Day trip to Hamamatsu

We decided to use the weekend for a day trip to a nearby city: Hamamatsu. It's a costal city, about 2 hours by train from Nagoya. Since it was a day trip, and there were lots of things to do and see, we had to really think about what we wanted to do and see. We settled on visiting a bird park in Kakegawa (a smaller town about half an hour away from Hamamatsu), the Nakatajima Dune (one of the three largest sand dunes in Japan), and the Hamamatsu Castle.

Our fist adventurous decision came in the morning at the train station. We had mapped out a route with 2 transfers to Kakegawa, but saw that a local train was coming 3 minutes later going and would take us directly to Kakegawa. We decided to take that train, not knowing how long it would take. Turns out it took about 40 minutes longer than our original route, but we had the convenience of not having to change trains, which was nice.

When we arrived at Kakegawa, we stopped at CoCo Ichibanya on the way to the park. It's a Japanese curry chain that always has vegetarian food,

which is super convenient for Tori. However, they now have a vegetarian croquette filled with 'soy meat'. We both tried it and we both thought it was delicious.

We got to the bird park around 12:30 and it was amazing! Better than we could have ever imaged! We enjoyed it so much that we did not leave until about 4 pm. It was mainly a bird park, but also had some flowers and fish. A lot of the birds were allowed to roam freely. Inside the park there were various stands were you could buy a small cup of bird food (different food for different birds). The birds were obviously used to strangers having food and were willing to land on your arm and eat from your hand. They also had various stands were you could hold birds and have your picture taken. While owls and falcons might be intriguing, we chose to hold penguins. After having a rather formal picture taken, we were allowed to pet the little girl and the staff took some more candid pictures. It was a really cool experience, since none of us have ever touched a penguin!

As we walked around the park, we saw a lot of other interesting things: They had a pool with fish in it that eat the dead skin of your feet. In the beginning it was an incredibly ticklish feeling, that later felt a bit like the feeling when you restore your blood circulation in your foot after it has fallen asleep. It was a fun experience and our feet actually felt really smooth. Other interesting things we saw up close were an albino peacock, a bunch of emus (they are scary; they make a loud roaring type sound), black swans, white swans, all types of ducks, pelicans, cranes, and a bunch of other pretty birds we don't know the names of. All together it was an incredible experience. We were lucky in a sense that the park was very empty (probably due to people being afraid of the coronavirus) and we could do everything without waiting or queueing.

After the park we took the train back to Hamamatsu, where we took a city bus to the Nakatajima sand dune. We read that it is one of the three largest sand dunes in Japan, but it did not prepare us for the size of this dune. It was huge! We climbed it up and had a gorgeous view of the dune and the ocean with the sky being painted in beautiful sunset colors. If it would have been a little warmer, it might have been nice to walk to the ocean and look around more, but we were a bit cold, so we decided to go back to the downtown area and go to the castle.

Most of the 400 year old castle is gone. Only the stone walls of the castle grounds remained. One of the castle gates and one of the towers got reconstructed according to original plans. While we were not able to enter them (they were already closed), we were still able to see them up close and they looked pretty being illuminated at night. We then took a stroll through the castle park, which was very beautiful and peaceful. Unfortunately it was not illuminated and it was too dark to take pictures, but definitely worth a visit. We finished our day trip with a dinner at a cool looking Mexican restaurant, which definitely is a treat here in Japan. It was a nice ending to a beautiful day trip!