I don’t watch baseball but this Shohei guy seems to be pretty popular around Japan. He must be really good or something because everyone wants to take a picture of him standing and holding their product. I made it my mission to document every time that I ran into an ad featuring him. He’s so popular, I even ran into him at the airport :p
This one in particular is my favorite the way he’s staring directly at Mt. Fuji. No way this was a coincidence.
We got to the rental car place and I asked if the front desk person spoke English as I didn’t want to misinterpret any rules or regulations for the rental. She excused herself and a stern looking Turkish man came out of the back room. He was very straight to the point with his communication which I appreciated. He explained as follows:
Use the GPS that came with the car, it’s tied to a satellite system vs my google maps gps. Due to the Izu Peninsula being a mountainous region, I may risk losing signal. Also the car GPS will reroute if there are icy conditions as reported by the local government.
One neat thing is that instead of putting addresses in the GPS, you put the business’ phone number and it’ll route you there. How very efficient!
He also stated and restated “Accidents have many meanings in Japan, what you must know is if any accident happens, your fault or not, you MUST call the police to file a report. Again, if you have an accident YOU MUST CALL THE POLICE.” Even if I go into a convenience store and find a 10cm scratch on the car, the police must be called, else my insurance on the vehicle won’t cover the damage and I’ll have to pay out of pocket.
He also explained the toll system which I had to awkwardly figure out last time I drove in Miyazaki.
I was very grateful for all of his instruction because none of this was clearly explained to me in prior rentals. Kind of crazy I can just rent a car with a piece of paper saying I can and then drive on the left side of the road like this without any prior experience (hopefully I don’t jinx it).
Become was my passenger princess and navigator for the day while everyone else rested.
First stop was this famous bridge (Fuji Dream Bridge) that all these IG influencers take photos at. It was 45 min west in Shizuoka city so we started to make our way in that direction.
Throughout our 2 week trip, Joanna’s dad has been going from store to store to no avail looking for a very specific Honda motorcycle t-shirt. I think when he was a kid in Vietnam, his older brother had a 1967 Honda motorcycle.
As I was driving us to Shizuoka, I passed a Honda motorcycle dealership. I hesitated to stop at first but this is also his vacation so I turned us around because the worst that could happen would be if they sold no merch and only motorcycles.
Bruce was SO excited to see that we stopped to help him with his shirt search. I’m really glad I stopped because he absolutely hit the jackpot here and got way more than just the one tshirt he was looking for.. They even had 3XL size which was basically a regular Large size at home.
We left the store an hour later with over $450 in Honda gear for him to bring home.
We arrived at the bridge around lunch time and were disappointed to see a looong line of people waiting their turn to take a picture. The free parking nextdoor was full so I took it as a sign that it wasn’t meant to be.
Become found a fish market worth visiting further into the city so we stopped to check out the market and get some lunch.
I wanted a repeat of the sushi bowl that Become took us to in Tokyo. My bowl had raw scallops, shrimp, sea urchin, tuna, and salmon roe. It was delicious but not to the level of luxury as the other place. Still quite good though.
There was a famous dairy farm (Maikano Dairy Farm) that had a great Fuji photo op up north of the city. It was over an hour drive to get there and unfortunately the farm was only open for another 15 minutes so they were not allowing new customers in. We each bought a consolidation ice cream cone and headed back towards Mishima city for dinner.
Joanna’s parents had me stop abruptly when they saw a McDonalds and said they had to try it to see what the difference was. I drove around the building to get to the parking lot not knowing that part of the building’s parking lot was a one way for the drive through (there were no signs). Thankfully there were no cars in line for the drive through but one of the workers ran out of the restaurant to check if we were ok. I don’t think I’ve apologized so much before. They said there was more variety, price was MUCH cheaper, and the quality was better at this Mcdonalds than the ones at home.
Speaking of hamburgers, the second specialty dish in Shizuoka was hambagu steak, specifically from a restaurant called Sawayaka which only has 35 locations in Shizuoka prefecture. We drove to the nearest one. It was only 8:30 and they closed at 10 so I figured we would be right on time. Unfortunately due to Japanese efficiency, they were no longer seating new tables as the wait would be too long and exceed their 10pm closing time.
I drove us to the next Sawayaka hoping they’d have a shorter wait and was faced with the same rejection. Joanna’s dad thought how good could this be? They’re basically just selling salisbury steak.
We picked an italian restaurant up the road and was again rejected even though it was 30 minutes to closing time.
I was too hungry at this point and took us to a 24/7 Yoshinoya, a fast food beef on rice bowl.
Dinner was fine, cheap, and came out quickly.
It’s not Joanna’s birthday for another few days but I wanted to do a little thing for her while her family was together. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find time to stop by a cake shop in Kawaguchiko so a strawberry cheesecake from the dairy farm would have to do.
We had a series of disappointing events today with timing being slightly off, but I think the real winner was Joanna’s dad with his Honda haul. I’m glad we were able to make his day and mark a highlight for him on this trip.
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