Day 8 Tokyo to Kanazawa
It was a leisurely start to the day as we didn’t have to
board the train till 12.45, so a final walk through the Ginza streets followed
breakfast. It was a gloriously sunny day. Many shops already had lines of people waiting at the doors. Clearly
these people were far more patient than us. No runners are worth an hour’s
wait!
Checkout was a breeze and there was a taxi just outside the
hotel door, so in no time we were at the massive railway station. The crowds were
pretty incredible. Apparently it was “Sports Day” and some kind of holiday. We
were quite early so rather than going inside and joining the melee, we found a
couple of seats outside and enjoyed people watching. Finding the right platform
was easy despite the plethora of railway lines and we took our place in the
queue. When the Shinkansen arrived, a cleaner stood at the door with a plastic
bag for disembarking passengers to drop in their rubbish. Of course he gave
each passenger as little bow as they passed. The doors then locked and we were
only let on board when the cleaning team finished their sweep through.
Minutes after we boarded, and exactly on time, the train
pulled out. We expected that there would be a catering car or something similar
on board, but it appeared that the service had been stopped, so for the next
two and a half hours we had to do with the bottle of water and some of the
nibblies we’d bought from Melbourne.
It was such a fast smooth ride and the journey would have been so pleasant were it not for three little kids sitting behind us. They were quite noisy on occasion and the father who sat next to us while his wife tried to wrangle the kids, did his best to ignore the whole thing. With about 40 minutes to go and after the screaming couldn’t be ignored any longer, he left his seat and sat with his wife to put the kids to sleep. Thank God!
Arriving in Kanazawa, we joined the taxi line and within about 10 minutes arrived at the hotel. Our room looked out on a string of high end shops from its 11 story vantage. In the distance we could see hills. Very pleasant.
By the time we dropped our bags in the room I was ravenous, so we went into a nearby department store that had a food hall in the basement. We got some takeaway and had it outside before setting off to explore the nearby streets. The main drag had many of the top end shops we had seen in Tokyo but the side streers were more humble and more interesting. We hoped to find somewhere we go to for dinner later. Our walk took us down to the river. We found a few places that looked interesting. As we returned with the sun now setting and the steet lights glowing, I thought we found a place I thought looked good, but it turned out that they had an hour’s wait for a table. Off we went again and on closer inspection, many of the places were drinking places with bar snacks. Johnny was keen to get some tempura, but try as we might, we were unsuccessful.
Eventually tired and footsore we opted for a beef BBQ place that
looked pretty good. Yes, they did have room and with the help of Google Translate
ordered two beers, some premium beef that we expected to BBQ on the contraption
in front of us, a side order of prawns and some noodles. We waited and waited.
Eventually we hailed a waiter and asked where our food was. Two small prawns
arrived. A long time later, a plate of thin beef slices (seared with a hand held
gas jet) arrived under two raw egg yolks. No noodles arrived. We had the meat and
asked for the bill. It was a bit disappointing, but we will make a better choice
of venue tomorrow night. The city seems to have a seafood focus so we should be
able to do better than today.
On the way home, Family Mart came to the rescue with some nice desserts and canned coffee.
