Hitachi Seaside Park and its colorful autumn flowers

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Hitachi Seaside Park and its colorful autumn flowers

Our visit to Hitachi Seaside Park almost didn’t happen due to the distance to the park and the fact that we needed an extra day in the north of Japan.

The day beforehand we had been in Oyama, where we spent the night after a couple of days in Hirosaki, enjoying the castle and the Apple Park.

Everything was going well, but we got up slowly that morning, and when we arrived at the station we were informed that the journey to Ibaraki (where Hitachi Seaside Park is located) would take about 3 hours, rather than just an hour as we had been told by someone else. Well, leave at 1:30pm, take 3 hours to get there, 3 hours to come back, and then take another train to Kyoto (to spend the night) … The math didn’t add up.

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We therefore changed our plan for the next 2 days completely. With the JR Passes we had the advantage of taking a variety of trains from different places without paying a cent (or Yen …) more.

Knowing my lovely wife, I knew that if we didn’t visit Hitachi Seaside Park it would haunt her for a long time. When we came to Japan, I was interested in the culture and the people and she was really looking forward to the nature and the colors that autumn would bring. colorful were an important part of her plan.

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We decided to just visit a few places in Oyama in a very easy-going way and then take a train to Mito, one of the closest stops before the park (well, about 50 minutes away by train).

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First, an accidental stop at a Shrine

The bus to the park would take a while, so we checked on the map and it didn’t look like such a long way (only about 15 minutes on foot) so we decided to walk.

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As usual, Noah was up for some leg stretching as long as it was close to bushes and trees where he could play a bit. On the way there were plenty of those, so he was happy.

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But it was a surprise when we arrived at the place the map said was the seaside park, and it didn’t look like a seaside park at all …

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What had happened was that we didn’t know the exact name, and we thought it was called Ibaraki Seaside Park. When we looked for that in the GPS, it led us to Sakatsuraisokai Shrine – which of course we had no plans to visit.

When we asked someone there, they informed us that the Hitachi Park was about 5km away!! We, of course, returned to the train station and waited for the bus, which took another 30 minutes to arrive …

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The effort was worthwhile as Hitachi Seaside Park is amazing

In the end it was totally worth visiting, as you can see in the pictures below.

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The park is enormous and the most important part – the Miharashi-no-oka area – is simply marvelous …

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This is a typical place where you should come early in the morning, bring some food and have a picnic during the day. You will find plenty of spots for that by the ocean, and there are even some other attractions around the perimeter, such as a Ferris wheel.

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There are lots of kiosks offering many types of food, in case you don’t want to bring food from home. And then of course there are the kokia flowers …

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Family Travel Secret
The Miharashi-no-oka area in the park is flush with sweet blue nemophila in the spring and the beautiful rounded kokia in the fall. During the season when the leaves change the backdrop is exuberant, with the kokias transforming from green to red.

You’re bound to be entertained there.

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And then, after Hitachi Seaside Park, another mission to get to Kyoto

We had a very nice afternoon there, but that same day we were travelling to Kyoto so we couldn’t stay for the whole day.

Then we suffered another setback. The bus we were supposed to take didn’t leave from that exit, so we would need to cross the entire park (which is big) and check if it was going to depart from the other exit. By the way, the bus leaves every hour and we didn’t even know the timings.

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In order to save time (and money), we walked for about 40 minutes to the nearest train station, to take a train to Mito.

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Even with all the effort we made we were late taking the train from Mito to Tokyo, and from there another one to Kyoto. We arrived at our guest house in Kyoto close to midnight. We were tired, hungry, and cranky (especially me … 🙂 ), so it was definitely a good time to sleep 🙂

The good thing? Well, the next day we were going to a festival in the city but we didn’t have to wake up very early, so we had some time to recharge before enjoying our penultimate day in wonderful Japan. Gosh, I’m already missing this country …

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