I'll have to go back to
Nagahama. It is much more interesting than I thought. The first time I visited there, I rode my bicycle into town late in the day along an unpleasant, busy highway, searching with increasing desperation for a 'HOTEL' sign. I never make reservations on bike trips because I never know how far I will ride. Besides, 'playing it by ear' increases my sense of adventure. I finally found a hotel but I remember the room smelled funny, and I left at 5 am the next morning, before anyone was even up and about (don't worry, I paid when I checked in!)
On my recent ride around
Lake Biwa, I put my bicycle in station bicycle parking every night and traveled home on a JR train to Kyoto, returning the following morning. So this time I noticed Nagahama's JR station. It's an impressive building. Still fairly new, it was opened in October 2006. Something that is quite unusual in Japan is that the architect successfully designed the building to resemble Nagahama's Historic JR Station (pictured below.) Of special interest to me were the beautiful stained glass windows. Nagahama is famous for glassware production, so stained glass windows seem a very appropriate decoration for the station.
The style and quality of the station building caused me to revise my previous impression that Nagahama was just another dull country town, so I did a little exploring before continuing my ride South along the East side of Lake Biwa. I'll write about my findings in a future post.
Image by kansaikate via Flickr
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