An Adventure over to Kanazawa City

Greetings readers! My predictions have come true and I truly am horrible at keeping up with my blog, so I have a lot to catch y’all up on. I can’t believe that it has already been 3 months since I moved to Japan. It seems like just yesterday that I was nervously packing my bags for my biggest adventure yet. Life here in Japan continues to go well, and I am really enjoying my time here, but I am also excited to come home for Christmas in just under two months.

Anyways, let’s back track into September and talk about the awesome road trip I went on with some other ALT’s Kanazawa City in Ishikawa Prefecture. Thanks to a holiday on a Monday, we were able to take a long weekend to travel at the end of September, so we decided to adventure out of Nagano to a couple prefectures over.

Kanazawa City is about a four hour drive from Nagano, so we all decided to just drive together there instead of taking the train, which would have been more expensive and much longer. The views on the drive over were amazing. The mountains of Nagano are simply gorgeous and the rivers and streams that run through the valleys are such an amazing blue/green color. The only thing that sucked about the drive was all the tunnels we had to go through, especially the super bumpy one that made us feel like we were riding a horse.

We arrived in Kanazawa City in the early afternoon and checked into our hotel right away. It was a cool little capsule hotel, that felt a lot like the hostels I had stayed in across Europe, but with a cool Japanese twist. Each bed is its own little “capsule” where you are closed off from everyone else. It’s almost like a little pod, and everyone has a little tv, outlets, and a light. Mine was on the top, which was cool, but also a bit difficult to climb up to. The staff member was super nice, and the facilities were excellent. I would definitely stay there again, and would love to stay in another capsule hotel. Here are some pics:

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After checking in to our hotel, we decided to do a little bit of exploring downtown. We drove into the main part of the city and parked, then decided to wander around. There is a really nice park that connects to the castle, so we first took a look at some of the gardens, then roamed up to the castle to take a look at the outside. It was a pretty nifty castle. Japanese castles are really elegant looking, while also being defensible, so it’s pretty cool to see. After the castle we continued walking in the park and visited a small shrine. Shrines are everywhere in Japan, so any city you go to is going to have one. I brought my book for my goshuincho, so I added another stamp from that shrine.

After walking around for a bit more, we met up with another JET Program ALT that one of my companions knew. We went to an izakaya, which is basically a casual pub where you can get appetizers and drinks. The food was pretty darn yummy, so we definitely enjoyed that. Afterwards we stopped by an arcade (which seem to be rather popular here), and I played a quick round of Dance Dance Revolution with the new ALT we met. I hadn’t played that game in forever and I totally sucked, but it was still fun. We then rounded out the night by grabbing some drinks from 7/11 (which are everywhere here by the way) and relaxing at our hotel.

The next morning was our full day of adventuring. We got some grub at a local German bakery (though it wasn’t really German at all), then proceeded to the gardens by the castle. We didn’t explore this part of the park the day before because you have to pay and it was already getting later in the day. But Sunday morning was the perfect day to explore the gardens and they were very beautiful. It was definitely worth paying the 500 yen for (about $5).

Once we finished exploring the gardens, we headed over to the train station to meet up with another JET. Kanazawa Station is known for the large Torii Gate in front (in the photos above). It was pretty cool to see. Once we collected the new addition to our group, we went to the large fish market. I did not particularly care for this part of the trip because 1. I hate fish 2. I hate the smell of fish 3. I hate looking at dead sea creatures. Gross. Luckily, our next stop after grabbing some food there (luckily I found some non-seafood options) was a local sweets festival, where I got a super delicious tiramisu pie. So yummy.

After the festival my friends and I parted ways briefly. I went to mass at a local parish right by the castle area that fortuitously had an English mass that weekend. The rest went off to an onsen. Once I was done with mass I met up with them again and we went to a nice geisha district, which was very cool. Check out the photos below.

After the geisha district we went in search of food and found a delicious curry restaurant. I seriously love the curry here. It’s different from Indian curry, but just as heavenly. Once we finished our food, we decided it was karaoke time. Karaoke is seriously so much fun here. They have special places just for karaoke where you get your own room to just have a blast. It was so much fun, and the perfect way to round out a great day in Kanazawa.

Our last day in Kanazawa was pretty relaxed. We didn’t do as much walking around that day, aside from walking to see some old samurai houses. After that, we were off to see the Sea of Japan. Unfortunately, a typhoon was passing by Japan at that time, so it was crazy windy. The water was super choppy and the wind blew sand right into our faces. I felt like I had been scoured by sand paper, but it was still cool to see the ocean. I was definitely shaking sand out of my clothes and hair for the rest of the day.

We rounded out our trip to Kanazawa with a trip to Costco. So many American food options were there; heaven on earth in other words. We stocked up on some essentials, such as cheese, bagels, and popcorn, and savored the delicious pizza at the food counter. It was nice to get a little taste of home before heading back to our Japanese home in Nagano.

Overall, it was a pretty nice trip. It was really relaxed and we had a lot of fun. Kanazawa is a pretty cool city that I would definitely visit again. Now it’s time for me to head off to bed here on the other side of the world, so I hope you, my dear few readers, enjoyed this post. Stay tuned for more! I’ll try to get caught up on my blog within the next week!