A Bus Tour of Beef and Flowers

What?
Ohmi beef (近江牛) might not be as famous as Kobe beef (神戸牛), but it still ranks up there as succulent Japanese meat. Apparently it is the oldest Japanese beef brand with a history of more than 400 years. Nabano no Sato (なばなの里) is a flower park on the Nagashima Resort Island that also includes Nagashima Spa Land (長島スパーランド), a huge amusement park. The flower park is located around a man-made lake and includes an impressive begonia area, but is most famous for its winter illumination.
Where?
Ohmi beef comes from Shiga Prefecture (滋賀県), but restaurants serving the dish can be found all over Japan. Nabano no Sato is located in Mie Prefecture (三重県). We took a tour bus, but the easiest way apart from that is to take a bus for Nagashima Onsen (長島温泉) from Nagoya’s Meitetsu Bus Center. It takes a little over half an hour.
URL
Mie - Once in a Lifetime Japan Guide Outline

There are various ways of travelling. Usually I prefer to go out on my own, making use of the fantastic network of public transport in Japan. But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to other forms of travel. Some place can only be reached by car, and sometimes I don’t go out on my own. In the latter case I prefer either my companion to make the plans, or we just take a tour bus so we can’t disagree about schedules and such! Regular readers of this blog know that I like such a bus tour from time to time.

This time, we participated in a bus tour that first took us to an Ohmi beef teppanyaki restaurant in Sekigahara. Ohmi beef forms together with Kobe beef and Matsusaka beef the top tier of Japan ‘s meat brands.
It was delicious, especially the miso/meat/penne soup. Some people complained the volume wasn’t enough, but for us it was just fine. Maybe I would have enjoyed it if we got an extra 15-20 minutes for digestion/drinks. But on every bus tour in Japan, there has to be ample time for souvenir shopping!

Right next to the restaurant was a theme park called Sekigahara Warland. It depicts the battle of Sekigahara with life-sized dolls… but honestly, from the outside it looked more pathetic than anything else and not worth the money. However I cannot be 100% certain about this as we did not enter.

Juicy and delicious.

Nabano no Sato is in the first place a flower park.

The whole park is centered around a lake and this tower.

The begonia garden.

But the food nor the crummy theme park were the main attraction! After lunner (lunch/dinner) we continued to a place called Nabana no Sato, a flower garden mainly famous for its illumination. This illumination can only be seen in the colder months and it’s being advertised pretty aggressively in cities like Osaka.
As expected, there was a huge crowd but it was actually quite easy to ignore that. The park was pretty and strolling through it was easy. Especially the begonia garden was very impressive and void of people, probably because it required an extra fee. But it was well worth it.
The only spot that was packed was in the tunnel of light when it just opened. But even here, 30 minutes of patience would leave a much better impression. Eventually we wanted to enjoy the illumination show a little longer, or step into the floating platform shaped like Mount Fuji, however the predicted rain finally decided to come down. That was the sign for us to go back to the bus and take a well deserved nap on our way back to Osaka.

Next to Nabano-no-Sato is Nagashima Spa Land, a huge amusement park divided in a water-fun area with onsen water and a traditional theme park with mind boggling coasters. Around 10 years ago I visited this amusement park, and given the amount of times that I peed my pants, I can assure the more adventurous people that it is a good park!