Camping tour 2016: Day seven (Friday 8 July)

We're on the move again. This time down onto the Kansai Plain where we'll travelling around on until Wednesday. 

It is the second most populous area in Japan after the Kanto Plain with Tokyo and Yokohama. 

The drive was mostly on expressways (paid, as are the majority in Japan). The scenery typically mountains and tunnels with the occasional town.  

We stopped for lunch at one of the roadside service areas. One of our favourite things on a Japanese road trip. These are fully equipped with great restroom facilities, hot food, souvenirs if you should want them, and often a service station. This one even had a coffee shop. 

The car parks are huge and as usual was quite full at lunchtime. 

I hadn't seen a dog run before. But at this stop dogs were well catered for. I was amused that they specified it was only for pets. Discrimination against boys?

Drinking fountain too!

In case you think we're doing this tough, here is our bed, it even came with an electric pump. So comfy! The great thing about a tour like this in a tent (or motor home or caravan) is that you get to sleep on the same bed each night. 

However before you think about bringing your caravan over here, we hardly ever see caravans on the road. And caravan parks practically don't exist. Motor homes are more common, but still we might only see one or two on the road in several hours of driving. 

Here's our tent all nicely laid out with beds. Everyone set up their own bed (one boy set up his brother's while he was working). We're getting into a nice rhythm here. What you can't see is that straight out that window is Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan. 

We experimented with a new dish for dinner. We've dubbed it "Biwazza". Pizza inside damper (a simple type of soda bread from Australia, actually just flour, baking powder, and water when we're camping). 

It was applauded by my strongest food critics. 

Looks like we're in for a wet night. Thankfully the top of our tent is now waterproofed with a new tarp slung over the top. Tomorrow we're hitting Kyoto for the day.