Japan in the Rain

Had a bit of a marathon night last night. We had a work-related dinner with all of the teachers from my building in the evening. Having eaten far too much sustenance-lacking raw fish and not nearly enough cooked meat, friend/coworker Ernesto and I headed for the nearest yakitori joint after the bus back to campus dropped us off. We were already in a well-primed state after several hours of consuming beer, sake, and non-alcohol absorbing raw seafood, but we continued the trend, plus meat, at our local meat-on-stick restaurant.

Chieko eventually joined us, though I'm not sure what time it was exactly. At some point it became suddenly clear to me that sleep was the one thing in the world that I needed, immediately, so I bailed out, leaving Ernesto and Chieko enjoy themselves for several more hours. And enjoy themselves they did. I came downstairs at some point near sunrise to use the bathroom, only to find Chieko and Ernesto sitting at out kitchen table talking about something, I'm not sure what.

Needless to say, we weren't the earliest risers this morning. I woke up around 10 and listened to the Red Sox, and then it was time to get out of the house. It was rainy and thundery today, and I wanted to get a good view of the weather rolling in off the Sea of Japan, so we headed up to a park on the edge of town that affords a nice view out towards the sea. It was disappointing weather wise, but we enjoyed sitting in the car in the rain and just chilling out for while. We were about to head home when I remembered there was a neighboring town that I wanted to visit, and very nice drive ensued.

We didn't know where we were going, other than towards the mountains, so it was completely serendipitous that we ended up seeing some pretty spectacular stuff. There was a little onsen (hot spring) town that we drove through, which was basically a main street lined with a bunch of spas and restaurants. At the end of the road was this little pond.


We retraced our route back though the small town and aimlessly made our way through some back neighborhood and onto a road that plunged into and up a mountain. It was a single lane deal, and I got the feeling that it was a maintenance road of some sort, though I didn't see much along the way that required maintenance. On our way up, the crappy weather was on its way out. There was a little rain, but the sun was breaking through and doing wild things with the light on all the wet trees and plants. There was a lot of mist, as well as low clouds, that were beginning to rise up from the valleys between the mountains. It was beautiful.

We eventually reached the end of the road, in the form of the pavement abruptly ending. We could have continued on if we were driving something more equipped for wet, non-paved terrain than our otherwise wonderful Honda Civic. So we headed back down the mountain.

The drive back down was a visual treat that I hope I might convey a hint of here. The fog was really thick in the trees as we got to lower altitudes, but the sun was really shining through and casting its rays through the trees.

On our way home, I stopped back off at the park where our drive had started. This is looking out over Kanazawa and it's surrounding towns, with the ocean in the background.

I've got a pretty hectic week coming up, but am enjoying the weekend very much so far. Hopefully the trend will continue tomorrow. Enjoy your weekend!