Shirahama trip - Day 1

Matthew and I really wanted to do a simple family trip away while we were in Osaka. However, we left things a bit late and only started to look for places we could go to a day before we wanted to go away. Luckily we found a perfect deal online. Only 1/1/2 hours away on the bullet train to the next prefecture, Wakayama. Wakayama is the prefecture where my mother's family came from and we spent lots of our school holidays when we were kids. It has the least population in the Kansai region. It is covered by lots of forests and mountains and has beautiful coastlines and nice beaches :)
It's a pity my grandmother no longer lives there. I truly loved her place. Her house was right in the mountains but only 5 min walk away from the ocean... Crystal clear water and so many colourful fish.

Anyway I am confident that our kids got some idea of how beautiful Wakayama is from this trip :)
Here is the Ocean Arrow - the bullet train we took.

Beautiful scenery:

We went through so many tunnels!

Here is a funny picture taken at Shirahama Station. Shirahama is famous for their hot springs and pandas. They have an amusement park called "Adventure World" - a huge safari park which has the most number of pandas in Japan. They were given some pandas from China in the past and now 15 pandas have been born there. Unfortunately our trip was too short to squeeze in a visit... maybe next time...

The bus arrived shortly after, it was only a 15 min ride to the beach!

We were hoping to see a lot less people at the beach :( The beaches near my grandmother were never this crowded! (Only us and another family or two normally... ) Being one of the major beaches in Japan this was not too bad I guess.

The kids had lots of fun! I think the water was a bit cold for them though. 

The beach is well know for very soft white sand. It is all imported from Australia!

Oliver enjoyed playing beach rugby!

This little lady couldn't stop giggling!!

And Luca was being Luca...

We had such a relaxing morning :)

After a big play at the beach, we took the kids to a nearby hot spring. We all got soft clean skin after a long bath :) I was worried the water temperature was too high for the kids but they seemed to enjoy it as much as I did!

Cooling down outside the public bath:

We did a little walk around the area before we got to our minsuku for the night. 

Minsuku are the budget version of ryokan, which you might be more familiar with. The one we stayed had quite a large Japanese room with a TV, aircon, sink and a toilet. They provided us 5 sets of futons on the tatami mat to sleep on. 

We were quite excited about our dinner as all the reviews online were excellent about their food. Here is what we had for dinner. Fresh sashimi and Japanese BBQ beef and pork. 

The Minshuku people recommended to us that we go for a little walk to the beach as there are about 15 firework displays on each night during the summer. They were just wonderful. Each time the firework made a big bang noise Luca was dancing like a crazy animal! So funny to watch. They were just stunning!

After the display we went to the nearby supermarket and got some handheld fireworks for the kids. It was just a perfect family night. We all came home with big smiles on our faces :) :) :) :) :)