Back to Japan for the 11th time - October and November 2024 - Page 5

One last photo in Nagoya, the spiral building.

This is the Shirasagi limited express train. It looks a lot like the N'EX train that goes from Narita airport. It does not go very fast, but the line is probably not up to it anyway. I have ridden on the line it goes on before between Gifu and Mount Ibuki, which is still closed due to a landslide. I tried to climb it again last year but could not due to the same landslide.

Inside the limited express, which was busier than the Shinkansen, but I still got an empty seat next to me.

Here is the view from Tsuruga station. I had about 30 minutes between trains and intended to go and walk around outside the station, so I exited on one side where there was very little to see, and there was no way to get back to the other side without reentering the station, which required me to validate my ticket for the next leg of my journey, thus meaning I was now trapped in the station.

Here is my bullet train to Kanazawa. Painted in the blue and gold colours like many of them are.

As mentioned above, I got a whole carriage to myself. That is my bag on the rack. Is this a brand new train? It looks old fashioned on the inside.

After arriving in Kanazawa I went to a nearby Anderson bakery for lunch, and made the guy behind me in the line furious because I got the last available table. I am fairly certain he was saying unkind things about me to the cashier.

And now for my hotel. The bed is huge, the room is quite large, why is there a fold up desk there? And what is that sink doing there? There is no actual desk to sit at, weird. This is not the same as the picture on the booking site, I always check for a work desk. So now I am sitting on the end of the bed using the fold up desk, but now for the sink mystery....

The toilet is standalone, and the sink is in the bed/lounge area.

And then the shower / full size bath is its own room. The shower has nozzles going in every direction, but floods the entire room, and also comes with some sort of chair like they tortured Daniel Crags testicles with in one of the bond movies. I am kind of frightened to take a shower.
Oh, and the hotel name is Hotel Forza. About $100 AUD per night.

Before wandering the streets of Katamachi I decided to explore a shrine up a hill in the dark. It was pretty good too. Also it was cold, I probably should have had my jacket on, only 9 degrees celsius. I wish the world would settle on one measure of temperature so I don't have to be confused about celsius / centigrade and then type it so that people do not think I mean failheit.

Here is the actual shrine, Oyama shrine to be precise.

Behind the shrine is a nice bridge across to the castle ruins park. I will probably go there on Saturday.

Exiting the shrine area and it was time for one last shot of darkness.

From the darkness to light pollution.

The main area of Katamachi is much as I remembered it.

However here are a few new stores, I think they were building sites last time.

The bridge was celebrating it's 100th birthday.

I remembered the back alleyways, there are some more alleyway-ish than this, further exploration required.

I headed into big boss guitar store, which is normally not something I bother to photograph, but those 2 black headless guitars are Schecters, and I never saw a headless Schecter before, so now I need to investigate. Also the headless white strandberg on the ground front centre at accidental kicking height is about $4280, so don't kick it.

And for dinner, the unhealthiest dinner of all! Katsu curry. It came from a funky diner that gets a great score on google maps, and it was really nice, but deep fried chicken on top of curry on top of rice is probably 3 days of calories!
Hopefully no bears tomorrow.

It is not often that photo of the day on a hiking day has nothing to do with the hike, but today is that day. Here is Kanazawa station with great light.

The view towards Hodatsusan from Menden station. It looks tiny from here. It is about 3km to the start of the trail from the station, I include those km in the stats as I figure most people that read this are going from the station and not driving. Note that the station is literally in farm land.

Here is the start of the trail. Note the public toilets, vending machine, and big parking area. Yamap suggests these are all recent additions, you will see why soon.

The start of the hike has the normal bear sign. These are everywhere. These are not the same as the recent bear sighting signs, which will be temporary and have a date on them.

The trail was very trail like immediately, no driveways / logging roads today... until the top.

Great trail but no real autumn still, even here on the colder side of Japan.

Now to explain the title for today, slow moving bear shield. I had a hiker in front and a group of 3 behind me. They were very slow. Ordinarily I would bound past. Today I decided to adjust my pace to stay in between them for probably 2/3 of the way up. At that stage I saw a couple of guys coming back down, and neither of them had bear bites, so I decided to drop my slow moving shield.

Bear signs everywhere.

There is the view to the top. Not very high at all today.

The trail flattened out near the top and became a bit autmumn-y but I am yet to experience the hypnotic state of leaf colour delirium on this trip.

Very near the top you can get off the path and go up the driveway to the weather station / tv broadcasting antennas. I chose not to, it seems most people do as the path up until this point was very well maintained but from here on became very overgrown. It was only for a few hundred metres.

And here is the top. With a bear sign.

There is a shrine at the top, and not much view down to the coast.

But there was a very good view to the distant central alps. What looks like cloud on the horizon there is actually big mountains. I have climbed the biggest of them previously, Tateyama. You can see the peaks now have a bit of snow.

The driveway down from the summit was actually very nicely yellowed. There were a few people around this area.

There was also a lot of infrastructure littering the summit area.

A few hindered metres down the mountain and there is a new area of development, including this lookout.

View from the lookout down to the sea. Kanazawa is off to the left.

This is why there are toilets and a vending machine at the bottom. It is brand new, and you can drive up here too. This is not a shop or anything, just a rest area that is free and unattended. Today I had it to myself. A lot of people hike up here on weekends from where I started from. For a reason I do not know the structure is called the Ryugu castle.

Inside is all fresh timber, it had a pleasing odour, no hint of urine. Also a vending machine.

Here is the fresh wooded view from the top of Ryugu castle. Now to go down a different way.

First I went down a forest staircase to this lake area. I have seen some stunning autumn pictures online, not today. The lake appears to be called, Oike.

The sun angle made Oike look a bit more appealing from the other end.

On the way down I passed 3 bear traps. No bears inside.

The way down crossed a logging road a few times, which provided some good views such as this.

Last view on the way down. You can see the antennas on the summit in the centre of this shot.

And then it was time to fast walk / jog the 3km back to the station, the train after the one I got does not come for 90 minutes. I made it with 5 minutes to spare. This is Mendan station, it is unattended, and as mentioned above at length, no IC card scanner, scan as you board the train.

This is the Omicho market. Mostly closed at night of course, but there are a few raw fish restaurants inside, mostly with lines of people waiting to get in.

Underneath the main station is... the main station underground square. Really it is called that. Not much goes on down here. I could not even tell what the exhibition was for as the security guard was looking at me threateningly. There was also a free to play grand piano and the girl playing it was ridiculously good.

You saw the gate to the station this morning, here it is again at night. Now in all its blueness.

The escalators coming up from the underground main station square have the very dangerous flat bit in the middle where the steps go flat. The temptation is walk along the flat bit, but it is hard to judge when they will re-stepify, which will ultimately result in your untimely doom.

Behind the station, not much was going on. Along this street there were some temporary tents set up so I was about to go over and investigate when I saw that they are sponsored by bacardi, so at that point I knew I was not interested. That's how sponsorship works!

Dinner option number 1. I need some more hormones.

I decided to delay my hormone treatment and head up to the 6th floor of a department store instead. And they had at least 20 restaurants to choose from. Many had lines. I wanted okonomiyaki, but the line was huge. My choices came down to omurice or pasta.

Having already had omurice, I chose pasta. I chose wrong. What I got looked nothing like the picture. The picture was thinner pasta, a lot more mushrooms, no visible cream, and a grilled hamburg steak on top with grill lines. What I got was a boiled meatball floating in a heap of cream with a few strands of big thick pasta and almost no mushrooms. It tasted fine, but I left a sea of cream.
Now I will look up what time the garden opens and go to bed so that it can be morning as soon as possible and I can go to the amazing famous garden full of tourists.

Last time I was here the trees on this street all had bright red leaves. This time, not so much.

That is the only person in front of me to get into the garden. I timed it for 8am perfectly, just as the gate was unlocked. There are a few gates but for the first hour or so I got many photos with no other people, and the early (or late) sunlight is the best light.

Now it is time for a lot of mossy photos into the sun.

Moss, trees, shadows.

The trees are already being tied up for winter. They should delay it a couple more weeks. Last time I was here there was an army of men on ladders doing stuff.

The garden is elevated, one of the features that apparently makes it one of only 3 'perfect' gardens in all of Japan. Really, that is it's claim. Anyway, the view is pretty good.

This is the main view spot. Probably better at dusk rather than dawn.

Turning towards the sun looks better. No other people in my shots.

More trees.

More moss.

The shots are boring when the sun is at my back.

Neonriffic.

I will stop soon.

But not yet.

Famous lantern. Actually most of the actual trees have some kind of origin story.

The lesser pond was still completely in shadow, so I did not bother with many photos of it.

Still no people.

Is this the last one?

It was the last one. OK, I exited a different way to go get a coffee before the castle ruins. Here is the wall.

The sun was still low even when I got back to the castle. You cannot enter this area. And now that I think of it, there are many interesting parts within the garden you cannot enter either, kind of frustrating as all the elevated mounds were off limits even though there were paths over them.

Behold, the site of an upcoming ancient historic castle.

Not a castle, a storeroom. Also not sure if new or old.

I think the wall is old.

The thing I most remembered from last time is this lawn. Seriously.

I exited via the non preferred route and found myself in more lawned areas with more ponds.

Back near my hotel now, and it is time to check out the Omicho market, at peak capacity. A lot of different crabs. Too crowded, I could not wait to leave.

And then after successfully washing all my clothes, I found the street behind my hotel is a long traditional shopping street, complete with stalls setup to extract money from unwanted tourists that the entire town relies on for it's survival.

Last pic of the day is the shrine at the centre of the shopping street. You could buy twisted potato on a stick from here. They set up tables for you to sit and eat it, because in Japan foods designed to be eaten while walking must never be eaten while walking. So really then, what is the appeal of things like twisted potato on a stick? Might as well eat something on a plate.

This is a welcome gate. But what was I being welcomed to?

Probably the best photo of the evening. This is like what I remember, but just one small bit.

This area is what I was mentioning above, all the signs are similar, it does not appear to have developed organically over 100 years.

Here is the local shrine for people planning to tie one on.

One last shot of the back alleyways. These were taken before 6pm, hence no people yet.

On the hunt for my dinner and a lot of places have big lines. Although it is not shown here, this line goes around the block and is probably 100 people long. Surely that is many hours wait? I have no idea what kind of food is inside.

Eventually I headed back to the underground restaurant area near my hotel, and some places were closing at 7, restaurants! So my choices were limited and I ended up having this thing that they called special hashimoto rice beef. Which was basically omurice with a teriyaki rather than curry glaze with a small steak on top. I opted to get the token gesture salad. It was actually pretty good, much nicer than last nights pasta.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, but nothing too long, if I don't get lost.