tokyo-kazusa

From where we live it is about one hour and forty-five minutes to Goi in Chiba Prefecture.

At Goi, we saw this woman selling bento and other items and wondered if we should buy something for the ride.

(We ended up not buying anything but would regret it later...)

Then from Goi to Yorokeikoku it is about one hour and thirty minutes on the Kominato Railway.

One thing you'll notice is that most of the stations in the area have "kazusa" attached to their names.

This particular area used to be called Kazusa Province, and is located in the middle of what is now known as the Boso Peninsula.

The Kominato rail only had two cars and no shocks...talk about rough ride.

Still, it was nice to see farms, nature and no tall buildings.

Along the way we saw nanohana (rape blossoms), but it wasn't as plentiful as most of the pamphlets advertise.

The reason is because they didn't have much funding to plant nanohana seeds plus the weather was wonky.

We also saw what is apparently the largest toilet in the world...a huge fenced area with 1 toilet (thank goodness for that curtain!)

I had seen this on a show and was excited to stumble upon it on this trip from the train.

If you'd like to read more about it, I found an article in English here.

At Yorokeikoku, there were no places to eat that were open, so we bought some musubi at a convenience store and also bought some sushi from a man at the station.

He also gave each of us a handful of puffed rice (sorry I took a photo nearing the end of eating my stash).

From Yorokeikoku to Ohara, you need to go to the end of the line (Kazusanakano) of the Kominato Railway, then transfer to the Isumi Railway to get to Ohara...which takes about 2 hours.

The reason it takes so long is because the lines are not coordinated to meet up with the other line in a timely manner (thank goodness for Wi-Fi at Yorokeikoku station.

This ride was krazy crowded because the Isumi line only had one car and there was a busload of tourists that arrived several minutes before we were to depart.

At the end of the line (Ohara) we decided to turn around and head back because we needed to check-in at the ryokan and also because with the untimely running lines, we weren't too sure how to spend our time in Ohara.

We were able to get off the train for a bit at Otaki.

I thought it was cool that the high school is located at the foot of the castle and you need to walk through the high school to get to the castle.

We didn't have time to check out the museum in the castle because we needed to catch the train back towards Kazusanakano.

Luckily, our ryokan picked us up at Kazusanakano, there was literally nothing near the station and to wait almost an hour to get back to Yorokeikoku was krazy.

Dinner was an assortment of things and I was a bit disappointed...it just seemed like a mish-mash of dishes instead of the seasonal foods you usually see at ryokan.

It was a long day plus it rained here and there.

The ryokan bath water was black like the type we have at the public baths we have in Ota...it was actually kind of was freaky as I didn't know how deep the bathtub was (couldn't see the bottom)...

Still, we were glad to be exploring the area.

Tenryuso
163 Kuzufuji Otaki-machi
Isumi-gun, Chiba
Phone: 0470.85.0311