Hamamatsu Flower Park
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I went to Hamamatsu Flower Park. Before heading out, we ate lunch at McDonald's. I had Chicken McNuggets with Ume Sauce, which is plum sauce. It was nice and tangy! I still prefer barbeque, but it was a good change.
We drove past this place on the way to the flower park. What does that even mean??? Lol.
Hamamatsu Flower Park is on the western side of Hamamatsu. We could have taken a bus from Hamamatsu Station, but it would have been about 1100 yen per person to get there and back so it was cheaper to drive.
I took the expressway for the first time in Japan and it was actually pretty easy, except that I went the wrong direction at first even though it was clearly marked. So we got off at the next exit to turn around but we couldn't actually get off at that exit because it was ETC only. It's a toll road and you can install things in your car to electronically make automatic payments at the tolls. I don't have that so I couldn't use that exit. So we got back on the expressway and continued going the wrong direction until the next exit. We didn't go too far out of the way so it was mostly annoying because I had to pay extra for going the wrong way. Toll roads are pretty expensive here. I think it was 300 yen to get from Iwata to western Hamamatsu, which isn't very far at all. 300 yen isn't much, but if I drove to Tokyo (which I don't plan on doing) it would cost about 4000 yen.
It was a really nice road though! It was nice to drive on a road with wide lanes and clearly marked exits. Much better than most roads! I have gotten used to driving on the left, but I still don't really like the narrow roads here. Most roads don't have names either and even when they do sometimes have a number or something they aren't usually marked. But even though I don't like the roads here I'm still glad to have a car. It's very convenient!
It was kind of fun driving out in the middle or nowhere though, haha. But eventually we made it to the flower park. Yay! Here are a bunch of pictures:
Creepy face! Ugh!
The balloon-shaped things floated on the water and moved around a bit. Cute!
Sakura ice cream! :)
Most of the sakura around here have already lost their flowers, but many of the trees at the park were still super pretty!
They had cute drinks in the vending machine. They also had a vending with duck/koi food! So we bought some of course. The ducks made cute squeaky noises!
There were some trails through the park that went off the main path and were more like short hiking trails.
What's at the top of the stairs???? This!!!
A dinosaur! Ahhhhh!!!!
Really really weird. There was a whole area for kids with some rides and stuff, but there was hardly anyone there so it just seemed kind of creepy and sad.
The wooded areas had a bunch of these flowers. I have no clue what they were, but they were super pretty. :)
This was some sort of glow in the dark moss stuff or something.
After the flower park we drove to a nearby ropeway. We didn't take the ropeway because we weren't sure if it was running or not (later we did see a couple people ride it), but we found an overlook area and some trails heading down to the shore. It was a really nice area!
There's a sort of sad small amusement park at the other end of the ropeway. Maybe it's busier when the weather is warmer.
On the way back home we stopped at a 7-11 for snacks. This was next to it. There was a Betty Boop statue and like a carousel horse and random junk.
I start school tomorrow so I'm probably going to spend most of my day preparing for possible classes tomorrow. I don't know for sure what I'm doing tomorrow, but I should be prepared. Hopefully I'll find some time to post some stuff this week though!