Day 2 started out with waking up much too early in order to be on time for breakfast at 7, which was another mammoth example of traditional Japanese food: there was rice, soup, fish to grill yourself, soft tofu, salad, an egg, and six small bites of tsukemono (literally pickled things).
When we left from the ryokan, the staff members lined up as they had when we arrived and waved at us until our buses were out of sight. Even though it was raining, they just took umbrellas and still stood there.
Just like yesterday, before returning to Kanazawa we stopped at some more cultural locations.
Stop 1: Wajima Morning Market
I didn't take any pictures here because it was raining. The market is a street that has vendors that sell everything from wajima lacquer-ware, food, etcetc. It's a rather famous market with an extensive history, but since I had nothing I wanted to buy I mostly dozed in the bus, nice and dry.
Stop 2: Wajima Lacquer-ware Museum
Also didn't take pictures here, mainly because they weren't allowed. The museum had lots of examples of the wajima lacquer-ware used in modern settings...my favorite was a piano where the inside of the lid had a very elegant and elaborate design running all over it.
Stop 3: Kiriko Museum
These giant lanterns, or "kiriko" are used in the Noto region for summer festivals. They range from 4-15m and weigh over two tons. During the festivals a bunch of men (20? 30?) brace them from below and carry them through the streets.
Stop 4: Senmaida Rice Fields
These are rice fields that are built into the hillside, overlooking the ocean. They're only about a meter wide so all the work has to be done by hand. It's a famous location mostly for its scenic appeal, and in winter they light up the fields with lanterns. Again...raining...so I mostly hopped out, took a picture, and hopped right back in the bus.
The small patches of darker green are the rice fields. You can see how many of them there are.
Final Stop: Okunono Salt Field
This was a place that still makes salt by hand: salt water is scattered over a field, dried and raked several times, and then boiled until salt remains. All done by hand and all very intensive labor. When we got there they were in the process of boiling away salt water mixed with the salt sand to get, well, salt...it takes about 18 hours and was like a sauna!
You can just see the blobs of coagulated salt in the center of the boiling mass.
And after this, with the rain of an incoming typhoon in our faces, we had a three hour drive to Kanazawa. Everyone was exhausted, and I slept like a rock...
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