This is something that had been on the cards for a while, the weekend we finally decided to rent a car and GO the weather forecast changed from sunny to cloudy then to rainy. Wonderful timing. As it happened we were lucky and didn't get rained on. The sun even made an appearance when we were at the beach.
So! From the beginning, Alice and Ice picked up the car from a rental place close to where they live in Tokyo and then drove over to Ichikawa to pick me up. Ice drove us across Chiba and I pointed out all the places in the middle of nowhere that I've traveled to for work over the past year and a half. Chiba is a big prefecture, there's some stunning countryside but access to some places by public transport is not very convenient, this was a big problem for me when I was working out there.
We arrived at the beach and it was cloudy but warm. With the weather being less than perfect, it was very quiet so we found a free spot to park and there were very few people actually on the beach. There was a group of boys who I think were part of a sports team and then some people surfing. Otherwise we had the place to ourselves.
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| I have sand in my veins. |
After lots of playing in the waves, running around on the sand, and taking many photos, we drove around looking for food. Originally we were going to just grab snacks from a convenience store but I'm glad we didn't do that. We ended up getting some delicious Okonomiyaki. I've eaten it a few times before but everywhere I've had it the staff have either mixed it up and put it on the hot plate for me or else brought it to the table basically cooked and ready to eat. At this place we got to mix and cook it ourselves which was fun. It was a nice place and we were the only ones in there again. Another advantage to visiting the beach on a cloudy weekend.
Back to the beach for sunset!
We spent some time googling to try and find somewhere to see fireflies in Chiba, that proved difficult so we scrapped that plan. Instead we went to a convenience store and bought a load of sparklers, found another stretch of deserted beach and ran about taking photos.
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| Photo credit: Alice |
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| Right Photo Credit: Alice |
Next our random driving lead us to a bowling ally which was open until midnight, we arrived at 11pm so we had a full hour to bowl. The men working there were clearly tired and bored. We were (again) the only people there and very exited about the whole thing. Whatever system counts the pins wasn't working properly and gave us random extra turns every now and then and turned a couple of spares into strikes. Clearly the place was in need of some fixing-up, and not just the decor, but for me that just added to it's charm.
More food. We hung out here for a while, ordered more food than we could eat, and then drove back to part of the beach we had been to earlier in the day. The plan was to sleep a bit in the car and then watch the sun rise. We didn't sleep well because we were attacked by mosquitoes and sleeping in a car isn't easy at the best of times.
There was a lot of fog and/or low cloud in the morning so we didn't really see the sun rise, it just went from dark to less dark. A little disappointing but there's still something sort of magical about being on a beach at that time in the morning.
After snapping a few more photos we all climbed back into the car and I drove us back towards Tokyo. I'm looking forward to the next road trip we do now. With any luck we can get more people and maybe visit somewhere else. I'm thinking a forest or a river maybe, who knows!
