Day 14 Hitachi-Naka, Japan

Hitachi-Naka is well named as it is home to the giant manufacturing company, Hitachi.  Were we are docked it is plain to see that industry plays a big part in this area.  The captain had a bit of trouble docking our ship this morning.  The wind was blowing very strong and kept pushing our ship away from the dock.  Two tugs were employed to hold the ship up against the dock.  They worked extremely hard to do this.

 We had two places to visit today on our tour.  First was the Hitachi Seaside Park.  It is an interesting place because it covers a variety of natural landscapes.  From Sand Dunes to forests to grasslands and springs.  It is around 350 hectares and is home to a variety of colourful flowers throughout the four seasons.  There is also an amusement park for the young and numerous cycling tracks.  The flowers that were in bloom at this time of the year were Nemophila, Roses and Japanese plum to name a few.  As we were given two hours to walk around this park, we ended up walking around 9km and managed to get lost a couple of times.

The next place we visited was the Fish Market.  Compared to the one that we visited a couple of days ago, this one was primitive.  It was shop after shop along a street that stretched for two street blocks.  Every type of fish imaginable was for sale.  From salted to dried to fresh.  But by far the longest line waiting to be served was for the freshly shucked oysters.  We had seem this numerous times on our journey around Japan.  The Japanese love their oysters.

We bought these to try.  I thought they were crab balls but Philip reckons they were battered fish eyes.  They went straight in the bin.