It was my first time in Niigata! Although it was a day trip and raining heavily, it was more fun than expected.
Niigata City is the capital of Niigata Prefecture, north of Tokyo, facing the sea of Japan. It's a 5 or 6 hour drive from Tokyo, so we left early from Tokyo to be there on noon time. We were supposedly meeting up at 6am, but the owner of the car woke up late so we had to leave Tokyo before 7am which was still not bad.
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We had stopovers on the way for toilets and grabbing breakfast and snacks. We met rains on the road, so it was quite slippery. The area around Saitama Prefecture to Gunma Prefecture was a bit traffic. After many tunnels and lush green summer trees, we finally reached Niigata prefecture. But it was now raining so heavy that we couldn't see far ahead. The fields with the mountains on the horizon weren't visible anymore. Still, we were welcomed by a cute line of sunflowers on the road - but some were facing down as if they're tired working adults. π Must be the gloom the rain brought.
Fruits Forest Cafe
The main purpose of visiting Niigata was to meet another gaming friend. I was with 3 other gaming friends in this roadtrip and this was our 2nd meetup after meeting them in Tokyo. We met at Fruits Forest Cafe where he takes pride of, and surely, the food didn't disappoint.
We had their fruits parfait. Mine was the Miyazaki Mango parfait, which came all the way from Miyazaki Prefecture on the south. Miyazaki is known for their highly expensive and delicious mangoes so I just had to get one myself. Also, mangoes are my favorite!
Miyazaki Mangoes are indeed great! I even thought of going to Miyazaki one day just to have their mangoes. π
My friends had the Okinawan Pine parfait and the in season Peach parfait. The peach was gigantic and inside it was their specialty cream which went perfectly with the peach. The pine was also great!
Since it was the birthday of one friend, she was treated to the Melon parfait. It looked like a feudal lord because of the shape of the melon on top of the glass and mind you, vanilla ice cream and melon were so perfect for each other.
One friend got curious of the fruits pasta so he ordered one. It came with a small soup. It was a different variant of peaches, and the pasta sauce complemented the peach. It was so delicious!
We had our introductions and chitchat a little before we left. It was such a joy to meet another friend who we've just been playing with online. He never thought that he would be able to meet someone from the game, and I did too. Never did I think of coming to Niigata to meet another friend. Hopefully next time, we could visit the cafe again and talk with him longer.
Niigata City Aquarium
Our roadtrip continues. We asked that friend for recommendations where to go next and he jokingly replied with Aeon the mall which we all laughed at because we could just find a lot of them in Tokyo and nothing's really there except to shop and dine. He asked other coworkers and they suggested the Niigata City Aquarium Marinepia Nihonkai.
I don't know how long the drive took to the aquarium. I just noticed that there's a sandy area on one side of the road. That's when my friends told me that's the sea of Japan. It wasn't visible because of the strong rain, but I bet it's so beautiful on a sunny day, especially this summer.
The aquarium was nearby. After paying the entrance fee of 1,200 yen (around 8 USD), we went inside not knowing what to discover.
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As in many aquariums, there were so many fishes of different kinds. I couldn't name them all. But some were beautiful to look at because of their shapes and colors, while some were the unique kinds. There were crabs too, big and small.
Lots of fishes were so keen on greeting us! They're just so lovely!
Aside from sea fishes, there were also river fishes. They were in a different area inside the aquarium. There's also an interactive area where you could hold the starfishes with your hand. It was a popular one among the kids.
There's an area too where you can learn about fishing in the old times, the tools they've used and the techniques they had. There's even one that uses your hand to catch fishes.
The jellyfishes were not a lot like what I've seen in another aquarium but they're plenty enough to capture your interest.
On the outdoors, we found penguins enjoying the rain swimming while some were hibernating. Some penguins were watching the other penguins as if they're on the beach. Some were even sunbathing although there's no sun and there's no sunbed.
On another area, we found seals enjoying the water on one side while on the other there were seals who were out of the water, lying down. One big seal stood out because from time to time, it would wail and the sound echoed in the place.
We found the dolphin stadium with no dolphins. The show was done for the day it seems. The stadium was huge and the dolphins were huge too. We found them in their room nearby, enjoying the water. Some were playing tricks. They're just lovely to watch.
We went back inside the aquarium to find some more aquatic animals like otters and beavers. There was also a research room where they take care of the young.
The visit to the Niigata City Aquarium was so unexpected but we had fun looking around and killing time while the heavy rain poured. There were many families with children that day, which I think they had also experienced a great time to learn and play. Too bad we didn't go to the souvenir shop to buy something because we're trying to go to the fruit farm stand, which is the supplier of fruits of the cafe we visited earlier.
Ending The Trip
When we reached the fruit farm shop, it was already closed. We left in tears (just kidding) but you could clearly see in our eyes that we wanted to buy some fruits to take back home. We then decided to go to Nagaoka to get nihonshu (ζ₯ζ¬ι or Japanese sake) which is what's Niigata's famous for. It was dark when we reached the station and we hurriedly looked for the shop.
The sake tasting museum in the shop was closed when we arrived. Yeah, too bad we weren't able to try different kinds of sake. You might be wondering what's sake, it's a Japanese rice wine, read as "sa-ke".
While my friends were busy looking for souvenirs to buy, I was out near the train station looking for the train station stamp.
I got 2 stamps here! One was from the train station and one was from this sake museum. Luckily, the stamp was not inside the museum but outside, camouflaging in the sake shelves.
My friends got their nihonshu and I got some snacks. So off we left Niigata now. We didn't bother having dinner there because it was already late. We had dinner at a stopover though which was still good.
I hope I could visit Niigata again. Some other group of friends come here often on winter because Niigata is also famous for their ski slopes. So it was refreshing to come in the summer where the fields are green and the mountains are vividly green. I wonder how Niigata looks like in spring and autumn. I bet it's also amazing.
Thanks for reading!
See you around! γγγγγΎγγοΌ
With love,
All photos are taken using my phone unless stated otherwise.