On Tuesday, at Skye’s suggestion, I made my way to one of the “overlooked jewels” of Japan: Kanazawa.

The reason Kanazawa isn’t terribly popular as a destination is:
a) it’s located on the West Japan Railway’s Hokuriku Line, off the Shinkansen train line, so depending where you’re coming from, you might have to take some extremely local trains to get there, and
b) it’s in what the Japanese call “Snow Country” (although at this time of year it’s more like “Rain Country”, or I guess just “Precipitation Country”… I digress).

Since I was departing from an equally not-so-visited town in Japan (Shimo-suwa is not so popular with the English tourists, either), I had to make 2 connections to get to Kanazawa. The first was at Minami-Otari, a small rural station in what looked to be a logging town. For my Canadian audience, we’ll say that if Tokyo was Toronto, and Shimo-suwa was Mississauga, Minami-Otari was like Blind River, or Pickle Lake.

In Japanese terms, it was a one-vending-machine kind of town. I did a spot of research, and it turns out there are about 5.6 million vending machines in Japan, which calculates to at least 4 vending machines per 100 individuals, and in the cities more like 1 per 30 people. There was only one vending machine on the train platform, one inside, and another outside the station. Crazy.

My favourite thing about Minami-Otari was the station stamp, which looked like Juan Valdez and his mule Conchita carrying a load of coffee beans. Hilarious! For folks who haven’t traveled here: in Japan, every train station and castle has a large round rubber stamp, so you can prove you were really there by stamping your travel journal. So yes, Minami-Otari was quite small.

I had 8 minutes to make my connection. I arrived on platform 1 and didn’t know where to go, so I asked the friendly station master, who was the only person in the station. He spoke no English, and I spoke no Japanese, so there we were, lost without translation. Eventually we worked it out with hand gestures and clock faces, and he indicated I should proceed to track 2, quickly.

I lugged my heavy suitcase over the bridge (no luxurious elevators in Minami-Otari!) and stared at what appeared to be a bus that had accidentally driven onto the train tracks. One car only, with what looked like a token receptacle inside, packed to the gills with people holding ski gear. “This can’t be right,” I thought to myself, and before I could find someone who looked like they might help me, the doors closed, and the bus/local train chugged off into the distance.

“No matter!”, I thought to myself. In Tokyo there had been a train leaving every 5 minutes, to practically everywhere in the country. I was sure there would be another train to Itoigawa (the next connection before Kanazawa) in another 15, maybe 30 minutes at the most. Not so much. The train station dude looked really disappointed in me when I emerged from the overpass. He shook his head and gestured at his watch again. 2 and a half hours to the next train anywhere. I parked myself and took out my knitting, and sat in silence, at the silent train station, vowing never again to get off the Shinkansen line.

Once I reached Kanazawa, I was in no mood to admire their lovely modern station with its huge wooden torii melding seamlessly into a vast overhead shell of glass and steel. It was rainy and cold, and I was tired. I was shocked to see dozens and dozens of hotels, since I knew the area didn’t really cater to foreign tourists, but apparently it is very popular with Japanese tourists.

I made my way with minimal effort to the Ryokan Shibaya, where Stephen had thoughtfully booked me in the night before. It looked closed when I arrived because all the lights were off; I soon discovered this is a popular practice in shops in this town, as they are conserving energy (every day is Earth Day in Kanazawa!) but it was a weird at first to enter a dark staircase leading to a dark lobby and then ring the bell. Naturally, the proprietors here spoke no English either, but they were friendly and patient, the inn was lovely and clean, and my room spacious, with nicely swept tatami, a comfortable futon and working heater. I slept nicely.

The next day I awoke to pounding rain on my window panes. Kanazawa has a local proverb: “even if you forget your lunchbox, don’t forget your umbrella”. I hate umbrellas, but I had to cave and buy one at the train station, to save my poor camera lens from getting soaked as I wanted to take photos. I then set out to explore Kenroku-en: The Garden of Six Attributes… more on that next post.