25 October 2017
Bus confusion
Understanding the bus routes of Shizuoka
I would like to offer my sincere apologies for the lack of interesting photos today and also this evening. I offer no excuses and promise to do better in the future.
With that out of the way, onto Shizuoka.
The area where I am staying is probably the main area, although the city layout is a little confusing, my area is right where the world Daidogei championships are held every year, whats that I hear you ask? Street performing or as we call it busking.
Unfortunately I am a week to early too experience the marvel of jugglers, people dressed as statues, and every other kind of act where the performer spends 30 minutes teasing the crowd before performing his 20 second act.
I actually spent a lot of the evening in the bus information centre. I wish everywhere was a train, that would be far easier, everywhere in the world buses are confusing.
There are a few places I might go to tomorrow depending on the weather and how my legs feel, but all of them require a bus, so its more likely I will go wherever the bus takes me and work it out from there without knowing how I will get back.
Generally speaking, it is far easier to get back to a place than to get to a place, as all buses end up at a train station, because trains are superior, thats why trains never depart from the bus station.
Some of the streets around Shizuoka look like Kyoto, with the street verandah things, only its not very busy and a lot of places shut at 6pm.
I dont know what these lanterns are but they are in the streets all over the city. More power cords in the rain draped through gardens.
This is the Shizuoka station. It is a massive connected complex of shops and restaurants, probably 100 eating places in and under it. I suspect this has taken a lot of the foot traffic away from the older part of the city.
For dinner I wanted curry, but managed to combine it with soup. Its chicken and tomato curry and green vegetable soup. Both were delicious. Curry should always come with soup.
If you look closely, you might think this is croquet, but its not. I saw them playing this near Ome out in the mountains the other day also.
Its a form of golf, but all putting. You start a decent distance away from the 'hole' and hit the croquet ball hard, you hopefully get it near the hole which is a metal hoop sitting on top of the grass. Then you have a couple more putts to get it over the metal lip of the hoop so that it stays inside.
It looked like fun to me, I am guessing it is very old people friendly.
Here is the map, its nearly as big as my bed and you need a magnifying glass to read it. I went to the bus stop at the train station to make sure I know where to stand and wait, and noted that the buses arriving dont show the number of the route they are on. Handy. At least they take Icoca / Suica, a few times on previous trips I got on a Japanese bus and there are about 11 different combinations of how to get on, if you should take a ticket, pay on boarding or pay on getting off, exact change required for unknown cost of journey etc.
When you take a train you just swipe and get on, then swipe again when you get off.