Another walk

I went out for another walk this afternoon. Mark had decided to take and nap and wasn't willing to get up quite yet so I went alone. I headed down to the beach which is about a 20 minute walk. Numazu is located in a natural bay and is really close to mount Fuji. On a day with clear skies I should have been able to see the mountain from the beach but unfortunately it was overcast so I did not get to see much at all. I did get to see the "beach" which, as you can see, consists of lots of pebbles in front of an rather ugly concrete dyke.


This is the view out to the Pacific:


On my way back I got to see the "Numazu Port Floodgate"


This floodgate protects the harbor in case of a Tsunami after an earthquake and is one of the largest floodgates in Japan. This gate needs to close within 3 minutes of the earthquake to protect the city and the harbor from the flood-wave. There is an elevator that brings you to the visitor platform on the top of the structure which gives you a pretty good 360 degree panorama since there aren't any other tall buildings around (which is rather unusual for Japan). Unfortunately it was already getting dark by the time I got here so I was not able to take any good pictures from the platform....
From here I went back to the Hotel along the river to wake up Mark for dinner. We went out to a small restaurant that was soso. It was amusing to watch Mark struggle with his chopsticks and finally giving up and the food was ok but nothing to special. We will have to ask our hosts tomorrow for some advise in finding good authentic restaurants...