So I was reading @lucia_hunter 's Twitter feed about his trip to Uchiura, and my first thought was "Thanks for taking one for the team".

The thing about Uchiura is that like pretty much every rural area ever, is that public transport is almost non-existent. He also noted that the ryokan that served as the basis for Chika's home doesn't have that good service standards, with obvious maintenance issues. Shops only open for like 3 hours everyday and the bus only arrives every half hour. It is the definition of a sleepy town.

With 10+km distances between places of interest, it's not fun to cycle there either, especially when you consider rental bicycles in Japan have no gear shift capability. A huge oversight in a country that mountainous when rental bicycles here in flat Singapore have gear shifts. I have cycled from Shijo in Kyoto to Kiyomizudera to Ginkakuji and then back to Shijo, which is probably a total of around 15km. Nope. Not doing it again.

My personal recommendation would be to use Atami as a staging point to go to Uchiura. It's a 40-minute drive and as a former resort town, the infrastructure there is equipped for tourism and the resorts and hotels there have a certain standard of service. Even if the place hasn't progressed from the 80s.

Ok technically it's still a resort town, but it's pretty much dying. That's why they had to make a deal with the devil and tie up with a dating sim to try to resuscitate its visitor numbers (didn't work).

But still if you want to go to Uchiura, take the train to Atami, rent a car there, drive to Uchiura and then stay over at Atami if you feel like you need more than a day to explore Uchiura.

But what do I know, I don't even have a licence 🙃

I should probably get a licence.

Now all those missed picture opportunities that @lucia_hunter mentioned also made me think of the reason why I have a DSLR.

See a fleeting photo op moment and you have a DSLR slung around you? Raise it, kick off the lens cap, disengage the safety (flip the on switch) and fire away (I set my camera to Low Frame Rate Continuous). Bad shot? Don't worry: you have 5 more pictures of the same thing. Drop the lens cap? Clean it and you are fine. Lose your lens cap because you dropped it? It's Japan: they sell replacements.

I tried that with my cellphone, that's a missed moment. Nearly 5 seconds to get a camera phone ready, 3 of them spent cursing at phone lag. I only need like 2 seconds to get a DSLR ready.

The takeaway is this: Uchiura does not have the public infrastructure to handle tourism at all. I've seen it first hand too in Malaysia. My parents' hometown became some kind of hipster hotspot and with some promotion from the Malaysian tourism board and a direct air link from Singapore there, a shitton of visitors have descended on that town and now there are major traffic issues there. At least Uchiura has public transport of some sort. Ipoh doesn't.

Of course I prefer sitting in a train than having to actively drive a car, but in the countryside, there aren't many choices.