyone goes traveling. As to not feel left out I decided I needed to go somewhere too.

I had originally planned to go to Koga in Shiga prefecture. Koga is famous for ninja. I figured since I'll be going to Iga ninja town I should probably get the other famous place out of the way as well. Well I was vetoed by the girlfriend and we settled on Hamamatsu.

I had been to the outskirts of Hamamatsu years ago for some mandarin orange picking. I didn't really get to see the city in depth. On our list of sites were Hamamatsu castle and the Unagi Pie factory (unagi pies are famous in Japan and are made in Hamamatsu).

We took local trains into Hamamatsu and arrived around noon. After a brief stop at the local tourist information center where we learned that there was a festival going on, we decided to to scrap our plans and head to the festival.

Festivals are almost always fun be it a penis, kite, or rice festival. This turned out to be a kite flying festival. In the old days people who had a newborn baby would donate money to make a kite to be flown for the child's sake. The tradition remains today.

It was pretty amazing to see all the kites in the air and to see how big some of them were. Some were about 2 meters in length. I've never really been one for kites, but I enjoyed this festival. I also got to see the ocean. I realized that it's been nearly three years since I stood on a beach. It made me a bit wistful and I immediately got the itch to travel to a tropical beach somewhere.

After we had our fill of kite viewing we swung by some of the food vendors. It was of course overpriced, but I always like festival food especially when it's meat on a stick. I had a tasty Asahi Super Dry and a skewer of beef. Once lunch was finished we decided to head back to the station and then to the castle. Little did we know that our plans would not be fulfilled.

The line for the return shuttle was just under an hour and a half. By the time we got back to the station any chances of going to the castle were gone. So we decided to take in some of the local area before heading back. I liked Hamamatsu. It's not a huge city, but it's no village either. It seemed like it would be a nice place to live, but I'm a long way away from settling down.

We wandered around the streets and got to see many festival participants wearing ancient Japanese attire. Finally the parade started and things took up a lively atmosphere again. After about 45 minutes of watching the floats go by and listening to taiko drums and shamisen, we headed back to the station to get dinner.

Dinner was disappointing. It took almost an hour to get our food and it was just so-so. But what do you expect from a chain restaurant?

With dinner digesting in our bellies we headed back to Nagoya. I got home and hit the hay.

This wasn't a big, stress inducing trip. I highly recommend Hamamatsu for anyone in the Nagoya area who just wants to get out and see something new.

Something I learned on this trip is to ask the station personnel if they have any deals on tickets to my destination. I was originally going to pay about 30 dollars for a round trip train ticket, but once the guy learned I was only going for the day he changed the discount I got a ticket for roughly 24 bucks. It was a nice way to start the day.