Tokyo-Kanazawa

We had to get up super early for our trip to Kanazawa, it takes about 4 hours and as it was on the other side of the island there were fewer train options. The purpose of this trip was to see the Sea of Japan and just chill out in a small town with lots of gardens and cultural things to do. Daragh got up to make sure we were on our way and we said a bleary eyed see ya later. On the way to the train station I thought I had a bit of a head rush, but no wonder as it was early and we skipped coffee and it was just after 7am. As we would read a day later in the paper this was actually a 6.1 on the Richter scale earthquake centered in Chiba, about 100km east of Tokyo in the direction we were headed. We were too sleepy to pick up on this and relate it to the fact one of our train connections was delayed, which seems to be as rare an occurence in Japan as a quake is in Hamilton.


Deciding to pack light as we weren't planning on shopping was a good idea, deciding to not bring jackets because it wasn't too cold out was not a great idea. We saw lots of snow on the train ride there and the highs were about 8 degrees Celsius with a wet, cold wind off the Sea. Sweaters and shirts were not enough, so this kept us walking quickly from the train station to our tradish Japanese inn.

We checked in to the Murataya Ryokan, which was as close to downtown as anything could be, I think. I assumed downtown was the several blocks on the main drag that had covered sidewalks, but I could have been wrong. Covered sidewalks were really appreciated in the cold and wet weather, thankfully we were able to borrow umbrellas from the inn.


Kanazawa has an area preserved as a samurai district, with wooden board houses, peaked tile roofs and narrow cobblestone streets, all just a block away from the main drag.

One thing we noticed about Kanzawa was that english signage and knowledge of the language seems to have disappeared, except for the ryokan. This made finding vegetarian food some difficult, but the inn lady gave us a map with an Indian curry resto marked on it, and that proved alright so we would be back there for a late lunch tomorrow. We wandered along the streets, comparing the cherry blossom lanterns here to those in Tokyo.



After a while we headed back to the inn for an awesome bath and even better sleep on the super comfortable futons that magically appeared in our rooms since we had headed out for dinner. It was fun dressing up in the provided pyjamas and robes, all needed as it was a bit chilly in the room.