Some photos of our trip to Sawara in Chiba Prefecture over the 3 day weekend a couple weeks back. On the way to Sawara we stopped at Chiba Station and had lunch at a place called Common Café. I order a burger not expecting a lot, but it was the best burger I've had in a long time actually. We arrived a bit late in Sawara and were kind of tired so we decided to just go to the hotel, shower and relax for a bit and then have dinner. We had a reservation at a French restaurant called Mougins and it ended up being a really great experience. After eating dinner we were headed back to the hotel and we heard some hayashi and cheering in the distance and we decided to check out what was happening. We found a dashi parading through the streets and they were stopping at different places to pick up alcohol lol. Apparently they'd been doing it every Sunday, I think since corona started. It was pretty cool to see though. The next day we went to check out the Sawara Historical District and after reaching our destination we decided to take a break at a cafe. We ordered a shaved ice and some sort of soda. They were both really delicious, especially the shaved ice. It was some sort of flavor using tea from Kyoto and milk. I forget what it was called exactly though. We also stopped by the former residence of Inoh Tadataka, the famous Japanese cartographer. It was quite interesting seeing where he lived. After visiting his residence, we to the nearby museum and learned about his life and everything he did. I was pretty blown away by how incredible he actually was. I was a bit surprised that I hadn't learned much about him when I was studying the history of Japan, but after visiting the museum I'm convinced he was truly a genius. Unfortunately I couldn’t take pictures inside of the museum, but seeing all of the tools that he used to draw maps and learning how they worked was really interesting. On top of that, the maps he drew were unbelievably accurate. I think it mentioned somewhere that his maps were used until the 1900's, despite being drawn several hundred years prior. His cartography was only one of the endeavors he pursued as well. There were also some documents that explained how he helped his town get through the famine, and also documents detailing how he dealt with local lords imposing taxes on his town. Besides the museum, we also took a boat ride through the canal that ran through the historical district. The canal was quite nice, and you could see the historical buildings that lined the sides of it while going through it. We had to lower the cover on the boat for several bridges as the water level was quite high due to the recent rains, but that just made the experience even more memorable. The tour guide on the boat mentioned how when the canal was used back in the Edo period, it was incredibly busy and boats would have been bumping into each other constantly while passing through. During the boat ride through the canal I noticed some interesting statues on various lanterns and decided to check them out. They all turned out to be interesting and unique. We ended our trip by having a late lunch near the historical district. We had planned to take a train back to Tokyo but missed it by a few minutes. Fortunately, a bus arrived at the perfect time and so we rode that back to Tokyo. It was much better than the crowded trains. Overall it was a really good day-trip style excursion and I definitely recommend it! Managed to find 2 poke lids too!