Japan 2023. Day 30. Ine, the Venice of Japan

Deep inside me there is a sybarite, born to enjoy living in the lap of luxury. Of course I keep this persona hidden deep inside me, because it would be a considerable handicap to my way of travel. A big room and a soft bed did wonders for me, however, so I went around Hashidate Bay with a benign smile, at ease with the world around me. 

Imagine my surprise when a mere 25 km to the north I found a charming small town, Ine, that had sprouted around the shores of a coastal pocket, with the houses coming right up to the edge of the water. Many of the houses have docks under them, so you can get from your living room to your boat, and then directly into the small entrant to the bay. This is a very unusual arrangement, because normally the tide would require a good buffer zone. The entrance to the pocket bay is, however, partially blocked by an island, and the special configuration dampens the range of the tide to a mere 0.5 m. I don't know if Ine started as a fishermen's village, but today is a very desirable vacation spot for the urbanites of Kyoto, just like Sausalito is a refuge for the wealthy of San Francisco. The small houses are as cute as they can be, built of dark wood in traditional Japanese style, and of course may come with the use of a motor boat for your touring pleasure (I took a boat tour of the small embayment and enjoyed it very much).

For lunch I stopped at a convenience store and bought a package of small candied crabs, maybe an inch in size, and a wine cooler. You are supposed to eat the crabs whole, crunching through shell and dried inside. I figure you should do this once in your life, but I would not take that as the main reason to come to Ine.

The other place worth visiting is the Amanohashidate Shinto temple and sand bar. The temple is old, beautiful, and has the disorganized cluster of different shrines that can be expected of a structure that has grown over a couple of centuries. The sand bar blocks another embayment within the larger Hashidate Bay, and is a super popular park for families with kids to rent bikes and go across the embayment. A very touristy development makes this a good shopping Mecca for the tourist.