Gunma, and the Country Side

The morning following Canti's departure from Tokyo, Ken and I were already on our feet and ready for our next escapade out of the big city. The idea was to make it to the national park of Ose, reputed to be one of the nicest national parks in the Kanto region of Japan.
Due to some shoddy planning on our behalves, we never quite made it to Ose, and instead wound up in the country side of Gunma prefecture, unwilling to pay an unexpected extra sum to take the bus to the national park. The revelation was bitter, but when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Similarly, when life gives you an infected wound, you squeeze the pus out of it. So we tried to make the best of our situation, and perhaps we succeeded to some degree.
The three hour train ride we took brought us to a town named Numata - which literally translates to "swamp field." Once there, it wasn't long before we realized there wasn't much to be done. Numata's population seemed to be at a rapid decrease. A quick trip to what was supposed to be the local shopping mall proved to be nothing but the carcass of. The only shop in the whole mall that seemed to be able to keep business was the 100¥ store - the "dollar shop", as you would say back home. It seemed hard to keep a business running. Knowing we would find little fun in the actual mall itself, we decided we'd be the source of our own enjoyment in Numata, so we took a wheelchair to the shopping mall's roof and played the fools (much to the dismay of a high school couple trying to have a romantic moment), knowing the mall didn't have the money to afford security.

Sometimes the best fun is senseless fun.

The hotel we stayed in that night was probably some kind of pension for old people at one point or another. It smelled odd and the wallpaper was peeling off, but we had cable television and beds to sleep on, and that was all we needed.
 The next day we ventured out of the town and into the actual country side, hoping to indulge in something more typical of the rural life.

 We enjoyed picking some grapes (although, with Japanese fruit being so expensive, we could only pick so much), took a dip in a small bathhouse run by elderly country-folk, and altogether just immersed in the skyscraper-less landscape of the Gunma outback. But, city-people as we are, it wasn't long before we had run out of places to go and things to see, and Tokyo beckoned us back with its glitzy lights (and its pretty girls which could be counted with more than just the fingers in one hand.)