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 I got up the next morning and took another bath in the onsen. This time after the bath I sat on a bench against the wall. It had holes in it and I could look outside over the city. The breeze felt really good after the bath. It was a great way to dry off.

Then I stopped at a German Bakery for breakfast. Well, that's what it's called. I doubt it's very German, lol. It was very good though. I had a sugar covered doughnut and some sort of bread with a hot dog in it.

Then I got on the bus to head to Shirakawa-go. It took about an hour and 15 minutes. The drive was very pretty. Do you see how blue the water is? It's crazy!


We also went through a LOT of tunnels. Tunnels are usually a bit boring, but these were kind of cool. It was crazy how many there were. We went through two back to back (like a second or two of sunlight between them) and it took us about 7 minutes to get through those two. They were so long!

When I arrived in Shirakawa-go it was sooooo cold! Well, I guess it wasn't that cold (I'm not sure what the temperature was) but it was much cooler than I am used to lately. I think the high that day in Kanazawa was in the upper 60s, but I'm not sure what it was in Shirakawa-go. I had a jacket on and still had goosebumps! Luckily, after about an hour or so it warmed up a little bit. It was still chilly, but with my jacket I was comfortable.

The architectural style of the houses in Shirakawa-go is known as Gassho Zukuri, which means "prayer hands construction." It is called that because the roofs look like hands in prayer. The steep thatched roofs are very unique. They are built that way to withstand the heavy snow.

Several of the houses are open to the public, but many of them are guest houses where you can spend the night.


 



I went into two different houses. The first one I visited was Wada House. It was built in the mid to late Edo period (1608-1868).


A fire is left burning on the first floor of the houses. The smoke rises throughout the house through grates on the floor, which you can see in the next picture, and reaches the thatched roof. The smoke helps to keep the roof insect proof and dry. I can't find one of my brochures right now, but I think it said that without the fire, the roof would only last a year or two, but the fire allows it to last for up to 20 years.


Also, the roofs are built without any metal. It is all just wood and ropes. I don't think you can see them in any of my pictures, but some of the beams are bent. They were made from trees that had been bent by the snow. 

After visiting Wada House, I stopped at one of the food stands and bought a chestnut bun. The outside had a picture of a sarubobo, a traditional doll of the area. Sarubobo means baby monkey. It doesn't look like a monkey to me, but it's kind of cute. 


The inside had red bean paste and chestnuts. It was warm and was perfect in the chilly fall weather. 


Outside one of the many gift shops was a ledge with many Studio Ghibli planters. Cute! :)


It was interesting to watch them redo the roof. My brochure says that it took 150-200 village residents to redo a roof. I guess it doesn't take as many people today. 


Next, I visited the Kanda-ke house. 


You can see that the top floor was very smoky! It smelled so good! :) The upper floors of this house were used for silk worm production.


This is a window on the 2nd floor that looks down onto the fire on the 1st floor so that the fire can still be watched from the 2nd floor. 



This is mitarashi dango. It's mochi with a soy/sugar sauce. This was my first time eating it. It's soooo tasty! I enjoyed watching the man cook this over the fire.

The buses didn't run very often so I was there from 10:00 to 1:50. It was a little bit longer than I needed, but I didn't get bored. I looked through a bunch of the gift shops and bought some souvenirs.



I got socks with Hello Kitty dressed up as a sarubobo sitting in an onsen, miso Kit Kats (I haven't tried them yet), and an awesome cell phone charm. I was about to buy one with Hello Kitty dressed as a sarubobo inside a gassho house with snow on the roof and cute snowflakes dangling from it, but then I saw this one...


Godzilla is totally about to smash that gassho house. It was too funny to pass up. Also, he is holding a sarubobo doll, lol.

On the way back I took a few more pictures of the pretty scenery. The water is just so blue! Well, more teal really, but it's so pretty! It looks kind of fake. 




The rice fields here were very pretty (much prettier than the endless ones I saw from the train the previous day). This area reminded me of the puzzle that I have.



When I arrived back in Kanazawa I headed back towards the area around Kenrokuen so that I could visit some of the shops. I took a different route and wandered through Naga-machi Buke Yashiki District, which is an area where samurais once lived. The houses aren't the same anymore, but they have kept the look of the old walls. 



Many restaurants in Japan have plastic food replicas in their windows. This one had felt food replicas!



To reach the stores outside of Kenrokuen, I went through Kanazawa Castle Park. It wasn't that impressive and a lot of stuff is under construction, but it was nice to take a different path.



I bought some really cute Hello Kitty socks at a shop outside of Kenrokuen. They say Kanazawa and have the famous Kenrokuen lantern on them. :)


I went to McDonalds again. Haha, I kind of didn't want McDonalds again (well I wanted it, but it's so unhealthy!) but I really wanted another toy (haha, yeah I'm so like a little kid). This time I got corn instead of fries. I also got a strawberry McFlurry which was really good! So I made it a little healthier by getting corn, but then I made it really unhealthy by getting a McFlurry. Oh well. :)

It's interesting that the Happy Set has five chicken nuggets instead of 4 like in the US because Japanese fast food restaurants generally have smaller portions than in the US. 


I was one of the few people in McDonalds not in a school uniform. It was definitely a high school Friday night hangout place. Many of them had books out, but it didn't look like they were getting much homework done, lol. 

After McDonalds I stopped in Kohrinbo 109, a mall in the main shopping district. I saw this hilarious sign.





Here's a picture of Forus, the other mall I went to the previous night. 

It took a long time to get there. From this area, there's not a very direct route. I had to go west to Maibara (between Nagoya and Kyoto) and then go north. There isn't a Shinkansen that reaches Kanazawa (there will be in 2014, though it will be from Nagano so it wouldn't have helped anyway) so I had to take a slow train. I took an express train that skipped a lot of stations, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.



Here was my itinerary for the day:

• 6:59 - 7:45 Toi -> Shuzenji (bus)
• 7:54 - 8:30 Shuzenji -> Mishima (train)
• 8:59 - 11:15 Mishima -> Maibara (shinkansen)
• 11:59 - 1:51 Maibara -> Kanazawa (train)

It was about seven hours of traveling! Though it's not really that bad. I would hate to spend 7 hours on a plane. Even in a car seven hours is pretty bad. I don't mind the trains as much. Plus, in between the different trains I can walk around the stations and buy snacks and stuff.

Sometimes I actually really enjoy the trains. I sit and enjoy the scenery or just relax and listen to music on my ipod or play video games on my DS. But that day the view was just not that great. It looked pretty gross actually. Here's a view from Mishima Station.


After several hours I reached Maibara and then took the train north to Kanazawa. I had been looking forward to this train ride because I'd get to see a part of Japan I hadn't seen yet. However, the view was mostly very boring. It was rice fields, and more rice fields, and even more rice fields. Oh, and tunnels too.


By the time I reached Kanazawa I was very glad to get off the train, but I wasn't too excited to be there. But as soon as I exited the ticket gate at the station I started to get excited. The station had stores and restaurants and was pretty lively. I walked through the shopping area and was entertained by the 90s pop music they were playing. As I stood in a bookstore I heard them played Lucky by Britney Spears. A middle aged Japanese man walked by and was humming along with the song quite loudly. I was very entertained.

The station exit is really cool.




This clock was super cool. The numbers are made up of many tiny fountains! :) It also displays messages such as "Welcome to Kanazawa."


My hotel was right next to the station, but check-in time wasn't until 3:00 (and as you can see it was 2:04) so I wandered around the station, picked up an English map of Kanazawa, and ate at Doutor, a coffee shop. I had cinnamon and brown sugar banana chips, a roasted chicken calzone, and an iced latte.


After eating I still had a bit of time left so I went and purchased my Shirakawa-go bus tickets for the next day. By the time I finished that it was about 3:00 so I went and checked into the hotel.

The room was a little bigger than I was expecting. I had been expecting it to be a little smaller. I guess I'm more used to the hotels in Tokyo. However, this room does not have a shower, so I had to use the onsen. If I had not been to the onsen a few a weeks ago I probably would not have chosen this room, but now I'm okay with that. I would want to go to the onsen anyway so I really didn't need my own shower.




I didn't spend too much time in the hotel room and soon I headed out to go to Kenrokuen. It was gray outside, but it wasn't raining. It was a bit chilly though. I wore a jacket! Just a couple weeks ago that would have been crazy. I was still sweating like crazy a couple weeks ago. Now I need a jacket!

On my way to Kenrokuen I passed Oyama Shrine. I had wanted to visit this shrine and didn't know that it would be on my way to the garden.


It's a really unique shrine because it has elements of Japanese, Chinese, and European architecture. See the stained glass at the top?

There was a small garden by the shrine and it was really pretty! I loved the wooden walkway across the water.


Outside of Kenrokuen are many shops. I didn't go to any then because it was a little after 4 and Kenrokuen closed at 6.



Kenrokuen was beautiful! No matter which way you turn there is a great view, so I took a ton of pictures.

The information in the brochure I received is a little hard to follow, but the garden was developed between the 1670s and 1820s. It is now covers about 25 acres.


That is the oldest fountain in Japan. It uses the water pressure from the higher pond in the garden.


The lantern on the right is the Kotojitoro Lantern. It is the symbol of the garden.



They really do a lot to support the trees. These supports are seen year round, but the garden is also famous for its yukitsuri, which protect the trees from heavy snow.







I uploaded more pictures of the garden on facebook, so be sure to check out the link I put at the end of this post.

As I walked through the garden the sun began to come out. The weather had been great for visiting because it wasn't hot and I was really comfortable in my jacket. The overcast sky was actually good too because it was good lightning for my pictures. But the sunshine towards the end was nice after seeing gray skies all day! :)

I left at 6:00 because it was closing. I would have liked to spend a little more time, but I still got to see everything.

I headed back towards the hotel. Near the garden was a different hotel and it had something really shiny outside. I got distracted.


This is the moat around Kanazawa Castle, which is across the street from Kenrokuen.


I took a slightly different route to go back to the hotel. I liked this tree lined street.


It led to the main shopping district. I passed by a McDonalds. I was planning on grabbing some food at a konbini on the way back to the hotel, but I saw a sign for the Happy Meal (Oops, I mean Hapi Setto!) toys.


They're taiko drums from the taiko game I have for my DS. They're so cute! I couldn't pass them up! They had four different ones available (the top four) and I got to pick the one I wanted, so I chose the pink one! :) Haha, this is kind of sad isn't it? Does this sound like a blog written by a little kid? Oh well, lol.




It took about half an hour to walk back to the station. This is what part of the station looked like. It was so empty! Actually this is underneath the front plaza area of Kanazawa Station. I think this underground part is actually a different station.


It had a cool waterfall.