What is it with Japanese and really early mornings? We were awoken by the “time to wake up” song for the village at about 6.00. The night itself was fairly sleepless – the mattress was hard and the pillow was just a sandbag! I managed to doze for a little bit, and then got up, and we had breakfast. This was your typical Japanese breakfast, but with something I hadn’t tried before – tamago kake gohan. Basically crack a raw egg, mix in some soy sauce, and pour over rice. Really nice!

We checked out and walked around the village. It was beautiful – just 12 “authentic” buildings. From a 10 minute stroll up the mountain we got some fantastic views. Then it was back in to town to make paper. We went to the paper making mill factory and the guy walked us through the process. First of all we made a sheet, then were able to decorate it, before the guy made a top sheet (very thin) to go on top. This was then dried and voila! We had paper!

We went back to our hut to collect our bags. Not long later our taxi arrived to take us to the oldest of these huts – > 300 years old. It was about a 20 minute drive away. We paid to get in, and they had just started a show so we sat down and enjoyed the majority of it, before having a walk around the hut. It was 3 stories and had lots of old equipment on display. We had some “medicinal” tea and then strolled across the bridge and up the hill to the jail cell.

We wandered around for a little bit before our bus came, which took us to another old village. This was similar to the one we stayed at last night, but even smaller. We had ~1 hour before the next bus, and were getting hungry, so we walked through the village and had some noodles for lunch. On the way back through the village we stopped for some photos, and then bought a soft serve ice cream for the walk up the hill to the highway. We waited about 5 minutes for our bus to arrive.

It was then about an hour bus trip back to Takaoka, and we had 90 minutes to kill. So we walked up to Kanaya-machi – an old style part of town. It was ~20 minutes at a brisk pace. We were able to leave our bags in a locker at the train station (500 yen) which made it easier, but it was still quite hot, so I enjoyed a cold drink of water for the walk. Once we were there we walked down the street, which had a market on for the day! So there were stalls on both sides of the street with the usual trinkets. We bought some food and made our way back to the train station. We got side tracked at a couple of shops so by the end we were running short of time for our train! A quick toilet stop, grab our bags from the locker, buy our train tickets, and we had about 2 minutes to spare.

It was about a 30 minute train trip to Himi, heading North up the peninsula a bit. The water was to our right and looked so different compared to the mountains we had been walking through the last couple of days. At the train station we had a transfer to our hotel. It took about 15 minutes past the fish market and the sake brewery we were expecting to go to (which was the reason we came to this town – unfortunately they decided not to have tours, but only told Kaoru last week). We were taken up to our room on the top (5th) floor, and looked out East over the bay. It was a beautiful view! So I bought a beer and a drink for Kaoru and we enjoyed that looking out over the water and discussing our plans for the rest of the day.

Feeling quite sore, we decided to start by going downstairs to the free massage chairs. This was just what we needed after the walking with our heavy backpacks! Luxury! Then we sat in the lounge and had a cup of tea, looking out over the bay again.

At 6.20 it was time for a bath before dinner.  There was a beautiful view over the ocean from the 3rd story bathroom, but the water was just way too hot.  And trying to shave using the disposable razor provided just drew lots of blood.  Still, it was nice to relax, even if just for a short time.  However when you’re on the clock, it’s hard to really appreciate where you are.

We made it to dinner about 7.00.  We were quite relaxed and warm, and ready to start our “mini” sized meal.  We had no idea what we were in store for…

I ordered a sake tasting platter – 3 different sake’s (100ml glasses) for 1,500 yen.  One of them was from the brewery we were hoping to go to tomorrow.  It was particularly nice – I don’t know what stood out about it though.  I think it had a bit of a fizziness to it – not necessarily the right word to describe it, but that’s the only thing I could put it down to.  But the food….oh my god.  It just kept coming, and coming, and coming.  And every dish was as good as the last.  You can imagine what the seafood would be like in a fishing village.  The sashima was great, even for Japanese standards.  We had shabu shabu squid, that swelled up while being cooked (for no more than 60 seconds).  The seaweed changed from a dull brown to a glowing green as it heated.  I can’t even remember most of what we had as I just kept getting fuller and fuller, but couldn’t stop eating.

*finally* they brought out the rice, and I knew we had reached the end.  I left half of this, but I was wrong – there was still dessert to come!  Luckily that went down easily – some jelly with a dob of creme on top.

It was an effort just to stand up after this meal.  Finally we made it back to our room, and were delighted that they had come in and cleared our table, to make our beds up.  We sat out on balcony for a while and planned what we were going to do tomorrow given a few changes in our schedule…enjoying the night view of the bay.