Our next destination was Kanazawa, transiting there on the Nohi bus express via Shirakawa-go. We were tempted to arrange a few hours in Shirakawa-go as the village has world heritage status for it’s Gassho style houses. However, we would have been a bit hamstrung by the luggage. Coin lockers are available but Io was concerned might be occupied given the popularity of the village. Sadly our Takayama hotel don’t arrange luggage transfers so we would have needed ro find a local desk for Black Cat. In the end we decided against the extra hassle.
The bus trip was efficient, although not as scenic as I hoped. The expressway contains a lot of really long tunnels through the mountains. Nonetheless, it’s quicker than the train and interesting enough. About 2/3rds of the passsengers disembarked in Shirakawa-go and were not quite completely replaced. The town looked to be packed with tourists.
In Kanazawa we had booked the Square Hotel. It’s the only time we were not staying right near a station, as none of the station hotels had triples at a sensible price (or at all). The Square hotel was around a 15 min walk away, so not too bad. And despite arriving 30 minutes before check in time, we were checked in right away and able to head directly to the room, a rarity in Japan. Our room was also excellent, very spacious.
After dropping the luggage we walked out to the Kanazawa castle and Kenrouken garden area for an explore. The castle area was not too busy but we did not stop for long as we were all keen to see the garden, which is rated as one of the top 3 in Japan.
Just outside the garden we induged in an ice-cream style that Kanazawa has marketed very successfully to both international and domestic tourists - ice cream topped with gold foil. The idea is that as Kanazawa is the source of almost all gold foil in Japan, why not put it on food? Anyway, we ate our super expensive soft serve, which ShelleyB-son enjoyed so much he spent the rest of the day begging for another.
The entry fee for the garden is 350 yen per adult, which we felt was very reasonable. The garden is fantastic. Luckily Kanazawa is yet to be quite as heavily visited as other Japanese towns, so although the garden was busy, it was not so packed as to be annoying. If the same garden were in Kyoto, it would probably be impossible to move.