Odawara Trip
(Originally posted on adventurasia.freezope.org around 2003~2004)
Yesterday I went to Odawara by shinkansen with my cousin, his wife, and two adorable kids. We went to the castle - a huge wooden fortress - with a surrounding moat (which looked more like a large garden to me) - and even a zoo with monkeys, birds, and an elephant (the first time I’ve seen one in Japan).
My cousin and his family were on a one week vacation in Tokyo before heading back to their ‘current home’ in Phuket, Thailand. My cousin had a specific request “We want to ride the bullet train (shinkansen) for about 15-20 minutes. It doesn’t matter where we go, we just want to go on one. Grab a coffee at the other side, and return back to Tokyo.” I checked with some of friends as to where we could go, and a couple ideas came up - shin yokohama / odawara. As shin yokohama is only about 15 minute shinkansen ride, i thought that it wasn’t enough distance to pick up any speed. Odawara at 30 minutes was probably better.
Well the shinkansen ride was about 30 minutes, compared to other routes of between 60 minutes - 120 minutes, it was quite a bit faster.
When we arrived in odawara, we grabbed some lunch at the udon shop inside the station. It was quite good, and as my cousin and family were eating food from the local convenience store for the past week, it was a welcome change.
After that we took a cab ride to the castle, took some photos + videos, fed the fish bread! (I was surprised about this, big chunks of bread were thrown in,and the fish gobbled them up in one mouthful - these are big fish with even bigger mouths).
My cousin, his son, and I went inside the castle - which had many different artifacts - like a museum. After a bit more walking, we grabbed a cab back to odawara station and took the odoriko train line back to Tokyo. (The shinakansen don’t run so frequently, and my cousin didn’t want to wait so long). We got to Tokyo, transferred to the Yamanote, and took the train to Shimbashi. My cousin and his family took the Yurikome (spx?) monorail to Daiba where they were staying, and I stayed around shimbashi for a couple hours as there was the nihon television grand opening ceremony - there were several live performances / new shops etc…
By then I was so tired, that I headed back home. I fell asleep on the train and almost missed my station. Once I got home, I took a cold shower, as I was sweating like a pig all day long. Did my laundry, tidied up my apartment, and then watched the fireworks display from my apartment window. It was quite nice and I got it all on video.
Filed under: Japan
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