Hamamatsu (浜松市)

With the rainy weather verifiable behind us (it's true! I checked!), I got ready for todays trip, left the umbrella on the table, and headed out the door. Then I stood there, looked at the forecast again, still saw that everything was dry, got suspicious, and grabbed my umbrella.

And what do you know, it started raining cats and dogs the instant we arrived at our destination. I blame the 6 minute delay (!) our train had. If we had arrived on time, I wouldn't have had to run out of the train through the rain. Luckily, once I had shelter, I was able to hold my umbrella to the sky as evidence and it soon stopped again.

Today we went to Hamamatsu (not to be confused with Hamamatsucho, the neighborhood in Tokyo where we stayed the first night), a fairly innocent little town that somehow still managed to warrant a Shinkansen stop. I mean, they do have a sky scraper. One. Maybe that's what it takes to qualify.

Other than that, we started looking for stuff on the map. The flower garden looked beautiful but was an hour away by bus. As was basically anything else. And with our return ticket booked, we didn't really want to venture on anything too extravagant. So we settled for the castle and surrounding garden that we could easily walk to without having to rely on any public transport.

Amongst all the insects that were trying to eat us alive, we also found a little park with people playing catch and the like, with hundreds of dragonflies dancing between the people. It took me a while to recognise them as it was so unexpected to see them glittering in the sunlight.

Otherwise a fairly chill day to match the mood of todays public holiday.