Drinking in Japan

Today I woke up really early and met Super Dave at the train station to start our west Japan vacation. On the way to Osaka and Kyoto we will be stopping at the famous Ninja Museum in Iga city.

Getting from Numazu to Osaka can be done fairly quickly on the shinkansen. Traveling to Iga requires getting off the shinkansen in Nagoya and then taking some smaller lines to Iga. The final route to Iga-Ueno station is on a narrow train line that feels like it’s cutting through people’s yards! It took us about 5 hours to get to our destination, but the museum was totally worth every minute of that travel.

NINJA TRAIN!

Simply put – go see the ninja museum. Do it. They have an extensive collection of everything ninja, and have some impressive demos of techniques and weapons. Also, you can throw shuriken at a target, which is WAY harder than it would seem.

Super Dave and I got to see only about 2/3 of the museum – somewhere after the weapons demonstration we started talking to another English teacher from Canada who was traveling solo. We ended up chatting with him for a while while we were walking around the museum grounds. When we parted ways, Super Dave and I realized that we had walked right out of the museum grounds. Getting back in would have required explaining our error to the front gate staff in Japanese. Neither one of us trusted our language ability enough to try this, and we both felt pretty dumb for accidentally walking out of the museum, so we decided to cut our losses and get lunch instead.

After some delicious cold soba noodles, we visited the nearby Iga Castle, another underrated gem. The original castle dates back to 1585, but the current structure was rebuilt in 1935. The museum inside the castle wasn’t as extensive as Himeji Castle or Osaka Castle, but it was still impressive and is definitely worth going out of the way to visit.

A view from Iga Castle

Also in Iga, you can visit Basho’s house, if you like haiku.

Super Dave and I returned to the train station and started our 2 hour trek to Osaka. We checked in at the hotel and spent our evening exploring the area around Osaka station. We found a lot of small mahjong places hidden away off the back streets, and ended up shooting pool in a tiny billiards bar. We both suck at pool. Looking forward to an eventful day tomorrow!