Niigata

Some online commentary suggested there was nothing to do in Niigata; nothing, full stop.  With that in mind, a day trip over to Sado Island was considered, to the extent of picking places to see on the island, looking at ferry times and comparing car rental options.  All that started to look a bit hectic and expensive for a few hours on the island.  In retrospect, an overnighter on Sado would be the best option.

In the end it was the 6am departure that was the deciding factor.  The aim of the game in taking a day off the bike is to rest and take a break from needing to be up and packing panniers and being away by a certain time.  Being out of bed before 5am seemed like turning that dial up, not down.

Eat

After successfully navigating the bus system to deposit us at Niigata station,  we headed west looking for some miso ice cream at the Minemura Miso Factory.  The ice cream was surprisingly nice and lots of miso products, amazake, crackers, nut snacks were on offer.  Managed to secure snacks for the afternoon's planned sumo viewing.

We searched out the local backstreets for Meshiyanagamise to grab an early lunch. Around the side of a standard looking house there was an 'open' flag but opening the slider revealed your average looking house entry, not a restaurant.  Eventually our host appeared and ushered us into a 12 seat dining room.  The menu is really just a daily set meal with a few other token options.  Everyone we saw ordered the daily set menu.  Today's was rice with a ginger pork stir fry accompanied by miso soup, pickled vegetables, a number of small salad sides, and an egg drop crab soup.  The set also included coffee and a small dessert for ¥800.

See and Do

Managed to get a bit of a lie in before heading out to the Niigata City Art Museum. We'd seen an exhibition for the "I Dream Cats Could Be Us" exhibition advertised at the Nizayama Forest museum back at Toyama.  The admission for that was a bit steep so we settled on just taking in the collection exhibition and the sculpture park.

A stroll along the covered shopping street (shotengai) of Furumachi was disappointing. Although we did snag a tasty morning treat from a sweets shop.  We have so many fond memories of hours spent exploring shotengai in cities all across Japan.  They were always an interesting mix of small stores selling, well pretty much everything.  This trip, everywhere we went the shotengai was effectively dead or at best, barely hanging on.  Meanwhile,  I don't think we ever cycled more than 5kms without seeing a sign for an AEON mall/town/whatever.  I'm guessing those two things are not unrelated.  

We  booked into a 2pm brewery tour at Imayotsukasa sake brewery.  Our English language guide was advertised as knowledgeable and lived up to his billing.  The road in front of the brewery was actually a river when they were first established.  Interesting half hour tour, which stretched to more like 45 with all my inane questions, followed by a small included sampling of a couple of sake and amazake.  Well worth the price of admission.  Even Beloved who was skeptical enjoyed the experience I believe.  The sake gatcha won us a bottle of sake which made up the balance of sumo watching essentials.

Even with a misstep on the loop bus back to Furumachi, we were able to catch the last couple of hours of sumo and enjoy the spoils of our urban gathering.