23 December 2009

We woke at 6.30, in good time for sunrise. Big storm clouds out at sea were blocking the full effect, but they were flushed with hints of pink

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At the heart was a towering anvil of cloud topped with the telltale blur of ice crystals; puffy cumulus were billowing behind it as it travelled northwards. We took it in turns to sit and watch the front move slowly by from the little rotemburo tub. While Nick was in there I put Emily in with him briefly, though it was a trifle too hot for her.

Breakfast was thankfully not too daunting in terms of outlandishness of content or in amount. Emily was happy with a banana and cranberry and chocolate bread but we had the usual battle to get 100ml of milk down her. After checking out, the hotel minibus took us back up the precarious zigzag track to the car park on the cliffs. Emily was very grouchy again and refused to walk around. Despite her strop, we stopped to have a look at the view back down into the cove and over the other side of the headland to a small lighthouse a little way out. They seemed to be in the process of developing the site into a tourist attraction and had erected a viewing tower with a scary overhang that felt like walking a plank.

A short distance in the car brought us to a village with a disused British-designed lighthouse on the clifftop above. Emily deigned to walk all the way up the steep track to see it. It was very cold and showers kept sweeping through, producing a couple of short-lived rainbows over the water. Down by the car park we saw some daikon (white radish) that had been hung on a rack outside a wooden house, and I saw some more the same up the road afterwards.

We continued south on a road hugging the scenic coast for an hour, to Wajima.

Emily slept all the way, and carried on snoozing for some time after we had parked in a restaurant car park on the edge of town. Once she woke we went in for lunch. Emily was being fussy and just picked at some soba noodles. Of course, she was more than happy to help polish off the cakes that we ordered with coffee. On the way out the waitress kindly gave her a snowman decoration from their Christmas tree.

As we turned inland to pick up the toll road the weather deteriorated to freezing showers. The attractive blanket of snow had survived for a third day, but as we hit the coast further down it petered out. It was only about 100km to Kanazawa but it seemed to drag interminably and I was running out of ways to entertain Emily. Even once we hit the city (c. 500,000 people) it still took half an hour to navigate endless lights to the minshuku (pension accommodation). Lamp no Yado was the sublime to the ridiculous of this downmarket establishment, but we had booked the cheap option to offset the expense of our first night. However, we couldn't have asked for a more effusive greeting than that provided by the proprietor. She was an old lady of at least 80, reeking of cigarettes, who scooped Emily up and carried her in from the car. Her's is an old samurai house so it has low ceilings, narrow corridors, squat toilets and shoji (paper screen sliding doors). It was extremely cold so she fired up a kerosene heater in our room; after so many people died in the Kobe earthquake from kerosene fires, Nick has been very nervous of them, and admittedly they do give off a lot of fumes too, but it did warm it up very quickly.

By the time we went out to explore it was nearly dark. We were in the heart of the samurai house district, which is very atmospheric, with cobbled traffic-free streets, mud walls covered in straw matting, trained pine trees and glazed-tile rooves with a snowy mantle.

Emily was still being stroppy and would not walk, but cheered up a bit when we stopped to make another snowman. We thought the area was very attractive, next coming to a pleasant street with a stream running along beside it and shops and eateries across each little bridge over it. The main drag, Katamachi, was just around the corner, and lit nicely for Christmas.

We spent ages trying to decide where to eat. Unfortunately the concept of smoke-free dining has yet to make it to the provinces, making it hard to choose somewhere pleasant to eat. After a few enquiries, we swallowed our pride and went into an Italian-style cafe. As far as the food was concerned it was a good choice; the pizzas were fabulous and we followed up with delicious icecreams. Back in the chill of the minshuku we fed coins into the aircon to raise the temperature a little before bed. Emily took ages to go to sleep again and I had to lie on the futon next to her while Nick stayed huddled up in the ante-room revising for his upcoming exam. She decided she wanted to recite all the Japanese she knows, which was quite comical. We were all in bed at 10pm and soon flat out. The futons were comfy and layers of fleece blankets and duvets helped ward off the chill of the room.