Think I was a bit optimistic about that jetlag being done…. lousy sleep last night.
Alas the Japanese restaurant was closed this a.m., so in order to bypass the buffet circus on the first floor I went to the Chinese restaurant for breakfast. Adequate but absolutely dreadful coffee.
We collected and headed over to the Metro to experience the Tokyo rush hour with all our luggage – likely not popular but the unfailingly polite people said nothing as they packed in around us, all in business suits. No need to hang onto anything as we were so packed in it would have been impossible to move. After a few stops there was a mass exodus so we got to sit down, but it filled up again quickly; we were extruded at Tokyo station. It is another huge station, a major connection spot for the bullet trains and we transferred to our train platform with several collection spots along the route. We are like an accordion, spreading out, pushed together at a collection point and then spreading out again 😊. We made it uneventfully to the right platform and found the right queue to be in – quite confusing with parallel lines for queueing for this train, and then the next, and the tickets don’t have any English on them so we got a lesson for future trips we may take without guides on how to interpret the numbers. Very helpful.
The bullet train took about 1 3/4 hour to deposit us in Kanazawa with a few stops enroute. Very efficient, and to the minute in leaving and arriving. A luggage team was formed for our group as we’d had to pile everything at the opposite end to where we were sitting, so they passed the bags out to the platform while we debarked on the opposite end of the car. Might mention I haven’t nearly the worst size bag! The prize for compactness goes to a couple from Colorado who arrived at the platform with a SMALL carryon size suitcase and daybacks full but not bulging. When I complimented them I learned they had craftily sent their hiking and Kyoto stuff via luggage courier from the Shingawa hotel directly to the Kyoto hotel for pickup on arrival….
Kanazawa is a modern and attractive railway station which we quickly cluttered up outside the exit. We had to dig out our seats and pedals for swapping out so we appropriated a back lane and it was a mess of luggage and bike bits being handed to the bike mechanic (Hammu) and much to the amusement of the school kids going by.
Kanazawa’s modern station. The fellow standing in the middle is a pig farmer from Denmark, lovely guy with a great sense of humour (apparently owns and operates a farm in Sweden as well).
Hammu, in our support vehicle, waits patiently for bike bits.
We get a safety talk with rules of the road from Tsuyu, complete with pictures 🙂
Formal group photo while we’re still clean and smiling LOL
One last group photo before we start the cycling in front of the lovely station
Then we took the luggage to the hotel for dropoff and got lunch while the tour crew swapped pedals, and even managed to get the saddles on although we’d originally been told that would have to be done later tonight. The brakes are backwards to what we’re used to in North America, and the hybrid gearing I will never get used to… as usual, the handlebars are way too low for me so I’m stooped over uncomfortably – the bikes come in “small, medium and large” (cringe) but they did say they’d try and work on something tonight. They are all hardworkers! Our tour leader “T” has been doing it a long time and intermittently tells us stories of outrageous behaviour by clients in the past…. like the one who set the fire alarm off at a hotel thinking it was the elevator button, but managed to break it in the process, of course in the middle of the night, so everyone had to listen to the fire alarm beeping for an hour until it could be fixed… Maybe that’s why they can’t use the same hotel anymore LOL?
Definitely cooler here, with a brisk wind. We dug deeper for more layers… cloudy today but no rain.
We were free to forage for lunch on our own and most headed to the food court at the nearby shopping centre. I had an awesome seafood okonimayake … half of it went under an ice pack in the hotel lobby afterwards (doggy bag) thanks to the translator device. Learned in Mongolia the perils of eating a full meal before cycling…The staff looked completely blank when I asked if they could store it in a fridge somewhere for the afternoon but the translator did an excellent job of getting the message across and we compromised on the ice pack as they didn’t seem to have a fridge available.
So off we went after the obligatory safety talk and explanation of the rules of the road in Japan – slightly different hand signals, esp. stop and the fact that bikes never “take the lane” as in North America. It was a bit daunting riding on the opposite side of the street at first, but it was literally “follow the leader” so not much to think about. We rode in city traffic, then onto a pedestrian path along a canal, stopping for a brief visit to a samurai house from the 13th century. Very plain.
As the houses were so close together, fires were a real problem with the possibility of wiping out whole neighbourhoods, and they were frequent. So the practice was to create a “firebreak” by knocking down the houses in the immediate proximity to limit the spread.
Sleeping quarters for 4.
It is a pretty city in the historical part, and the narrow streets and alleys we cycled in the canal district were lovely.
Only a few tourists around, and apparently many less pedestrians than usual. Unfortunately unable to get pics as it’s illegal to take pictures while moving on a bike, and we didn’t stop. It was full gas to the next stop, Kenruoken gardens, originally the gardens of Kanazawa castle. Reputedly one of the three best landscape gardens in Japan, absolutely gorgeous. It sits atop a hill in Kanazawa, which we pedalled up and I was chastened to find it hard work until I realized at the top I had it on the hardest gear… will take a while to get the system of those gears.
Very interesting to see the work crews starting to affix the winter supports – almost every limb is painstakingly affixed to a trellis to support it for the load of winter snow. Not a blade is out of place in the garden…
The work crews were getting a lot of attention…
The fountain is Japan’s oldest – gravity fed (the gardens are on a hill).
starting to see a little autumn colour….
Three little maids are we?
Autumn variety of Sakura cherry tree – white blossoms are just finishing. Apparently glorious in the spring (and packed solid with people).
Several reflective ponds and four distinct sections to the gardens.
Water course
Waterfall
I took a lot of pictures! It was breathtaking.
Back onto the bikes, and home along the canal on a different path – hopefully have gotten my bike snafu out of the way for the trip as I caught a clip on the exit bollard on a sharp left and went down. Happily no damage to my raincoat and shorts, the biggest concern LOL – a couple of bruises likely and a small scrape on the elbow. All soothed by a visit to the natural hot springs onsen on the roof of the hotel after check in. The bikes were stored close by in the huge parking “lot” for bikes at the nearby shopping centre but will be moved for better security overnight. Apparently there are bike thefts albeit the locks they put on them would last about 2.5 seconds in Vancouver and the staff seemed pretty confident they would be protective…
We had our 6 p.m. briefing and have our first long ride tomorrow, on a bike path along the coast. Weather forecast is for a tail wind fortunately though rain to start, hopefully not for too long. Some headed out for dinner but I have retired to consume the second half of my okonimyaki with miso soup and seaweed crackers, chased down by a chestnut daifuku.
Highlight of the day – undoubtedly the Renkouren gardens, with the alleys in the canal district second.