17.-18.02.2018 SHIZUOKA

On the way from Odawara to Shizuoka we missed our connection in Atami and had help from a really nice station employee speaking broken English. Eventually, we landed safely in Shizuoka and had absolutely no idea where to next. The tourist office then helped us with boarding the right bus (since the one described on the reservation wasn’t the right one) and an approximate arrival time. We got on the bus and were just praying that we’ll get off at the right stop, since everything was in Japanese and unfortunately, neither of us has managed to quickly learn that language in the meantime.

When we got off, we still had to walk a few minutes in the very rural area, only noticed that we already passed the hostel after we did and then finally arrived at our destination. The house looked like/was a traditional Japanese residential house and they simply prapared two rooms with four beds each to be used as guest accomodation. We were able to check in immediatly, since there was nobody else staying there at that time and so we had a room for ourselves. In the whole house it was really cold, they heated the living room via fireplace and our room had a paraffin heater, moreover the walls between our room and the connecting ones were made out of wooden beams.

Since there was not much else to do and we weren’t sure if or when we would have a connection back from the city centre, we decided to explore the area by foot. While walking, we came across lots of vegetable gardens and tea fields, some lumerjack shacks and little rivers. We tried getting up some of the hills our hostel was in the middle of, but decided to turn around every time when no actual path was visible anymore. After the sun finally set, we made our way to the main road, where we spotted a supermarket before and bought dinner and breakfast there.

In the morning, we woke up downright freezing, since we didn’t want to let the paraffin heater run the whole night (and potentially suffocate in our sleep?). We were then brought to the station by the house-owner, in a not-quite-modern truck, which felt a bit out of place/time even for that town.

BGC: 15 (+0)