1st DAY: Fun!

We got to the bike shop at 13:30 and were on the road by 14:00. It felt good to be on a scooter again. We drove back to the guesthouse to pick up our bags then we were off, out of Osaka. They say Osaka is famous for their cuisine but I didn’t care. The place didn’t have any visual appeal at all, I needed out. We did Universal Studios and that was enough. We plan to do all the other attractions on a 2000yen special offer when we got back to drop off the scooters. But for now, we’re off to Biwa Lake, the biggest lake in all of Japan to go camping. We plan to do the rest of Japan this way. Sure we had to pay 41000yen for the scooter rental for an entire month but transportation in this country is real expensive and we’re going to save heaps on accommodation which hit me the hardest while in Okinawa. Plus, how do you expect to find campsites using public transport? Where’s the adventure in that? We’re going to be different than the other 99% of tourists that come here.

The road system is confusing as hell. Highways change number then change back later, they’ll take a detour around and come back to the same road as before further up, roads don’t have street names for both streets of an intersection, there are millions of intersections everywhere, and of course, routes aren’t clearly labeled most of the time. We eventually got there without too much difficulty, thanks to a bit of preplanning the night before. On the way, we went through some quiet mountain roads with quaint little Japanese style towns that were nestled in next to the mountains, cute. Lovely small city atmosphere when we got to the river leading to the lake. There were people canoeing, running, strolling riverside all around. This is the scenery and lifestyle I’m going to look for when I stop traveling and working.

When we got there, I was pleasantly surprised. We were on a small island, in the middle of a massive lake. The campgrounds were well kept but had no showers but the location was great! My biggest complaint though is those stupid mosquitoes. Is there a place in this world that mosquitoes don’t live?