The best green tea in the world? Cycling Across Japan (Part 3)

The best green tea in the world? Cycling Across Japan (Part 3)

Okay. Hello, hello. Welcome to episode three of cycling across Japan. I am in the lovely Crook Haven at uh I can’t even remember the name of this beach, but it is fantastic. So, episode three, where did I leave off? I was in Shizuoka, a small city by Japanese standards, massive by any other standards except for like, I know, China. Um, and well, after arriving there, I got to this nice cozy guest house, lovely other people there, and I rested for the evening. Uh, I had a few things to do there, recommendations from the camera crew and recommendations just from, you know, travel books and and Japanese knowledge. One was to visit the city hall. So, it’s a relatively lowrise city compared to Tokyo. So, you go up to the city hall. I don’t know how many stories. It’s like 16 or 30 or something like that, but it’s above a lot of the rest of the city. Um, so I went there uh actually twice in the end. Uh, and uh, the film crew took me there, saw my reaction, looking at the view, seeing some headquarters of uh, I don’t know if it was Toyota or whatnot. And and they were showing me uh, where the view of Mount Fuji was supposed to be and it was just covered in clouds and it was it was kind of comical seeing seeing my reaction to that. Um, and they they really just kind of were like, “Oh, uh, well, I guess that’s kind of it.” And we staged like a a goodbye cuz they were they were leaving. Uh, so that was kind of the end of the film crew with me. Um, to which I I did miss their company, but it was nice to be kind of alone and able to mingle with other travelers for a while. So, uh, the other things on my list were to try, believe it or not, bread, cuz I was at this stage about four or five weeks into traveling, and I just hadn’t had like real bread, you know? I had stuff full of like preservatives or sugar or uh like in Japan, I find things very very sweet, so I couldn’t find like just regular bread. I found a lot of donuts. Um, you know, I love a good donuts, but uh, but this was the first like fresh baked bread from a bakery that I was able to manage to find that tasted like real, you know, something you could taste the yeast off of. It was, it was unbelievable. Um, and that was at a bakery called Heibi Buroto. He buroto. Absolutely tin like best bread I’ve ever had in my life. Uh uh and then I had uh you know time to socialize with some other guests. So we had a cycle around the city. Um saw like an old castle ruins there was kind of just the big stones built up at the bottom of it and that was more or less the ruins with some kind of deeper trenches and you know nice koiish. Uh again, a super hot day, so just chilling, cycling around with a few people was uh was perfect. Uh and the last thing I tried there was the green tea. Uh now, I heard Shizok is famous for having the best green tea in the world. So I went to uh you know a bougie place where they had like all this kind of chemistry equipment breaking bad type setup and they had the green tea at exactly the correct temperature for each pour and you know they prepared well and it was it was tea and it was amazing. It was like the first time I had green tea and didn’t taste bitter. I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to taste bitter before. It was perfect. Fantastic. I went with some random Korean guy and and he was just like, “Yeah, this is this is the the shit.” Like it was it wasn’t real. Um and then uh the next day, so I had two nights in Shiwoka, a rest day from like long distance cycling, just a recovery day cycling around the city. Then it was uh in my direction towards Hamamatsu. So, it was more just along the coast of that uh southern/theast east coast of Japan. Uh it was the easiest going cycling, you know, flat, lots of along the beach. Oh man, just nice weather, not sun baiting down in me. Uh so I splurged on a hotel. I kind of cleaned myself, cleaned my clothes in the evening, had some more of the best green tea ever. And the main thing there was it was the first like, you know, I saw the emperor’s palace in Tokyo, but that didn’t feel very castles. It was too too grand, too big. So, the Hamat’s Castle was a bit like the Osaka Castle. I’ll have a photo inserted here. And it was the first real one I saw. It wasn’t, you know, overcrowded with tourists. It was just a few, you know, Japanese tourists, local tourists, and it was stunning. It was really beautiful. Uh, you know, nice history lesson around top of a hill, nice view. It’s it’s a castle. It’s it’s quite nice. Um, and, uh, then the next day it was Okazaki, so I was starting to go inland a bit, um, towards the north, uh, and across the country. And uh there was really nothing except for beautiful countryside, you know, nothing except for beautiful countryside. It was stunning. I was stopping every few minutes it felt like to see cranes and rice fields. The rice fields had these glassy watery surfaces with just a few reads poking up herand just dipping for food in the rice fields and seeing turtles in the wild wild like streams and rivers and uh it was striking. uh just as as a country set, just mountains that were kind of unconquerable, albeit relatively small as far as big mountains go, and then rice fields in between. Uh and bullet trains just zipping by whenever you’re near the tracks. It was magical. Uh and the night Noazaki was nothing to note. It was just a stop on the way cuz I wasn’t going to push myself too far. Then I went to Nagoya the next day. So, uh, it was the biggest city so far of the trip except for Tokyo. Um, there was, let’s see, I have artwork and castle written down here. Uh, uh, so there was heavy traffic and kind of, you know, easy, but not the most scenic or enjoyable biking on the way there. uh on route one. So super busy motorway/highway for most of the trip. Uh but anyway, when I was there, I visited the uh Atsuta Jingu and Narumi shrines on the way and they were lovely. Uh especially the I think Narumi shrine had the kind of string of Tor gates a bit like you see in Kyoto, but you know, nobody else there. Not the same scale, but nobody else there. So you just kind of can have it to yourself. Um, and while I was in the city, I visited what I will say is the most impressive uh castle of the whole trip. Even better than Osaka Castle or the Emperor’s Palace or particularly um anything equivalent in Kyoto as well, which which says a lot. So they set the scene about it. It was reconstructed. So it had burnt down and it was reconstructed with golden leaf artwork in the emperor’s quarters of the castle grounds. Uh you know I made friends with security guy who was was taking my photos and chatting with me for ages. Um and he was explaining to me how it had burnt down. It was all recreated. And the thing is you are allowed to take photos here whereas in some of the other golden leaf ones in particularly in I believe Kyoto you can’t take any photos. So you know you can kind of take photo appreciate it and maybe it was just my personal experience on that day cuz the sun was beaming through and hitting this golden leaf and it was like ah it’s like I couldn’t believe they were a god if I was a samurai back in the day. uh you know, so I made friends with this guy uh and then ran into him in Starbucks afterwards cuz I was kind of hiding away from a storm uh that had rolled in as as they do in Japan. And we ended up talking about the Japanese Alps and Enya and I kind of agreed next time I was in Japan, I’d visit the Alps uh to attempt to climb them during the the right season. It was the wrong season when I was there, when I attempted. Uh, and of importance to any influencers, you know, yes, you can take photos there, but you can’t in other places, you know. I feel like Lagoya is totally overlooked. Like, not so much a hidden gem because there are plenty of tourists there, international and whatnot. Uh, but I would say it’s definitely worth much more of a stop than people give it credit for. Uh, I believe I’m just checking the time of the recording there. I believe I’ll leave it there for this episode. The next episode I’m going to talk about going to Lake Biwa. Um, so going cutting from Nagoya across the country further through forest, stopping at temples on the way, meeting an English guy and uh seeing sunset at the lake, as well as talking about my experience with some spiders and my crappy crappy crappy tent. Okay, until next time.

In this episode, I talk about visiting Nagoya, Omaezaki and Shizuoka during my cycle across Japan. The highlights were the best green tea in the world, the best bread and bakery in Japan, as well as the most instagrammable castle in all of Japan.