KANAZAWA STOPOVER

Kanazawa is a one day stopover.  We stayed two nights and enjoyed ourselves, but one night is enough.  It is a fairly big city with a circular bus system located on the Sea of Japan, but doesn't have a coastal feel at all.  We could not see Russia or the water from our front porch.  It was very convenient to stay at the modern, clean Hotel Mystays on Hirooka Street, only a few blocks from the train station, and only $123 a night without meals.  We could stop each night at the train station and pick up yogurt and a pastry for breakfast since we had a refrigerator.

Kanazawa has the most beautiful zen garden, Kenroku-en, especially seen late in the day with the sun filtering through the trees and stone lanterns, particularly the classic Japanese photo of the unique two-legged lantern.  Spend a few hours there.  The Omicho Market is also a wonder and you can wander for a few hours observing some unusual things like crabs that are still moving, baby red octopus on a stick, fish jerky, giant whole squid and every size of shrimp.  The vibrant colors, the dazzling movement and constant banter of Japanese haggling was crazy!  The fish mongers happily let us take pictures of everything, probably wondering why silly Americans would want to take pictures of food.  We stopped and ate sushi at a joint inside where we sat at a bar that wrapped around the room right next to the sushi chef. We ordered from a picture and each piece of thick luscious sushi came out individually on little colored plates, each suggesting the price which was tabulated at the end.  No one spoke English and yen only!

The second day we visited the restored samarai houses and gardens which was very interesting, showing how samarai warriors lived hundreds of years ago.  We saw the geisha/Chaya entertainment district which is nothing at night and not much during the day after seeing Kyoto.  We also went to the ninja museum, Ninja-dera, which has nothing to do with ninjas, but was a house built during the Edo period for defense of the ruling family.  Reservations are required (go to the information booth at the train station, where you can also buy a one day pass for the buses which you will need unless you want to do a lot of walking).  The $10 tour is in Japanese, with an English guidebook, and the house is filled with hidden stairs, trap doors, hidden rooms, secret passages and an underground tunnel to the castle...very interesting and worth a visit.  The neighborhood nearby with shiny black tiled roofs certainly unique to this region was filled with small shrines and was fun to explore on foot, but can be missed if you are short on time.  If vermillion is Kyoto's color, black and dark wood stained with soot is typical here.  Different and very pretty.

We found finding food in the evenings a challenge, so think about this before you go because we walked a lot before finding restaurants both nights.  Although we did find a wonderful udon noodle restaurant for lunch where the chef cooked the homemade noodles, fried the tempura, cracked the eggs and added the toppings right in front of us like a short order cook and that was fun to watch and delicious.  Curry udon anyone?

FYI we could not get bus reservations to go to Shirakawago from Kanazawa...both days were fully booked, so think about this if you plan to go to Takayama via Shirakawago.  We ended up going there by Shinkansan via Toyama and then by local train.  We visited Shirakawago from Takayama so read about our great day there.  It was a picturesque train ride as season change was just beginning...be sure to get your reserved tickets for both trains the night before to avoid early morning lines and risk the possibility of reserved seats being sold out.  And then 2 1/2 hours later, we arrived in wonderful Takayama!