Ogose

Ogose was known as the Village of Plum, and we could see why. With the hike, it seemed like everything was well worth it as we were rewarded with an almost extravagant view of plums all around the base of the mountain with nobody else present. I could hear the faint sound of drums in the distance as there was a festival going on but we sure took our time to enjoy and take in the beautiful scenery. As we made our way into town, we stopped by Umezono Shrine as a detour. I gave Nik the full rundown on the various deities present such as Jizo and Inari which was coincidentally one of the kami enshrined at Umezono.

I had to pay for both our tickets as Nikita didn't bring enough cash but it was all worth it as we saw the festival was in full swing. I had thought that there was some kind of dancing monkey but turns out there was some traditional lion dance going on, it was really mindblowing to see something like this as we didn't expect it so Nik and I were just beaming at each other, blazed out of our minds. We went around the festival stalls and I got some okonomiyaki which turned out to be too salty. We went around the plum grove but I personally found those outside were much better as there were a lot of people here, I took my time to just sit down and take a nap. We also found another plum grove in someone's backyard, we were about to sit down on some chairs but I was wondering why they were so many bugs flying around. It turned out to be a bee hive which made us back away with a lot of nervous laughter. The long walk back to the station was bearable after such a fun-filled day.Read more