Weather: overcast (and atmospheric!) with afternoon patches of rain 17°C, high 20°C
Accommodation: Hotel Pacific Kanazawa.
Eskil woke up at 7 am – a sleep in! We were dressed and walked to the train station before 8 am. The day before we’d been on a crowded bus as we assumed it was easier, but it was a lovely, quick walk to the train station along the main road with lots of public art.
I’m a bit in love with the Kanazawa train station.
We had breakfast at the Starbucks, which was right next to our bus stop. The bus departed at 8:40. The bus took us up into the mountains, with lots of curves and some loooong tunnels, like the Hida Tunnel that is 10.7 kilometres long! It was raining, but the clouds clinging to the mountain and yellow rice fields were stunning. On the flatter land near the see we passed lots of farms with multiple buildings in the middle of rice fields; in the mountains there could only be small plots of rice around houses – and the houses all had steep roofs so that in winter the snow would fall off.
At Shirakawa-go we headed into the museum part first. These were lots traditionally built gasshō-zukuri buildings collected from around the prefecture, some of them several hundred years old. It was really beautiful to walk around, visit the houses, read the information – and for the most part we had the whole area alone! Amazing.
The time absolutely flew, and we were all getting hungry. Near the entrance to the museum portion of Shirakawa there is a soba restaurant, so we decide to give that a try. Our friend Miranda had asked us if we’d tried cold soba with fresh wasabi and dipping sauce, and although it didn’t sound that exciting we know she has great taste, so this seemed the perfect opportunity to try it out. It was! This restaurant specialised in hand made soba noodles, and they were stunning – so different from the dried soba that we get in Australia. And with a simple dipping sauce and freshly grated wasabi – YUM. We shared one Zaru Soba and one Hida Beef Shigure Soba.
We then crossed the Shō River and went into the lived in part of the village. There were a lot of tourists in this half of the village, and not all on their best behaviour. For example, we saw a man jump up so he could take some straw from one of the thatched roofs. Well! However I was really excited to be able to photograph rice close up after seeing so many beautiful rice fields.
We had spent so much time exploring the museum area that it would have been a push to walk up to the famous look-out, so we didn’t. (I get anxious about getting buses on time.) It was interesting to walk around and see the traditional buildings being lived in by modern Japanese. The houses and setting really can’t be ruined, even by herds of tourists.
14:40, when we needed to board the bus, came too soon! We had less than an hour’s trip to Takayama, then less than an hour to explore and to get back in time for our 16:30 bus for Kanazawa! It wasn’t much time at all to see Takayama – we just quickly walked to the river, crossed a bridge, walked a block or two down, crossed another bridge, and walked back to the bus and train terminal – but to be honest I prefer less time in Takayama so that we had more time in Shirakawa-go. Not that Takayama wasn’t good – it’s just that Shirakawa-go was so amazing.
The bus departed on time at 16:30, picked up even more people at Shirakawa-go, and was quite full for the trip back to Kanazawa. We arrived back at Kanazawa at 18:45, made use of the facilities at the train station, then walked back to our neighbourhood.
As we were a bit tired to explore and dinner the night before had been good, we went back to Sukiya for dinner. Afterwards we bought beer at 7-11 and made our way ‘home’. While we’d been gone, housekeeping had made up our beds and tucked Monkey George in; so cute! We were so tired we decided to forgo showers until the next day, and Eskil kept trying to get into bed with us. He’s really grown accustomed to being able to sleep with us on futons on the floor!
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2015/09/25/.