Sunday 12th July 2015
Accommodation: Yodoya Minshuku, booked directly with the hotel with the help of a lovely Japanese girl called Yumiko! ¥13,000 (about £100) for a double room with breakfast.
The logistics!
The next stop on our itinerary was originally Kinosaki but after seeing on the town’s Facebook page that they were a short train trip from a nice beach town called Takeno, we decided to spend a night there first. Our Japanese itinerary was very full on so a day lazing on the beach sounded fabulous! (I clearly thought this before realising how much it rains in Japan in July!)
We didn’t spend much time in Takeno so I was considering skipping over the town while writing my blog but think it is definitely worth a blog post as there’s very limited information available in English on visiting the town.
After seeing Kinosaki’s Facebook post about Takeno, I wrote a reply asking for advice on how to book accommodation. A lovely, helpful Japanese girl from Takeno called Yumiko replied and totally sorted us out!
We told Yumiko that we would ideally like a room with a private bathroom and she recommended a hotel (called a minshuku) which was just in front of Kirihama Beach. There was a Japanese website so through Yumiko and the Google translated page we worked out what room we wanted and she arranged the booking via Takeno’s tourist association.
Yumiko also helped us with details of how to get from Kinosaki to Takeno and then to the hotel. Our timings meant that we had to get a taxi which cost ¥4,000 one way and took about 25 minutes. If we had arrived earlier, we would have been able to catch a train (¥200pp/one way) or a bus (¥500pp/one way) and someone from the minshuku would have picked us up from the station.
Yumiko also told us that there is sea kayaking available at the beach and booked this for us, ensuring that there was an English speaking guide working when we were there. This cost ¥12,400 for us to have a tandem kayak.
The journey
From Miyajima, we got the ferry to Miyajimaguchi and got the local train from there to Hiroshima. From Hiroshima, we got a bullet train and a local train to Kinosaki and then got a taxi to our minshuku in Takeno. Everything apart from the taxi was covered by our JR passes.
Between trains, we picked up lunch at one of the stations. David got a bento box but I hadn’t been too keen on the first bento box I had a few days before so decided to find something different. I went to a (Japanese style!) fast food type place called Yoshinoya and got a meal with miso soup, grilled eel (unagi!) with rice and kimchi (something pickled and spicy). Pretty tasty, healthy and very different to UK fast food!
It was about 4pm before we arrived in Takeno and checked into Yodoya so my dream of a lazy day on the beach was pretty much entirely taken up by travelling! We would have had to do the same trip to get to Kinosaki anyway so it was no big deal and gave us longer to spend in Kinosaki the next day.
Takeno is definitely not on the international tourist map so it felt like we’d found a hidden gem! We didn’t spot any other non-Japanese people (gaijin!) while we were there and only a few people seemed to speak English. Yumiko had warned us that not many people speak English but trying to get by with a language barrier is part of the fun! I asked one of the owners of our minshuku if there was a washing machine by drawing a picture and somehow he showed me how to use them with lots of hand actions!
A wander around Takeno
After we checked in, we got pointed in the direction of the beach and headed off to explore Takeno. There was a small beach about 5/10 minute walk from our hotel and we sat there for a while before going in search of food. We tried to get dinner by the beach but it was too late for the cafes there so we continued our wander and got quite lost (again). In hindsight, we really should have found a map!
Takeno is not very densely populated and we had a nice walk through the Japanese countryside and eventually stumbled upon a supermarket. The sushi selection was amazing and we got a platter each to take to the beach to eat.
When we left the supermarket, we asked a man for directions to the beach and headed in the direction that he pointed us. After a much longer walk than expected, we arrived at a bigger beach that the one we’d been to earlier. Looking at Google images now, I know that this was Takeno Beach and the previous beach was Kirihama Beach. As we walked to the beach, some of the local kids said ‘hello’ to us – I think they were excited to have someone to practice the English they had learnt at school on!
After sitting at the beach with our sushi picnic, we headed back to the hotel which took much, much longer than expected! It was getting dark by the time we got back to the hotel. There was only a toilet and sink in our room and the bathing facilities were what we had been dreading…a shared bathing area!
Our first public bath!
A lot of hotels in Japan have a big shared bathing area. Even though theses are separated into male/female facilities, David and I were still less than enthusiastic about the concept of getting naked with strangers! However, we needed to wash and thought it would be good to bite the bullet ahead of Kinosaki the next day – an onsen town where the whole point is to go to public hot springs! So we grabbed our towels and robes, headed downstairs, wished each other luck and headed in to bathe…with strangers…naked…
The hotel was pretty quiet so we were both hoping not to see any other guests – and we were in luck and each had the room to ourselves!
How to bathe
As the thing I was most nervous about in Japan (as an uptight Brit?!), I had done a lot of Googling beforehand to find out about what happens and bathing/onsen etiquette! I was surprised to find that most of the bloggers didn’t make a big deal about it – “I took off my clothes and went in”! Now that I have been to a few shared baths/onsens, I can understand that there is no big deal. Everyone is naked so who cares if you are! Plus, it is very relaxing once you get over the “oh my god, I’m naked!!” part!
The most important rule of onsening – don’t go into the bath/hot springs without washing first.
Go into the shared bathing area, take off your clothes and put them into the lockers/shelves and then go to sit on one of the little stools in front of the showers. You can take the face cloth with you but I think I read somewhere that this shouldn’t touch the bath/hot springs water. It can be used for ‘modesty’ when walking around (easier for guys!) and placed on your head or by the side when you’re in the water. The showers that I saw while in Japan all had shampoo etc in front of each stool. Wash and rinse yourself thoroughly and then you can go into the bath or hot spring to relax.
After an extremely quick shower, with one eye on the door, I went into the really deep, big, hot bath and relaxed…though didn’t stick around long in case another guest came to join me!
I met David outside the baths and we headed back up to our room, both feeling quite proud of ourselves for braving our first mini-onsen experience!!
Breakfast
We had sea kayaking booked for the next morning and had breakfast in the hotel before leaving. We were the only people in the dining room and had a traditional Japanese breakfast with fish, rice and egg. At breakfast in Miyajima the previous morning, we’d each been given a hard boiled egg which we peeled and ate. Assuming that this egg was also hard boiled, David smashed it off the table to crack the shell. Unfortunately, it was a raw egg so David ended up with egg all over the table! After laughing, we managed to clean it up before the lady came and wondered what these silly foreigners were playing at!
Sea kayaking
We took our cases and headed down to Kirihama Beach for sea kayaking. There were about 10 people on the tour and everyone else was Japanese. The company had arranged for the English speaking guide to be there for our tour so he explained things to us, while the other guide explained in Japanese.
We were out in the water for about an hour and went a little along the coast and into a big cave. Our guide was lovely and we talked about life in Japan and in the UK. The area is a geopark and he explained about the different rocks. They took lots of pictures of the group and put them on the company’s Facebook page for us to see.
On to Kinosaki
After our kayak, we went back ashore ready to work out how we would find the train station to catch the train to Kinosaki. I’m not sure who arranged it, but a lovely lady was ready to drop us off at the station in her car! We were very well looked after by the lovely people of Takeno and made to feel very welcome!
Although I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit Takeno again, it is worth a trip if you are heading to Kinosaki. The beaches were lovely and clean and it is nice to visit somewhere off the international tourist trail. Plus, we can now say that we’ve stepped foot in the Sea of Japan!
If you are thinking of staying in Takeno, I would recommend getting in touch with the Takeno Tourist Association. It would have been very difficult for us to plan our trip without Yumiko and she said that there were a few English speakers at the tourist association. Unless you can speak Japanese, I don’t think you can book the local hotels online and they should be able to offer advice and book for you.
3 thoughts on “Kyū (Takeno)”