Another big day, and our last in Japan!! I can't believe it. It was also a gorgeous day- clear, sunny, and mid 70s.
We started off today by taking the train to Umimonakamichi Park, which took an hour longer than we planned since there were unexpected train delays. It's rather frustrating as a tourist to be standing on a train platform for an hour not having any idea what's going on because all of the announcements are in a language you don't understand. But that's part of the deal!
Anyway, we finally got there and walked around a bit. The park was unlike any other park I've ever been to. It's a sprawling family-oriented entertainment park with play areas for kids, bikes to rent to cycle around the whole park, an arcade, a water park area, beach lookouts, flower gardens, an aquarium, and a miniature zoo (which was actually pretty decent). We spent just under $4 each to get into the park and you could easily spend several hours there. We started by checking out the beach lookouts, which was pretty but I was disappointed that you couldn't actually go on the beach. Then we walked along the coast for awhile before angling back in towards the zoo area. This was pretty neat. There were three different types of monkeys each on their own little island; the small spider monkeys looked so tiny! Especially compared to the snow monkeys we saw near Nagano. There were several petting areas where you could pet sheep, goats, pigs, turtles, etc. I saw the strangest looking goat thing I've ever seen with spiral horns and huge floppy ears and horizontal pupils. He looked like some creature out of Star Wars. They had flamingos and parrots and prairie dogs. They also had an area where you could go in with capybaras, wallabies, and kangaroos! Who would've guessed we would see kangaroos after leaving Australia?! After leaving the zoo we walked through some of the flower areas which were really pretty; the roses weren't bloomed yet but the tulips were pretty. Then we left the park.
Next stop was the Momochi Seaside Park to visit the beach. I was hungry when we got there so I found a snack- ice cream that you could "make" yourself. You could pick the fruits/nuts that you wanted to put in there. I added blueberries, peaches, and walnuts to vanilla ice cream base and it was delicious. Then we sat on the beach and enjoyed the sunshine and sound of the waves for about two hours.
Then we caught the subway back to the same area as yesterday to try getting food at the yatais again. Success! It was really different from other street food vendors I've seen before. It's like these mini-restaurants sprouted out of the ground; each stand had it's own seating for up to about 12 people. So we picked one of the stalls and ordered some ramen (it is our last night in Japan after all). This was our first time trying tonkotsu ramen, which means the broth is made from pork bone. It was super good and I'm really glad we tried it. Typically I had been getting shoyu ramen, which is the soy sauce base. I think the other one I tried was our first one in Japan and that was miso, which I don't really know how to describe. But anyway, the yatai endeavor was really cool and unique.
We were on our way back to the airbnb and almost here when we decided instead to play a little pachinko right across the street since we still had a little more yen than we really need for less than 24 hours left in Japan. We tried a couple of different machines and the second one I played kept winning. It was pretty exciting; I thought I was winning a lot since I only started with 50 balls but I won over 800. I still never really knew what exactly I was doing but sometimes a kind stranger would give me a tip as they were walking by. By the end when I cashed it out it wasn't as much as I was hoping, but it mostly covered what I had put in for the night. So that was good, although I didn't end up actually spending the money which was the goal but I guess that's a good problem to have. :)
We fly to Singapore tomorrow! Also, a huge shout out to our favorite travel buddy- happy happy birthday to Jack!! We miss you!
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