On our way out of Osaka, we rented a car to get to the relatively rural vacation home in the Mie Prefecture.
Though the area could be visited by train, our home exchange could not, and a car was necessary to explore the better parts of this region. Our first stop was Nara, whose Todai-ji temple is one of the world’s biggest wood buildings, housing Japan’s largest Buddha.
The park is also home to (Nathan says, “infested with”) a huge deer population that are even more comfortable with humans than those on the island near Hiroshima. These deer have actually learned to ‘bow’ (nod) at people for treats. If you glance their way or rustle some plastic, they’ll come running!
After this nice stop for sights and bites, we continued our drive. As we got further south, the roads got emptier, smaller, and windier. We checked into our house and grabbed some groceries for the week.
After a travel day we needed to spend our first day in Mie working, but couldn’t complain about the view over Matoya Bay with the kites and other seabirds passing by.
We could also see some oyster beds out there, a preview of one of Mie’s top attractions - the seafood. Oysters and abalone are traditionally harvested here by female free divers called Ama. They are fighting to preserve their way of life while competing against commercial divers with scuba equipment. We had oysters several times, usually not knowing how they were caught but always knowing they were very fresh, perfect and by US standards, extremely cheap!
On Saturday we had amazing weather, nearly 70F. We spent the day out in in, starting with one of Japan’s oldest (4BC) and most sacred Shinto shrines, Ise Jingu. It is way less flashy than most, focused more on the beautiful natural setting along a creek and forrest’s edge. A little jarring to move from there to a packed shopping and dining street. We had a picnic with us, but still had to grab a couple unique tastes, including some of the mochi that was first popularized here.
We made a second stop over by the coast to hike a small hill and then walk along the beach to another shrine, Okitama Jinseki, aka the ‘Wedded Rocks’ connected by a rope.
Finally we hit one more town, Toba, where we were surprised to see a cruise ship at anchor.
We ventured out for nature and oysters a couple more times during the week, seeing this Disney-like woods trail and an amazing viewpoint over coastline!
This week has been the perfect example of why to choose a Home Exchange - I doubt we ever would have come to this corner of the world if it weren’t for free housing. It’s a tourist area, but besides seeing/hearing about 3 American passengers from that cruise ship, the tourists were local, and it felt off the beaten path. Next though, it is back to the big city!