Lonely Planets says that you really need a car for this part of Japan, true if you want to see the un - spoilt area around this part of Japan you need to drive. We hired out a car from Kyoto and drove the distance. Fortunately the car came with Japanese satnav, with satnav in Japanese. The Mazda / Europcar person was happy to feed in the satnav address to the hotel blocking out express toll roads as requested and off we set with the night approaching. For the rest of the trip you could point and shoot the satnav via the map of where you wanted to go using an A4 decode sheet from English to Japanese.

The hotel whilst appearing as a blot on the landscape from across the bay is pleasant, clean and friendly inside. It has assorted restaurants. It is a Japanese holiday resort hotel for the Japanese. Few westerners visit the hotel which is probably why there are few reviews of it on tripadviser. English is not generally spoken by staff at the hotel but they are very friendly and willing to please. Breakfast is impressive with the choice and indeed the view out of the window to the sand bank. Dinner had it's ups and downs over the period since there is no English translations but the duty manager one day was called to help whilst other days clipping finger movements steered us away from the crabs. This is the Japanese crab eating coast.

Biscuits provided in the hotel room were interesting, crab. You can dress up in gowns for breakfast for dinner and breakfast most did, or pass on this ritual.

Elsewhere good coastal drives and the light house point provides a good walk although the local monkeys became aggressive so a quick retreat as made from one path to avoid being bitten, monkey urine and tree branches and water being shook down. The monkey troop chased us back for about 100 metres. These are the monkeys that normally bath in hot tubs.....

For the all important wifi the hotel provides hi-speed ethernet lan connection for free with a cable coming out of the back of the broadband TV box in each room. You need a portable wifi router if you can't or don't want to plug in the ethernet cable to your device. There was no central business PC area or PC for use.

The hotel, the car and the coast provided a good get away from the more urban side of the trip and the high speed trains connections between cities.