An entire street filled with Sweet Shops?!

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Having bought a do-nichi kippu (Sat-Sun Ticket), I was determined to get the most use out of it! So although I was tired from a long day in Mito the day before, I woke up reasonable early on Sunday too to prepare for another day trip!

After a little research I discovered Kawagoe in the Saitama Prefecture. About a 20 to 30-minute train ride away from the capital of Saitama (also named Saitama) is Kawagoe, a city that blends modern and historical worlds. The part of the city I was interested was, obviously, the historical (which I will talk about in a moment).

My shinkansen train was set to leave at 9:26 so I caught an 8:45 train, which should have gotten me to Sendai by 9, giving me plenty of time to eat breakfast. (Keyword "SHOULD") Unfortunately, the wind was very "strong" (I didn't think it was that strong), so instead of a 18-minute train ride, I had a 45-minute train ride due to the train constantly stopping at stations for extended period of time because of the "wind." So I missed my shinkansen. I was able to get a ticket for the next train that left 15 minutes later, except the problem with this train was that is made more stops. So instead of arriving 15 minutes behind my original train, I would arrive an hour later. Sigh. (Skipping over the part about getting lost for an hour in Kawagoe because the Japanese don't know how to make simple maps... or even maps with North on the top...)

My friend and I finally reached the historical part of Kawagoe. Despite the amount of bombing that happened in the area during the war, many old shops managed to survive. The main point of going there was because they had a street full of old Japanese sweet shops. There were at least 20 shops full of sweets (although many had similar products). After buying a few things, we looked around the area a bit and browsed in some of the shops. I also tried a baked mochi (like sticky rice cake) filled with sweet potato (a specialty in Kawagoe) and I was VERY satisfied with that! From there we made our way slowly back to the station in Saitama City. We had originally planned to also go to Omiya Park in Saitama City (it has a mini zoo, swimming pool, amusement park, etc) but because of the late start to our trip (and getting lost...) we didn't have time. So you might see another blog posting about Omiya Park in the future :D

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