asuka-osaka

Sunday, we woke to the birds chattering, a rooster crowing and a goose or something of that sorts screeching...

After some instant coffee and some bread for breakfast, we checked-out and continued to explore.

The Ishibutai Kofun (tomb) is apparently the tomb of Soga no Umako, a member of the powerful Soga clan.

Details about the tomb are written here.

Entrance to the tomb, is quite large and pretty impressive to go into!

Then a couple of minutes uphill from here and we saw a whole hillside filled with rice paddies...beautiful.

We then stopped at Sakata Farm for a 30-minute all-you-can-eat strawberry picking.

I thought 1500 yen per person, was kinda steep, especially since the strawberry season is almost over.

On top of that, I was leery of eating the strawberries without washing them before eating, they aren't touching the ground, but still.

The strawberry variety in this area is called "Asuka Ruby".

We don't have this type of thing in Hawaii (or at least not when I was growing up), so I've always wanted to try doing a fruit pick and eat.

In the end, I think we ate 30 strawberries each, and it was fun.

One rock formation that we saw was the Kameishi (turtle rock).

The stone currently faces the south, but legend has it that it originally had faced the east and should it ever turn to face the west, the whole of Japan will be reduced to a sea of mud...spooky!

And then we saw the Takamatsuzuka Tomb.

Details about this tomb are written here.

We had a late lunch at Misono.

I ordered a hot egg sandwich (the bread was toasted and egg (omelette) was warm)...950 yen (tax included) with iced cafe au lait (+50 yen).

Satoshi had their mixed sandwich (ham, egg salad, lettuce, tomato)...900 yen (tax included) with coffee.

It was a scorching day. Since we got out and about early, we were able to see all that we wanted to see.

The clover fields were so pretty and I loved all the butterflies and ladybugs that we encountered on our bicycle rides, but would nix all the uphill stuff.

I hope you enjoyed this adventure as much as we did.

Golden Week will be over this coming Friday and we hope to get out to visit MIL sometime this week.

Sakata Farm
289 Sakada
Takaichi-gun Asukamura, Nara

Misono
1-4-1 Misono
Takaichi-gun Asukamura, Nara
Phone: 0744.54.3386
Hours: 8:00-18:00
Closed 2nd and 4th Fridays