Toyama and Takayama

Thursday, 10/18

Down the tunnel this morning to another "set course" breakfast.

Clockwise from the grilled fish upper right we have: fruit with small mint leaves and pieces of a clear jelly which looks like ice, green tea, sashimi, dressed green salad with a small sausage, soy sauce, three kinds of seaweed simmered with usuage (fried tofu skins) in the red octagon, Napa pickles topped with mentaiko (spicy grilled cod roe), shiokara (salted chopped raw squid), sweet beans, orange juice, lightly poached egg with special sauce, white cooked daikon ball on top of very tender simmered pork and simmered yellowtail collar. Rice and miso soup are yet to be served.

Said goodbye to Hyakuraku-sou and headed for the train station to catch the scenic train to Nanao.

Some of the staff come out to the parking lot to see us off at each Japanese inn. They bow
and then wave until the bus is out of sight.

Our bus could carry 50 passengers so the sixteen people in our group, along with our English-speaking guide, Chiaki, and the local guide, Noriko, had plenty of space.

Our local guide and bus driver dressed formally including white gloves for both.

The train ride took a little over an hour with a couple photo op stops along to way.

One stop was for one of the replica mullet spotting platforms. The doll you see in this one is representative of the spotter who watched for mullet back in the day. When the fish came in the spotter would signal the fishermen who would pull the net, trapping the mullet.

Each little inlet along the bay had an oyster aquaculture operation. In this area, the old oyster shells with seed oysters are strung on ropes and hung from buoys. This area along the coast of the Sea of Japan is one of a few places in the world which have a nearly zero tidal differential. Since they don't have to worry about the tide dropping, the oyster ropes can reach almost to the bottom.

For lunch we stopped at a sushi restaurant. This one was one of those with the mechanized belt that carries different plates of sushi, and other dishes, around the restaurant. The belt wasn't in operation for lunch and the sushi master and one waitress ran the place. They knew we would be stopping in so the plates of nigiri sushi were prepared in advance and we ordered additional per individual choice. Those who ordered beer were served by the waitress but when we wanted tea, it was self-serve.

Tea bags are in the drawers. Hot water is dispensed by pushing the cup against the round rubber trigger  (just touching to top left of the cup). Boiling water comes out immediately. It allows the waitress to do other things while customers serve themselves.

After lunch we drove into Toyama to visit the Toyama International Glass Exhibition 2018.

It was an amazing exhibition. Both the exhibits and the building itself. Not photographs were allowed in the exhibits but I could have spent the rest of the afternoon there. As it was, I managed to work my way through one gallery and visit the Chihuly exhibit in the 90 minutes allotted for our visit. 

The interior of the building would have been a huge, cold, glass and steel structure except for the wooden planks installed in appropriate places as warming balance.

After the Glass show we drove to Takayama and checked into our hotel, the Associa. It is a popular hotel with tourists. During our two night stay there were ten tourist groups staying there each night.