Trip to Obama

For a while, my friends and I had been looking to go swimming somewhere in Japan: whether that was at Lake Biwa or the ocean somewhere. We made tentative plans for the weekend to go somewhere just for a day, and all agreed to wake up early on Sunday to meet at Kyoto station. We decided to travel up to Obama, which is pretty much directly North from Kyoto on the coast. Yes, we did decide on this destination mostly because it shares the name of past President Obama, which was enough to convince Anthony to go even though he is a Canadian. Originally, we had planned to go as a group of five: Anthony, Alex Yan, Ethan, and myself. However, only Alex and Anthony woke up early enough to leave with me, so the three of us decided to head out and figured the others could join later on if they so desired.

First we took a train from Kyoto station to Omi-Imazu, where we waited about an hour to transfer to a bus that would take us through the mountains to Obama. While waiting, we walked around the town, found a dock on the lake where we dipped our toes in the water. Immediately upon exiting the station, the three of us noticed a very heavy police presence in the streets, which didn't line up at all with the size of the town. Furthermore these officers were all wearing full SWAT gear and seemed to be setting up barricades in the streets. We asked a few questions to some groups of them, and gathered that they were setting up a perimeter in order to stop a criminal that was being pursed by car towards the town. We were excited at the prospects of seeing someone get caught, but didn't want to miss our bus, so we opted for some ice cream instead and hopped on.

The bus took a little over an hour, and then we arrived in Obama! We stopped at a visitor information center to grab some maps and ask for recommendations, and they even gave us some cool backpack pins. From there, we headed towards the ocean, but got distracted at a small outdoor market center. Anthony was looking to add some stamps to his notebook, so we asked for directions towards the spot. Instead of just being told where to go, this super friendly old man gave us a full tour of the performance hall. He showed us around the changing rooms, the scaffolding above the stage, and even let us play a traditional drum that was in one of the storage rooms.

From there we headed towards a temple that we spotted on our maps that was on the way to the sea. It was decently sized and took a while to explore, and featured one building that housed a large amount of paintings mounted high up on the walls.

After the temple, we finally made it to the ocean and we jumped in, which was a relief due to the temperature being around 90 degrees, and very humid. We didn't get to relax for long however, as we had plans to catch a boat tour that was leaving soon from the pier across the way. After drying off and getting dressed again, we realized we only had about 15 minutes to make it, so the three of us began jogging over through the heat. We made it to the tour location on time, and took our places on the top of the boat for an unrestricted view and to enjoy the wind in our hair.

The boat tour took about an hour, and took us past some interesting rock formations on the coast. During the ride, we met some girls that we assumed were foreign based on their looks, but found that they actually had been born and raised in Obama. They recommended that we check out a top rated beach a few towns over by train, especially since there was an amazing burger place at the location they said we definitely had to try out. After disembarking from the boat, we grabbed some sushi and scarfed it down to tide us over until dinner. Then again, we had to do some running, because missing this train to the beach we wanted to visit would mean waiting another hour for the next one.

The beach we made it to was called Wakasa Wada, and it was wonderful. It was a huge stretch of well maintained and clean sand, with numerous food and drink shops lined up along where the sand begun. Not only could you find things to eat and drink, but there were also shops to rent boats and paddle boards. We took a small break to enjoy a beer and some ice cream before walking the length of the beach. After getting all hot and sweaty once again, we decided to do some more swimming. It was shocking to be in salt water this warm, as I had only ever swam in the cold oceans near Oregon and California. To be honest, although the water was refreshing, it was a little too warm compared to the temperature of the air. We enjoyed the sunset before heading to the restaurant, where we enjoyed our burgers alongside a variety of local beers. Afterwards, we went back to the beach in the dark and set off some fireworks that we had bought from a store in Obama earlier that day.

I had forgotten to mention, that we had derailed our plans from this being a one day trip. We realized that if we had wanted to make it back to Kyoto that night, we would needed to have left the beach at 5:30 PM, but that would have given us no time to swim, eat or relax. We opted to give up on getting back to Kyoto that night, and look for lodging in the town. This was fine with me since I had no plans or classes Monday, but Alex and Anthony both had to skip their Monday classes. Thankfully, the first shopowner we spoke to also happened to own a ryokan right on the edge of the beach, which is a traditional Japanese style inn. Here, you sleep on futons on top of a woven floor. The ryokan had an onsen where we took a bath together in, before changing into yukata's and playing ping pong and then heading to bed.

We slept in the next day, leaving the ryokan around 10:00 AM. We debated over our plan of action, before deciding we would rather catch the bus back to the lake side of the mountains, and find something fun to do on the way back to Kyoto. At the train station before the bus, there was a piano inside that we played for a little bit.

By the time we got off the bus in Omi-Imazu, we were starving, so we started searching google maps. We settled on a Thai place, which turned out to be a great decision, because the place gave us a crazy amount of food for the price, which we all needed. At this point, even though we hadn't done much that day, we were all exhausted from our traveling that day and the previous, as well as just being out in the sun and heat all day. We discussed some different options, such as renting bikes, taking a ferry to an island in the lake, or just swimming again, but we came to the conclusion we would rather save our money for another day and head home to rest. We did stop by a crepe shop on the way to the station, which were much bigger than we expected and quite a challenge to eat. The final picture is Anthony regretting his purchase due to the insane amount of whipped cream they stuffed into these crepes.

The three of us had a hard time staying awake on the train ride back to Kyoto station. After I got home, I took a shower and fed myself before promptly crashing into my bed.