Another day in Okayama! Same hotel breakfast as before, though some of the items were different. No potato salad and the fried chicken was prepared differently as well. Still tasty, though.

I took a separate picture of the view this time since it looked blurry yesterday.

Our friend Yumi wanted to take us to the place that originated Okayama’s demi katsu, tonkatsu in demiglace sauce.There was a line and I can see why. They had some of the best tonkatsu and the demiglace sauce matched it very well. Unlike the complaints I had in Hokuriku with their sauced tonkatsu, the sides were great as well.

Here’s a picture of the different sizes. Two half-size, one regular, and one jumbo.

Afterwards we went to get some coffee at one of my favorites.

Then we had some time to kill before dessert, so we went to Raffine to get 40 minute massages. Well worth the time.

We went to the Higashiyama district of Okayama city to get some pancakes that were cooked in front of us.

The pancakes came with white bean paste and salt and also some syrup if you wanted. I just ate them with the bean paste and a little salt. They were delicious. The pourover coffee was strong and was perfect with the pancakes.

My sister and I were on our own for dinner and we picked the Italian restaurant that had more customers. It was OK. This mini pizza was fine but mostly lacking in flavor. I forgot to take pictures of the pasta and really it looked better than it tasted, and it didn’t look exceptional. It was OK. I wouldn’t not go, but I’d definitely try the other Italian restaurant first before I came back to this one.

I’m staying at the same hotel in Okayama as I did in May, and got breakfast here as well. Not only is it tasty but there’s pretty nice view while you eat. And the coffee is as good as it was in May. Usually hotel coffee is like most Chinese restaurants in the US: weak and coffee colored.

We met our friend Yumi and our first stop was the Bon Bon bakery, where we went a couple of years ago. I think we could’ve been OK with just the hot dog at the bottom of the picture. The bread there is delicious but i’ts also very hard. Toothsome might be the proper term but it’s tough, tasty bread.

Then we spent a lot of time driving around looking for the Okayama Family Mart socks. I found Family Mart special logo socks, a darker color combo I haven’t seen before, and Coca-Cola socks so I bought those but I’ve struck out completely trying to find any of the limited 47 prefecture socks.

But we did go get gelato.

For dinner we met Yumi’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew for dinner at Tommy’s Shokudo. Here’s how it started, with the Otoshi (also known as the Japanese table charge).

I only took pictures of about a third of our plates. Big amongst the items I didn’t photograph is the pizza there, which was excellent. But here’s our starter Caesar salad with lots of bacon.

The potatoes, missing zucchini (there was some), and huge pieces of pork belly with lemon.

The steamed veggies in a Dutch oven. I saw them crisp it up in the oven before they threw in some water to steam it.

The karaage chicken with tartar sauce.

Ooh, and another good one. Crisped up potatoes with cheese.

There were a lot more plates. Smoked dried beef (not really that dried). Smoked takuan with cheese and something else tasty. Roast beef slices with fried garlic. Mentaiko and cheese pizza. Fried octopus. I’m missing several others but it was great.

I guess in the wintertime they have the stove really going and you can cook S’mores. If you didn’t already notice there’s a camping theme and the chairs were all Snow Peak directors chairs, the plates were Snow Peak Sierra cups, and the lighting was lanterns.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to mention today.

I hope no one is expecting these to come out on a schedule because I keep forgetting to do them before I go to bed like I did on my past trips.

Thank goodness I slept much better. Today I traveled to Okayama to meet my sister. Got tickets for the Shinkansen from Osaka to Okayama online and had it all planned out, starting with breakfast at Tully’s. On my last trip I had a salmon cheese toast somewhere (Doutor?) but Tully’s had chicken cheese toast. It was pretty good.

Now that I know I can buy online and get the tickets at the machine, that’s what I did. And the trip to Shin-Osaka was not nearly as crowded as I remember. Shin-Osaka itself was a zoo. And the trip to Okayama is only about an hour or an hour and a half so it was pretty easy.

I had all afternoon to myself so I just wandered around the station area. The construction in the basement was finished but not all of the stores had returned. I thought about trying to find some hole-in-the-wall like the JapanEats guy does but I didn’t find anything. I went back to the Aeon Mall and took my time deciding what to eat but I saw a bonito restaurant at the Kitte building and so I had that on my mind. I think I overdid it on the bonito but it was tasty.

I had a “second cup discount” from my morning Tully’s so I went back and got some dessert (like I needed to eat any more).

I wandered around until my hotel room was available at 3pm. And I love being in the slightly-less-busy places like Okayama because I was able to go to Bic Camera and play with the new iPhone Duo! It’s cool, but not really for me.

Oh, and no one would give me a bus schedule. The one online was down (PHP issues I’m sure), and no one would give me a paper copy. They told me I could take a picture of it. Sheesh.

I hung out in the room for a while before I decided to get tickets for Monday when we’re supposed to visit my cousin in Yamaguchi Prefecture. I say “supposed to” because a typhoon is hitting that day and there’s a chance that trains will be stopped. The ticketing area was a shitshow as it often is and when I got a number from the machine it told me there were 88 people ahead of me.

Then it was time to head for the bus to the airport. Okayama has a small airport but it was busy. Unlike the places I’ve flown into lately, like Kagoshima and Nagasaki, the planes looked full and the one coffee shop was packed! I ended up getting a half-price rice ball and a beef croquette from Family Mart. I was still hungry so I also got a melon pan. No pictures.

The bus to the airport was so full that they had to add a second bus. The bus from the airport was so full that we had to sit towards the back and it was bumpy back there. When we got back to Okayama Station I had to get more food at 7Eleven. It wasn’t that bad.

And that’s it for the day.

Just like the trip in the spring, I didn’t sleep that well on the second night. I think it got better after that so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I messaged my old coworker yesterday and he was free today. He moved from Osaka down to Wakayama, about an hour away by express train. It’s an hour and a half by regular train and that costs a lot less but it’s nice to have a reserved seat on a faster train. I had to take the green car on the way back because that’s the only thing that the ticket machine offered. Even then it was only $25. The local train only costs about $6.50.

I started the day at Tully’s. I’m not sure why I like the breakfast hot dog so much but it’s great.

Yesterday I spent close to an hour and TEN WHOLE YEN printing out a sheet that I was supposed to show the conductor and then I found out I can just go to a ticket machine and stick in the credit card I used and it print out a ticket! I should be able to use an app but it looks like the JR West app is limited to the Japanese App Store. Phooey. And the conductor knows what seats should be filled and hardly ever asks to see the reserved seat ticket (I’m not going to chance it.)

My buddy took me up the mountain to see the susuki grass. It’s supposed to look the best this time of year. It’s blooming or whatever it is that grasses do. My dad was the horticulturist, not me.

Here’s some awful pictures of me up on the mountain. The pictures aren’t awful, but I must be getting vain because I think I look old. It’s actually because I am old.

We also had curry udon. They were out of rice when we got there a lot of the selections on the ticket machine were sold out. When we finished eating I noticed they’d cooked more rice and the sold out items were available again. I shouldn’t complain because the curry udon was some of the best I’ve had. I took a picture but the phone appears to have eaten it. I’ll tell you now it looked like curry udon.

We drove about an hour to a lookout point which looked close from the mountain but definitely wasn’t. It’s near my buddy’s fishing spot and it’s where the samurai would watch the foreign ships approaching Osaka’s harbor. If nothing else, it was pretty.

And another picture of an old guy. There was a nice Japanese garden and some people were fishing. The waves were choppy and they said they were having no luck at all.

My buddy had to go to the dentist at 5 so we went for an early dinner. Unfortunately a lot of restaurants in Japan close from 3pm to 5pm to prep for dinner. He found one on Google that was supposed to be open but once again Google was wrong. He found a place near the lacquerware district in Kainan just south of Wakayama City. I had the chicken and Shiso spring rolls. It was rather tasty.

The set also came with drink and a dessert. I picked Calpis (also known as Calpico in the US) and zenzai.

After dinner my buddy dropped me off at the Kainan train station and I just missed the 4:37pm express train. They come once per hour so I wasn’t completely out of luck. As I said earlier, I couldn’t really figure out the ticket machine and had to get a seat in the more expensive green car where I sat in front of a couple of guys who didn’t shut up the whole time back. Oh well.

And that’s about it. Tomorrow morning I have to pack up and head to Okayama Station. Then I get to figure out how to get to the airport where I’m going to meet my sister. The web site with the bus schedules is down. With the big PHP security thing going on, a lot of Japanese web sites were taken down for updates. I’m hoping I updated this site correctly (which was another reason it took me so long to get out of the room in the morning).

I passed out and slept all night. I had so many emails that I didn’t finish going through them all. Why am I reading all the NYT emails?

Anyway, I got out of my room and wanted to spend time at the “new” Kitte Osaka building. It’s been here for at couple of years and I just haven’t made it over there. It’s in the west end of Umeda, near the hotel my mom liked but recently we’ve been staying in the northern part of Umeda. I’m staying at the west end right now, in the hotel next door to my mom’s old favorite old hotel, and they’re both close to Kitte Osaka. Even better: this hotel is connected to the underground so I never saw the rain.

The Kitte building wasn’t quite open when I first went, but they did have a few restaurants open for breakfast. I went to a place called Absinthe. The staff was minimal and it wasn’t until I bothered the staff three times that I realized you could (should?) order with a QR code.

I thought I forgot my pill case and a case for my glasses, but it turns out I forgot the pill case and my deodorant.  Stores don’t open until 10 or 11am so I went across Umeda to the 24-hour Don Quixote because they sell western stuff and basicallly a little of everything. Japanese people don’t use much deodorant and they had a very small selection. Then it was off to buy a pill case and Muji didn’t have what I needed so it was time for the ¥100 store (plus tax). That 69 cents. I wandered around a bit more and started getting a headache. It also ended up being over 87°F and very humid!

I went back to the Kitte building for lunch and the headache wasn’t helping me any. I got some comfort food, omurice and Napolitan (ketchup) spaghetti. I also had some Ringl (ibuprofen). No picture of the coffee I had at the end.

I wandered around the five floors of the Kitte building and found lots of places to eat as well as “antenna shops” for prefectures around Japan.

I tried to go back to the room but it wasn’t ready. Luckily the Ringl started to kick in and I finally felt good enough to keep wandering. I went to a bunch of shops where I wasn’t planning on buying anything. There’s a new Apple store in Grand Front, and the Grand Seiko store turned into a Seiko store. I looked for a new iPhone case but they didn’t have anything for the iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro.

I wasn’t hungry but I stopped mid-afternoon for a snack at Toki.

I finally got back to my room around 4pm and sat for a bit before I went back to the Kitte building for dinner. I let a coin flip decide and I ended up getting Niigata tare katsu. I think it was better than the tare katsu I got in Niigata. It was cheap, too.

I made arrangements to see my buddy Moriwaki on Thursday and bought a ticket online. The English version of the web page said I had to print out the reservation so it took me several trips to the convenience store to get that done. And it’s two or three blocks away. Turns out my USB stick was formatted for the Mac, and the print station didn’t recognize it. I have to figure out how to do this without a printer.

Anyway, just stayed around the station and I got in 20,058 steps according to my phone. And I still have 70+ emails.

The first day is the hardest day because it’s so much travel. It’s about 10:42pm here and I’m finally in the hotel, eating dinner from the convenience store. It’s almost 7am in Portland and I got up yesterday at 4am.

My flight was delayed out of Seattle by almost 2 hours and we had quite a lot of turbulence as we neared Japan. We didn’t even get the second meal (breakfast) on our 11-hour flight. There seemed to be better movies compared to my May trip so I watched Toy Story 5 (which did make my cry), Spy Game (an old Robert Redford movie), Spiderman: No Way Home, Project Hail Mary, and most of Man on Fire (the old Denzel Washington movie).

I also missed my connecting flight to Osaka but that’s not that big a deal because there are lots of flights between Osaka and Tokyo. I was amazed at how many people seemed to be getting on because the plane looked small when i saw it out the window. When I got on it just kept going and going and I realized it was a Boeing 777.

My hotel is a bit inconvenient and I found out that the nearest convenience store is a few blocks away. I’ll finish my 7Eleven dinner and then it’s finally time for some sleep.

Got up a little early to hit the onsen again and then got breakfast from the buffet. It was quite good. In the upper left was scrambled eggs and ketchup rice. My friend’s daughter told us that it’s deconstructed omurice. I skipped the curry because everything else was quite a lot.

Since we were back in the sticks, I took a diesel train, transferred to an electric train, then transferred to the shinkansen which took me to Tokyo station. I was hoping to take a bus to the airport but since it’s Golden Week the roads are packed and they recommended the monorail. So i took the Yamanote line train to the Tokyo Monorail and then the Monorail to Haneda Airport. I was expecting the trains to be a mess but they were fine.

I wasn’t really that hungry at Haneda airport so I got a couple snacks at the Delta lounge. (I went to the Centurion Lounge but it was smaller and much, much darker.) This is a special dessert made for Children’s Day. I guess there’s supposed to be a koi in there (not a real one).

Then it was time to get on the plane from HND to SEA.

The food on the plane wasn’t bad, and I watched Mercy (pretty bad), the rest of No Other Choice (which turned into a black comedy after all), Shutter Island, the rest of the available episodes of High Potential, and most of Point Break. Why didn’t anyone tell me how awful Point Break is?

Had a pretty uneventful wait in the Seattle Delta lounge (still not hungry and I had a mislabeled Coke – I think it was Diet) and the quick flight down to Portland. 32 ½ hours after getting up, I was back in my own bed. The woman sitting next to me on the plane said she missed her flight the night before and spent the night in the airport. She took much longer getting home than I did!

And that’s it for my trip!

I stayed at a hotel that I was told was “okay”. It’s usually only about $50 US per night but for Golden Week it was closer to $130. The rooms were tiny, the walls were on the thin side, and the big bath in the basement wasn’t that big. But it was fine. The breakfast was pretty good.

There was an automatic pancake maker. Wave your hand over the switch and two small pancakes came out. The pancakes were pretty good.

After that I just mainly put on my white-ish shirt, my new black Uniqlo pants, and what I thought were black socks from FamilyMart that turned out to be dark blue. Then I went to the memorial service for the elder Dr. Kawasaki (the dad of the other two Drs Kawasaki) and I was the only non-family-member there. I was also surprised that the one-year memorial is where they place the cremains into the headstone.

After that we went to an onsen. This wasn’t everything. We still had more fish dishes and the silver lid is hiding a very tasty pork dish.

Then we took a dip in the onsen which was very sulphury and then just hung out in the lobby eating snacks and drinking a bit from the free drink bar. It was a a lot of fun and quite relaxing.

Not many pictures today. I packed and got a morning set at Doutor, where I should’ve gone the past two days.

Then we drove to the JA Store to look for some gummy candies my sister wanted. Last night we checked the intarwebs and Google said we can get them anywhere but we found them nowhere else. I think there’s one from every prefecture (there’s 47 prefectures) but they only had six so I bought one of each one they had.

Then we went to eat a ton of sushi. The first branch we went to had at least 100 people in line 30 minutes before opening. We went to another branch in the local shopping center and we only had to wait a half hour. They were quick serving the sushi so we were done in a half hour. And we ate a lot.

After that we drove to the eldest Kawasaki sibling’s house in Tsubame-Sanjo. Then it was on to Niigata city. I guess I ate a tasty soft ice cream cone at a rest area but I never took a picture. Oh well.

Anyway, I’m on my own in Niigata for a bit but it’s raining. On the recommendation of the elder Dr. Kawasaki I got tare katsu at Tonkatsu Tarou at the station. It was another thin (but not that thin) katsu but with tare rather than Worcestershire sauce like I had in Fukui. It was pretty good but I think I like the sauce version better. I’ll eat either. The Tonkatsu Tarou store was kind of a mess, though. It was tiny and the cash register was out in the mall hallway. No one knew where to line up and I stood in front of the cash register for a long time before they told me to line up to the side and made a guy pre-pay for his family’s food. By the time they were ready to take my money, a line had formed in front of the cash register (I was to the side.)

I made it back to the hotel, borrowed a weird cordless iron and realized there’s a big bath in the basement that they didn’t tell me about when I checked in. I took a bath and ate a strawberry dessert I bought at the convenience store that’s connected to the hotel. It was the best combini dessert I had on the trip but I forgot to take a picture.

It’s late-ish. Time to hit the hay.

This was the day I was planning to head for Tokyo, but I’m hanging out with old family friends instead.

I started out looking for a morning set and was striking out. One place my sister and I went said on Instagram that they open at 7am but I guess they changed to 10am now. I ended up at Choco cro and had a small ham end egg thing. It was good and they even heated it up for me. This was my third cup of coffee since there’s a Nespresso machine in my fancy hotel room!

I had some time to kill since my friend was driving his EV minvan down from Niigata to Toyama. I went to a park that was surprisingly near the station. There’s a big walkway around the river and this is a pedestrian bridge in the park. You can go up both of the towers and get a good view of the area.

Here’s the view of the Northern Japan Alps and “the most beautiful Starbucks in the world” (someone may have stuffed the ballot box). But it is nice and the area is pretty.

I met with my friend around 10:40 and we went to his mom’s. We used to visit here all the time when we came to Japan with my mom. The three of us went out for ramen. I made even more mistakes. I got the chashu ramen with extra spring onions because the picture on the menu of the normal ramen seemed to have neither. But it had both! I didn’t need the extra onions nor did I need the extra pork. (This picture is sure to horrify my sister who hates all things onion.)

We had to go to a fast charger to charge my friend’s EV. They do have a small charger at his mom’s but it would take days to charge his car enough to drive back to Niigata. We also went to three different stores to look for some JA (the agricultural collective) gummy candies my sister wanted but we struck out. Two grocery stores didn’t have anything and the JA store closed at 4pm, shortly before we arrived.

We ended up buying too much food at the grocery store for the three of us but we ate most of it (like almost all of it.) It doesn’t show the five korokke that we also got.

Right now I am kind of mad because I’ve ordered the same pen twice from Amazon and it was canceled both times. Now it says the shipping will take so long that there’s no way I’m getting it. I think I can get it in the US for only a little more so I’ll give it a try there. Wish me luck.

Mistakes were made.

Kanazawa station doesn’t have many options for breakfast. I was counting on going to Tully’s and getting a breakfast hot dog but it turns out they don’t open until 10am. My train was at 9:07am. I just went to the 7Eleven and grabbed a coffee and a melon pan. My sister said, “I bet it wasn’t as good as the one in Juso.” Ha.

Oh, I downed the coffee while standing in line waiting for the train because the whole trip is only 18 minutes. I really didn’t need to rush. 18 minutes is plenty to enjoy a melon pan and coffee.

Arriving so early meant I could actually get a morning set in Toyama. I went to a litlle bakery hoping to get some toast. THEY WERE OUT OF TOAST. (Turns out they just weren’t doing the toast during Golden Week.) I got a cold hot dog and cold hash browns. I could’ve gone to Mickey D’s. I even asked two businessmen who both had McCafe coffees about how the coffee was at a Japanese Mickey D’s and they said it was good. The bakery coffee was not as good as the coffee I get at my local Mickey D’s in Portland

The weather forecast called for thunderstorms but I headed out anyway. Went to the Loft to ask about the pen I’m looking for. I already found one silver Uniball Zento Signature for my sister but I kind of want the brass one but I’m probably going to have to order it online for twice the price. I’m OK with that. I keep looking for it because it’s kind of a fun quest.

Anyway, it was off to the castle (a reproduction of course). There’s a history museum inside the castle and lots of SE Asians inside (about a third of the patrons). A couple of Filipino families and a couple of Chinese-speaking families.

I also went to the art museum on the castle grounds which were a private collection that is now shown to the public. It had some very nice scrolls and screens.

I wish I could post the live photo of this. It was really coming down and it was also quite blustery.

I decided to walk the 15 minutes to the Glass Art museum and on the way there was a Daiei department store where I went to look for my pen. Of course, no dice. Everyone is pretty nice about it, though. They were also having a Hokkaido food fair and I looked through that as well.

I spent a couple of hours making my way through the Glass Art museum. It was pretty cool. I was kind of weirded out when the first exhibit was all by Dale Chihuly. I thought, I know that name. Born in Taco Town, I mean, Tacoma and got his MFA at RISD. Quit famous and did some interetsing work. Unfortunately I did see some signs requesting that you not post pictures online. I only took one photo anyway. Here’s one of the museum from the top floor though.

The next floor down was an exhibit by Jiri Suchi, an instructor from the Czech Republic who was about to move back to Europe. I kept seeing a guy standing around and thought, is he the guy or am I just being that Asian guy who thinks all white guys look alike? I finally asked him and it was him! He answered all my dumb questions about his art and I even got a selfie. I do not know why my eyes are closed and I was talking during the picture. I guess I never take selfies and I was a little nervous talking to an artist at his exhibition.

After seeing four floors of glass art, I was feeling a liitle off. I realized I hadn’t eaten any lunch and it was 2pm! I decided just to get a snack at the art museum. Brewing a cup of coffee and cutting a piece of cheesecake (who am I kidding, the pieces are pre-sliced) took them over 20 minutes. I think they just forgot about me.

Would anyone with any sense go across town to the beach on a day with thunderstorms and high wind warnings? Second question: do I have a lot of common sense?

There are fishing boats near the beach and I asked a guy walking around if anyone goes fishing in this weather and he looked at me like I was nuts.

Norm from Tokyo Lens has shamisen lessons and there’s a shop around here where he gets the shamisen he sells online. I decided to go take a look and walked 20 minutes in the wind and rain. My Wirecutter-recommended folding umbrella held up incredibly well. I guess you shouldn’t just walk to a store during Golden Week and expect much (I wasn’t expecting much, just messing around.) It was closed. That’s OK. I had to get my steps in (though I didn’t hit 15k today).

I got on the tram to head back to the station. The tram station was weird. The old station was a community space and the new waiting area just looked like a covered bus stop.

I’m embarrassed to say that when we got to the main train station I pushed my way through the people who seemed to be standing around thinking they weren’t getting off. I didn’t look back but they were probably all getting off but were being incredibly patient. I’m not sure.

I got my local EkiTag (an electronic stamp-collecting game) and headed to the hotel.

I had to juggle hotels at the last minute to see friends and I switched from an APA hotel to the JAL Hotel for two nights. I guess I splurged because it’s $283.91USD for two nights and I’m on the top floor. I think the APA hotel was going to be almost as expensive so I decided to just get a nice room. I’m sharing a wall with the elevator and I hear nothing, which means excellent construction. I have a Nespresso machine in my room and they gave me barley tea and two rice crackers.

I was busy writing this nonsense until I realized I’d better go get dinner. I told the guy at the front desk I wanted to try Zetteria (a local fast-food hamburger chain) and he said BUT YOU’RE IN TOYAMA so have some of our great fish!. I went to his suggestged spot, Toyama Sushi. There’s two next to each other and one has sushi on a track. I picked the non-track restaurant and waited in line for what felt like a long time because it was cold outside. It was worth it. Once again I thought I was spending a ton of money but dinner was only $35 USD!

I didn’t get much breakfast and had no real lunch so I ate two pieces of the sushi before I remembered to take a picture. Same with the white shrimp tempura. (So good.)

As I was leaving I asked the lady next to me if I could take a picture of hers since she got the same thing I ordered. She was taking pictures with her phone and I gook a quick pic. Then she got out her DSLR and said she had to get a good picture. Hahaha.

I was still hungry and I thought about BK and Zetteria. There were way more people at Burger King when I went by and almost nobody at the Zetteria but instead I went and bought sweets. Not one but TWO. A cake from Fujiya (and a ¥5 fork) and a financier from the German Bakery.

They packed the cake with a mini cold pack!

The cake wasn’t too sweet. The financier was a financier.

And oh boy, I forgot to look for something my sister said she wanted. I still have time.

Slept like a log at Onyado Nono. I think I complained about the other one but slept very well there as well. I’m sure I’ll stay in another Onyado Nono in the future.

Breakfast at the Onyado Nono Fukui was pretty fancy. I thought the chirashidon was a nighttime thing on the restaurant board, but it’s what’s for breakfast! (Upper middle.) It was another buffet. I missed the miso soup because I wasn’t expecting it to be a white miso soup with clams. The salad bar also had pastrami so I tried a piece. It was serious pastrami which I never expected to be in Japan. There were also soba bowls but I was full already.

Next stop was Kanazawa, a place I’d been many times. I was hemming and hawing about what to see, especially since I’m pretty tired from all the walking I’ve already done on this trip. The woman at the tourist information desk said, why not the Noto Peninsula? Probably not a lot less walking but I knew I’d have a nice train ride where I could sit for a while. I got a little confused and looked at the schedule backwards so it turned out I had a little time to kill. Of course I went to a couple of stores looking for the pen I’m searching for. I was pretty much told, “Not a chance.” (They weren’t that rude but I got the idea.)

Interestingly there were artworks on the pillars of the station and I don’t think many people stop and look at. I only found them because I had a lot of time to wait for the train.

It was a nice 1 hour and 26 minute ride through the countryside.

I got to Nanao and there wasn’t a whole lot going on. There’s going to be a big festival in a few days where they roll three huge 12m (~40 ft) tall, 20 ton (probably metric ton) floats through the tiny streets. I saw them preparing the floats in various spots during the day. The first was by the fish market.

The second was on the shopping street.

The third was at the shrine where the floats all head to.

You can Google Nanao Dekayama to see the completed floats.

I also saw a small paving truck. I took a picture because I’m used to seeing the big ones back in the US.

Two other things are the fish market and the old shopping street. The fish market looked like a normal retail fish market and at the back there was a food court.

I got a small tuna rice bowl because the woman recommended it as it’s locally caught tuna. I thought I was just getting a tuna bowl (upper left) and so I added the thing I’m not going to mention on the upper right, but I was also given a giant bowl of miso soup with a large piece of chewy, bony, white fish in it. It was all fresh and excellent.

I got the small bowl because it was a late lunch but with the soup it ended up being quite a bit of food. I paid by credit card because I thought it was going to be expensive. My phone gave me an alert of the foreign transaction and it end up being only $16.90 USD.

I went to the main shopping street and it looked like some of it was under construction.

Several historic buildings wrapped in construction cloth. When I read the signs it said they were culturally significant and damaged in the Noto earthquake of 2023. Repairs are expected to be done in 2027.

I also saw a couple of prefab buildings being used for restaurants, similar to the ones I saw in Kesennuma post-tsunami.

I was able to find a tasty cake and cup of coffee at a cafe on the shopping street.

The trip back was to Kanazawa was an express train. It cost more, but it only took 57 minutes.

I checked into the Via Inn that’s inside the station. It’s far from the tracks so the noise I hear is mostly from the hallway.

I went to find some food and I was pretty seafooded out. There were two pasta restaurants next to each other and the brightly lit one was full of schoolgirls so I picked the fancier-looking one. I knew it wasn’t all that fancy when I saw the food delivery robot and ordering on iPads.

The craft ginger ale wasn’t bad.

I asked where they got the salmon for the salmon pasta and confirmed it was from overseas. Salmon is hard to fish for in Japan. Since the salmon wasn’t local, I felt OK getting a Napolitan spaghetti instead of the salmon pasta. I got a seafood salad (I know, I’m an idiot, I’m not really good at avoiding seafood) which had more tuna and salmon sashimi than most mains I’ve had. But it the fish seemed rubbery compared to the buttery smooth fresh-caught fish I had at lunch. It was fine, I was just spoiled at lunchtime. It seemed expensive at ¥3025 but again that’s only $19.00. Less than what I pay for a burger and fries at a lot of places in Portland.

Well I spazzed on the drinks picture. That’s OK. I didn’t get any Wilkinson this time. I’m not entirely sure why I keep posting pictures of Wilkinson for my sister. I am drinking the Pocari Sweat hoping it staves off any leg cramps. So far so good.