Arriving to Niigata came with a real lot of excitement: we had finally made it to the other side of Japan, crossed the Japanese alps and we were damn ready to enjoy the city for a couple of rest days. Too bad, thought, that all of that enthusiasm hit a brick wall straight away: long story short, there’s nothing to do in Niigata. NOTHING at all. 

We reached the centre of the city around sunset and we went through our usual we-made-it-back-to-civilization routine : hot springs, coin laundry, food and looking for a place to pitch the tent. It was pissing rain, it was late, it’s was dark. As in : real dark. So we just decided to completely rely on google maps and blindly followed a strangely curvy road until we found a square literally the size of our tend under a tree, and stopped there, completely disregarding the fact that there was a peacock in a cage, literally a few steps form us.