on the edge of ordinary: Sole camping trip for 2024

I've been away from my desk for much of the last 2 ½ weeks and have been playing catch-up this week, but I am determined to do a little bit of my own writing today. Last week we went camping for three nights in Fukushima Prefecture, about 250 km north of Tokyo. It was our first time to spend any time at all in this prefecture, aside from driving through on the expressway.

It's the first time we've been camping in 19 months...we were looking forward to this trip so much! It's been really hard to accept the reality this week that our trip is over. It was a much needed break. We've been going pretty constantly since we got back to Brisbane in early May from our long motorhome sojourn.

We had a spectacular time. The first time to go camping with none of the participants under 20 (in fact all four of us are a long way past 20)! It was very quiet. We were literally the only people there in this large campground. After 4pm there wasn't even a caretaker around.

But back to the start of the trip: getting there involved over four hours of driving, first on Tokyo's congested ordinary roads, then an expressway, and finally over an hour through the Japanese countryside—over mountains and valleys and through tunnels. It was our first time to drive at 120 km/hr in Japan. I took a photo of this dual-speed sign to give us time to read it...and yes, we were allowed to drive this fast in our little car.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside "service area", one of the joys of travelling long distance in a car in Japan. There is usually many food options, as well as lots of clean toilets. We were already enjoying being away and hanging out that we took quite a long break at this point! Eventually someone pointed out that we still had more driving and a campsite to set up, so we got going again.

The countryside we drove through was, as usual, gorgeous, especially to eyes that have been in Tokyo for months. The layers upon layers of mountains still amaze us Aussies from a wide-flat land!

When we considered what car we would buy, a key requirement was the capacity to carry all our camping gear. This little car did a magnificent job. And we discovered that with no extra passengers it was really easy to pack the back of this, which is basically a box when you lower the back seats. Of course we had less gear, but still, we could see out the back of the car when fully packed and that has not always been a given!

It was wonderful having three nights away: it meant two full days without travelling. We had a very relaxed time. We played games, read, napped, strolled, and the one who brought his bike went for several long rides. Our friends introduced us to a beanbag game called Cornholes (US game) and we introduced them to a card game called Take7.

And of course fire featured a lot. This campsite sported a big flat place where people had previously had fires, so, with no rule saying we couldn't, we gathered up wood lying around and had two big fires on the last two nights. Not just entertainment, but we cooked our evening meals there too. Cooking for four wasn't hard, but the biggest difference was how little washing up there was for just the four of us: we were almost finished before we started. A big difference to when we've camped with 10 or more people.

This simple meal was so delicious.
Thin-sliced pork and baked veggies
in foil.

There was plenty of nature to enjoy. I didn't take photos of the bees, mozzies, or bees, or the vast numbers of "stink" bugs but I did capture the more photogenic dragonflies who loved to land on our ropes and car antenna.

It was a pretty cheap place to stay. Just $AU42 for three nights for each couple. For that we had water, as much space as we wanted, flushable toilets, and a place where we could wash dishes. Ironically the toilet seats were heated. The toilet pedestals were pretty much the cleanest thing in the whole place—the hut they were in was full of bugs and spiderwebs, though nothing too big (I've seen much worse in this land). The showers were also very clean and open 24 hrs a day. They cost $AU1 for five minutes, which is plenty of time. Alas there were no hooks or benches in the showers, but thankfully there was an actual door between the shower room and changing area, so our stuff didn't get wet.

You might wonder how we find these places. It's a pretty simple Google Maps search. We only stay at places that have sufficient information online for us to judge if we're happy about trying them (usually a simple webpage). The translations on Google reviews on these campsites are sometimes illuminating and often entertaining. This one had a lot of chatter about "Kevins" and I briefly wondered...until David clarified that "cabin" in Japanese is sometimes spelled ケビン or literally "kebin"! There were indeed a lot of unoccupied "Kevins", that looked great on the outside, but I don't think there was kitchens or showers in the Kevins. We knew that we were getting a better deal in our tents. Yes: much cheaper, potentially cleaner (according to the reviews), and more fun. I mean you don't get to play with fire in a Kevin!

Gotta love a good fern!

Beautiful squishy moss.

One area we drove through was obvious a dairy farming area, which is quite unusual in Japan. They had a farm that was set up for tourists and we stopped there for a yummy lunch and ice cream on the way home.

Yep, a dairy farming themed area!
This is a post box at the local convenience store

Ice cream with our long-time camping friends.

The farm shop...speaks for itself.

And a random bus! We could see the road that
went past the campsite and these between-village
buses went by a few times each day.
And it's a sign that you're relaxing
when you have time to notice the
occasional bus driving past (it wasn't
a busy road).