A trip into Ibaraki

My husband has very few days he gets off of work. Even over Obon, he heads back a day before everyone else. This left only part of a day to do whatever we wanted with after we finally finished doing all the paperwork things that had been pushed off until hubby had the time. After adulting, we really didn't know what we wanted to do for fun. Because we are pretty boring people, our fun typically comes from walking around home improvement stores but we didn't want to go to our usual spots. So we decided to go to Joyful Honda where we usually go, except farther away. The next closest to where we were was an hour away in a town called Koga. I had been there once last year by bike and was excited to go back. I had thought that it was in Saitama prefecture but actually it is located in Ibaraki and that reminded me of a movie I once watched in my University film class. In English, it is called Kamikaze girls, but the Japanese title explains the movie a bit more. The tale of Shimotsuma (a town in Ibaraki)... Yankee girl and Little Lolita. It perfectly describes how a person from Tokyo would view the countryside of Ibaraki. Nothing but rice fields and people who buy their clothes at Jusco (similar to shopping at Walmart) Driving through, that really was the impression we had. 

Nothing but rice fields. It was actually quite nice. Then we got to Koga itself and it turned back into a town. But the downtown area had fun cobbled streets.

We also passed by some nice looking shrines as well.

I really wish I could go back when I have lots of energy and explore around.