A Trip To Chiba

We had tickets for a music festival around the east side of the Bay, on a beach on the edge of Chiba City. The Chemical Brothers! Unfortuntely the festival was cancelled the day before due to forecast storms. We decided to go to Chiba anyway.

Didn't take any photos of the area we were staying in: one giant shopping mall basically, probably the biggest I've ever seen. Didn't take any pictures of the sad festival site on the beach where workers were taking down never-used merch stands and bars, the stage blowing forlornly in the wind. Never mind! Here's the photos I did get.

Chiba has a cool suspended monorail that flies around town. This is the track. Obviously, the train came past a moment after I put my camera away.

We ended up going to a randomly selected Izakaya and ended up making friends with some very hospitable (and later very drunk) locals. Much yakitori. Much sake. Much laughing.

The next day we got the train to the little town of Hama-Kanaya, which lies at the base of Mount Nokogiri.

Mount Nokogiri used to be a quarry. This is why it looks like a bunch of flat surfaces.

Chiba is also home to one of the world's largest petrochemical plants. We drove through it on the train, it is huge.

We met a snake!

Photos don't really do justice to the scale of this.

Hana-Kayama is also a ferry port. So we decided to get the ferry across to the other side of Tokyo bay and get the train home from Kurihama instead. Everyone loves a boat ride, and the train service is much better on the other side of the bay.