Noto to Takayama

The swell had died down for our last morning at Lamp no yado. It was wake up, onsen, big breakfast again, pack and go. We had a longish drive to Takayama ahead of us, made longish because we wanted to hug the coastline instead of take the expressway inland.

It was lovely. Ultra quiet, both the road and the sea. A lake. Then we got towards the bottom of the peninsula and after a turn I spotted snowy peaks on the other side. They looked vaguely like a band of clouds, but it was snow on high mountains, jutting into the sea.

We stopped for coffee in a town called Nanao. Get out of big cities and coffee is almost as bad as in the States. Barely tastes of coffee at all. Sadly Nanao only looked like a big town the coffee was pretty rubbish even though the place looked cool and the guy was nice. We asked if he knew of any okonomi-yaki restaurant in town (we couldn’t have any more fish!). They only opened in the evening but he went on the net and gave us the address of one place in the next town, Himi. But next door was a supermarket with lots of salads and we thought a picnic was in order. I went back in the café and asked where the nearest bakery was. The guy got out and almost walked me there. Then he shook my hand and thanked me. ? indeed.

With our shopping done we drove on a bit until we found a lovely spot in a harbour, sitting on the jetty, across from the snowy peaks still and bathed in the friendliest sun. Great lunch. European to some extent, which was very much welcome.

Then we drove on again and a few hours later we were in Takayama. I’d always thought the town was just a convenient stop on the way to the mountain village Alex had lined up for us. But we saw lots of white faces around. At the hotel’s onsen, a fat Italian guy asked me if he could keep his swimming trunks on. Goes to show innit. Point being that the place was full of ‘us’, and it made me think there must be something a bit special about Takayama.

When we got out and walked to the old district, which was all shut and dark, it wasn’t obvious. But the streets had charm. And very nice restaurants, including a Franco-Italian one called Le midi. We tried not to go there, but did in the end. They made a wicked minestrone, and Alex ordered spaghetti with Japanese aubergines. All very nice and NOT fishy.

The onsen was something else. No, you didn’t get a direct view of the sea. But of the whole city, from inside and outside. Long hotspring pool in, with wet ‘nap’ area. Then another pool outside, next to a wooden tub of boiling water, all of them with glass walls and parapets so you can, depending on your inclination, view the world or parade your private parts. From the 9th floor, so you’re safe, mind.

Anyway, good day. Another one.

Read one day, get one free

Busy being in awe the last 3 days, so for once I’m gonna try to summarise a bit. Wouldn’t want to bore my reader now, would I?

 

Our evening in Wajima was so-so. The place was dead as Victor Hugo. Pretty desolate too. First we’ve come across that. Lots of derelict buildings. Some squarely in ruins, some other in the process of making way for something else.

 

The harbour was a fishing boat’s one. In fact, after having driven arounds the whole of the Noto peninsula, I can safely say that not a single sailing pleasure boat is anchored there. As if the Japanese turned away from the sea.

 

We desperately walked around looking for a café, and none presented itself. On some backstreet we came across the Mariners and sat down. A slightly surreal experience, a bit English coastal town pub and a lot junk shop with tacky posters on the walls, five guitars on stands, CDs, tidbits, little dolls, and an eclectic menu.

 

After warming up on coffee and a milky drink for Alex (neither good), we ordered food. Choup got a pumpkin gratin, I a soup.

 

Our hotel was a business hotel on the sea front, with again some serious sea defences out. Hundred of actual blocks were also neatly parked in various spots, awaiting positioning in the sea I guess, or as quick replacement for breaking ones maybe. Our room was a smoking one. We slept with the window ajar.

 

We woke up to terrible rain and fog and wind and raging sea. The sea defences came into their own.

 

At breakfast a guy engaged conversation. A writer on Japanese culture and arts from Nagoya. 62 years old. Cool guy with cowboy-ish boots, redneck’s shirt and body warmer. Nice face too. He’d had a grandchild 15 days earlier, whom he couldn’t have enough of. He was there for a day to see an old friend (he’d driven to Wajima, 6 hours both ways). He knew the mayor of the place who was too busy that weekend to see him. He was going to see a doctor for a stomach pain that’s been lasting for 3 months. He hopes it’s not cancer, but fears it might as in Japanese there’s a saying that when a life is born another dies.

 

We walked the ‘best morning market in Japan’, dixit our writer mate, in the pouring chilly rain. Lots of weird fish and octopus everywhere. Miserable though. So we hopped in the car and drove around a bit for warmth and shelter. Still miserable. Drab. Awful day. Alex got quite depressed.

 

We could have left but hung around Wajima as I wanted to try the Mariners’ egg and teriyaki triple burger. It was good. Then had two crêpes with strawberry jam. Alex had potato gratin.

 

We chatted with the owner, Jun. A musician. Live concerts at times at his place. He played a CD of his stuff, which was like a Japanese Bruce Springsteen’s music.

 

Then we drove off to Lamp no yado, THE ryokan of the hols. The one place that convinced Alex to explore the Noto peninsula as opposed to anything else in Japan. Our friends Tessa and Ian from Vientiane had told us about it, and they’d been bloody right: traditional buildings and rooms (tatamis, futon etc) right over the sea. Well, right over a pool which is right over the sea. A little cove filled with rocks out to sea to naturally protect the owner’s investment from the massive waves crashing down on the coast on that day and until the early morning.

 

Not just that: just over the pool over the sea, our private hotbath, a wooden quasi-circular tub filled to the brim with hooot water. Slide the floor-to-ceiling windows and you’ve got yourself a hot bath in the elements, meters away from the sea below.

 

And boy did we feel the elements: slashing rain, stormy winds, boat-swallowing fog, but you don’t care you’re just quietly boiling away in your hot spring water. Unbelievably awesome.

 

Solid two-metre waves were constantly at the rocks, splashing 10 metres in the air at least.

 

OK, looks like I may have been a bit over-enthusiastic in my introduction: it’s just gonna be a normal blog, long and detailey and diarrhoaic. Ah well. Anyway I don’t write these for people to read. It’s more a journal written for the Denis in 20 years’ time. Souvenirs souvenirs. All these details here will come into their own when it’s be time to reminisce and I’ll be mighty happy I went to the trouble.

 

Dinner was the ‘real Japanese experience’. Remove the apostrophes. Proper real. We counted 10 different fish, 5 cooking styles (boiled, grilled, teriyaki, steamed, raw) all possible shapes of plates (oval, round, starred, long and thin, square, lozengey) and lost count of the number of dishes we got served.

 

The night awesome, spent under impressively warm covers and with the sound of the angry sea battering the rocks just ten paces away.

 

Breakfast was about the same as dinner. Fish fish fish.

 

Just as the storm had followed a summery day, the storm made way for another summery day. It had lasted just one day of full on fury. Just like that. Like a mistake, quickly rectified.

 

We drove to the famous Senmaida paddyfields, which we had quickly glimpsed through the rain and wind the previous day. It’s a hillside running down to the sea covered in terraced paddies. Lovely. We ate on the spot, stuff with not an ounce of fish.

 

Then we crossed that bit of peninsula south to Suzu. That stretch was sheltered from the still imposing swell and, finally, we did spot a surfer. On the north coast and quite a lot around Suzu, the problem is that the bottom of the sea is just rocks, and there’s always seem to be boulders here and there making surfing impossible. I saw some truly fantastic barrels on the north shore but most of the time their sucking in water revealed lava boulders waiting for the surfer who’d be stupid enough to go in.

 

There was a beach, and a guy paddled out. The waves were what, one metre’s high or so, quite fast. But they didn’t peel and mostly closed out in a 20-metre or so white wall. Besides, they seemed a bit slow to break and the guy missed lots of waves thinking they would when they still ran for a good 5 metres further before breaking.

 

Anyway he wasn’t any good, but who bloody cares. I was happy to see him. I’d have loved to go. But I’d jumped in many times in our pool to cool down from the hot bath and knew I wouldn’t last more than a minute in the sea. Should have taken my wetsuit. Mind you I did lose one of my flippers in Malaysia…

 

Got back to the heavenly hotel. The waves had quitened down a fair bit by then. The rocks could breathe again.

 

Dinner was even more fish and kinds of cooking and dishes than the previous day. It was fish galore. By the end of it gills were starting to grow on my skull.

 

At 9pm I’d arranged for masseurs to do their thing. Not that we needed them, but then again why wait?

 

I can safely say this is the best hotel I’ve ever been in. Yes it’s pricey and it’s overly fishy, but for once I could see why. Sure the hotel hadn’t planned for there to be a storm just for our stay, but there was; there was a wet grey day, a sunny stormy one, and on our departure day quiet seas and summer sun.

 

Tessa and Ian, again, thanks millions for the idea.

Kanazawa to Wajima (Noto peninsula)

We picked up our rental car from the train station. After a few hiccups with the English-speaking-but-Japanese-written GPS we managed to leave Kanazawa behind. We followed the coast. For endless kilometres it was just a conurbation road squeezed between a row of houses and shops on either side, with surreal speed limits, mostly 40km/h, and with a white line all the way, so no chance of overtaking anywhere. Must be said though that it didn’t stress me out. Don’t know if it’s because of the fear of radars and the invisible police force or because everyone does the same or because it’s my first day. Anyway it was quite relaxing in a sluggish way.

The sun was beautiful, not a cloudy smear in the sky. It was warm and soon we’d be by the sea and the scenic Noto peninsula. Alex elected to come here when a friend of ours mentioned staying in a ryokan that sounded incredibly brilliant. From the website it didn’t just sound it, so she was sold.

Just before leaving the highway we stopped at the Space and UFO museum of the UFO capital of Japan, Hakui. Huge and impressive building with Yuri Gagarin’s real Vostok capsule (apparently) and quite an extensive space exploration collection of exhibits. The UFO section was comparatively mediocre and overall it felt like the building was 10 times too big for what it showed. Anyway it was fun and wacky.

Hakui is at the top of a very long beach after which Noto starts proper, and the low-lying dune-type scenery makes way for a cliffy, rocky and green one. The vegetation changed completely too: at first like a mix between Brittany and côte d’azur, then like alpine forest. And when I say alpine I mean it, we kept seeing carpark dedicated to putting chains on your tyres and we even came across a huge snowplough parked in a corner. Not even a kilometre from the coast the trees looked like you were at least a 1000m up.

With the sun shining the way it did and all the deep green of the trees and blue-green of the sea it was hard to believe this place could get snowed up. But that wasn’t even all.

I read on the Internet that when the Chinese tried to invade Japan twice in the 16th or 17th century, each time with at least 4 times more manpower than the islanders, a storm and a typhoon decimated them to such an extent that they lost or had to retreat with their ponytails between their legs.

When we stopped in a lovely fishing village – the first of the day – the sheer number and scale of sea defences put out to sea and on the coast indirectly showed just what the Chinese had had to deal with: a first line 60 metres out, another at an angle 40 metres in, big rocks and concrete wall on the coast and concrete walls by the houses. Houses, I shall add, whose sea-facing wooden walls never had any opening. In fact, that’s something we’ve found: here harbours are not valued as tourist attractions, there is no eatery or bar, it’s just working places. In France even the smallest coastal hamlet provides something for tourists.

Anyway it was lovely: all wooden houses with black tiles. Few people around, very few cars (is the whole of Japan just crammed into Tokyo or what? So far it’s been such a quiet-deserted country it’s hard to think where the cliché comes from).

Lunch took place in a canteen-type restaurant cliffhanging some 50 metres above a gorgeous cove with bunches of seaweedy rocks, sand and a true painter-like palette of colours. I chose a dish I’d never seen before, a bowl of rice covered in shredded meat mixed with egg. Yummy. To go with that I had miso and spice dried ray slices, which were so beef-jerky-like I had to ask Alex to confirm they smelled of fish. Me wife wasn’t so lucky, her udon soup was a bit disappointing.

A few kilometres up the coast I spotted a lone surfer in a bay. We parked and went down to the beach. There was a hint of wind but the sun was still strong. I was very tempted to go in but thought I’d wait until the next day when we’re staying in that great ryokan overlooking the sea.

I love surfing, and I love watching surfing. It’s a great surrogate. There was just one peak, which started well enough but petered out after two seconds. The guy was doing the same short and tiny wave over and over again. I also thought he was very well padded, with socks and gloves and even a sun-hat-looking hood. I wondered if he was particularly sensitive to the cold, but we later found out the water temperature is actually 10 right now, which isn’t much so I don’t blame the man. Funny, it felt pretty warm (15 maybe?) just looking at it.

Still, I will go in at some point. Can’t miss the chance. I’ve swam in Ouessant in March. I’ve dipped into mountain streams high up in Corsica. I’ve also surfed in January in the North sea when the water was 7 degrees (I had a wetsuit for sure, although a bad one and holes in my crap gloves). Loved it every single time.

It was great seeing this lone man and the sea. The whole ocean for himself. A peak to himself. Surfing in March, in the sun, by yourself. Yeah, that’s the life.

In a way I tend to prefer this kind of surfing. Most of the time you’ll be on your own, no sharing and no priority. Your face is biting, you’ve got to keep paddling to keep away the onset of hypothermia. I remember some incredible sessions on the west coast of Scotland in winter and early spring with crystal-clear water, no one in sight, decent waves, the deep green hills dotted with white sheep all over, and the yellow line of the sand, plus the blue sky. Fantastic.

In fact, in the water it’s fine. The hardest is putting on the wetsuit, especially if it’s windy, and worst of all is taking it off. You’re already cold, yet you have to remove your second skin, the warmish water trapped in runs off and the wind knifes you like a hundred daggers.

It’s been fantastic being by the sea again. Maybe it’s being in Laos. Maybe it’s aging and knowing more precisely who I am and what I like the most more, but yep, the sea is definitely where I belong and want to live. Kyoto and Kanazawa have been great, but being reunited with salty water beats them hands down. The difference between great and greater.

In the match-up between nurture and nature, the latter doesn’t even have a rival.

The sea moves and is never boring. It’s threatening or sweet or perfect or cuddly or welcoming and womb-like, it’s a hundred colours, endless possibilities, surfing, sailing, paddling, snorkeling, fishing, jetskiing, swimming, kite-surfing. There’s the fish, the seaweed, the birds, the storms and x-foot waves, the sound and the fury, the sun reflecting on it or not, the clouds, the days when the horizon is unable to differentiate between sky and sea, the floating corpses, the spawned eggs, the floatsome, the rubbish, the oil leaks, the occasional poo, the people who walk along it, the kids who play in it, the dogs and their stick, the plunging cormorants and boobies.

Give me the sea over every land scenery. Yes mountains are awesome and dramatic, but they are not liquid and don’t dance in the wind. The panorama stays the same even if small details disappear or get altered. The seasons affect them for sure, but on the coast you can have two seasons in a day, rain and sun, wind and stillness, new face, new character, new painting there just in front of you. Every week you know you’ll have seen ten or more new sceneries.

You can’t fly in the air, but you can fly underwater. And on the sea. It’s called surfing.

I must admit, I’m writing this on a footless chair sat on tatamis leading onto a wooden platform jutting out into a raging sea. It’s 22 degrees inside, 6 out, the wind is rattling the windows, the waves are splashing over the very spiky Japanese black rocks scattered into the bay, whitewashing the dark low sky in impressionistic touches. Lines of cormorants keep gliding past our glass-wall. The storm may even get stronger yet Choupette is sitting on the other side of the table reading a book by an Anglo-Japanese writer. Perfection in motion is happening all around me this evening.

Circumstances do affect perception. But my perception of the sea doesn’t. This ryokan, in this particular spot, at this particular time of day and of my life, just makes perfection more perfect.

Lucky, very lucky me. Thank you Choupette.