tokyo-shizuoka

If you follow us on IG, you'll know we spent the 3 day weekend in Shizuoka.

Satoshi has a potential tour coming up, so he wanted to familiarize himself with the route as well as the places the tour will visit.

From Tokyo to Shizuoka it took about two hours.

Since it was a 3-day weekend and we were in the non-reserved seating, we had to sit apart because most of the seats were filled when we boarded at Shinagawa.

On this day, Mount Fuji was sleeping in, so we wouldn’t see her until later in the day.

We transferred to the JR Tokaido line at Shizuoka and rode to Kanaya.

The Tea Museum is located up the hill from the JR Kanaya station, we took a taxi because the running buses were rather sparse.

Welcome tea at Tea Museum.

Love Japan! 

I put down my ticket to take a photo of Mount Fuji, forgot about it, came back 20 minutes later and there was my ticket, just where I left it.

Matcha parfait with 3 different "strengths" of matcha ice cream...1000 yen 

Unfortunately, Satoshi lost his mask somewhere at the museum, we couldn't find it.

Lunch was at Gomi Hatchin, a local favorite where you can have Hamamatsu style gyoza.

Hamamatsu gyoza is served with bean sprouts.

Satoshi had this with their shoyu ramen

I liked these, they were crisp! I think the gyoza snob enjoyed these too.

I tried the gomoku ankake yakisoba, this was so good, the noodles were crisp in some places, chewy in some places...delicious!

After lunch we went to the Sumpu Castle Park, unfortunately, we got there quite late in the day, so we just went into the Momijiyama Garden, nothing was blooming though...admission, 150 yen each

And then we went to check out the Sumpu Castle Ruins...huge!

We went to check in and rest our feet a bit before we set out to look for Shizuoka oden at the Aoba Oden Yokocho and Aoba Oden Gai 

Most of these shops are so teeny that they can only accommodate 5 or 6 customers at a time.

We got lucky and found seats at Hinode.

There were 3 regulars, Satoshi and I and 2 others from out of town.

The 3 regulars were super friendly, and taught us the ropes on how to eat oden.

Order the oden set with 5 items and you can choose the items that you want (gyusuji, daikon, tamago, kurohanpen, atsuage) 

Sprinkle on some dashiko (in the bottle) --ground fish, nori and other spices (like furikake)

Round 2 (potato, tsukune, mochi kinchaku, fu and itokonnyaku)

We enjoyed our meal here and will be back the next time we are in Shizuoka.

We visited Shizuoka in 2020 but nothing seemed familiar this time around...I looked at my blog and realized that we had stayed on the other side of the train tracks.

It was a long day...lots of walking and eating.

Tea Museum

3053-2 Kanayafujimi-cho

Shimada, Shizuoka

Closed Tuesdays

Hours: 9:00-17:00

Momijiyama Japanese Garden @ Sumpu Castle Park

1-1 Sumpujo-koen

Aoi-ku, Shizuoka

Closed Mondays

Hours: 9:00-16:00

Admission: 150 yen (adults)

Hinode Oden

Aoba Oden Gai

Closed Wednesdays

Hours: 16:30-24:00

Kuretake Inn Premium Annex Shizuoka

10-38 Hijimachi

Aoi, Shizuoka

*if you'd like to see more photos, videos, please look here.