Got up a little early to hit the onsen again and then got breakfast from the buffet. It was quite good. In the upper left was scrambled eggs and ketchup rice. My friend’s daughter told us that it’s deconstructed omurice. I skipped the curry because everything else was quite a lot.

Since we were back in the sticks, I took a diesel train, transferred to an electric train, then transferred to the shinkansen which took me to Tokyo station. I was hoping to take a bus to the airport but since it’s Golden Week the roads are packed and they recommended the monorail. So i took the Yamanote line train to the Tokyo Monorail and then the Monorail to Haneda Airport. I was expecting the trains to be a mess but they were fine.

I wasn’t really that hungry at Haneda airport so I got a couple snacks at the Delta lounge. (I went to the Centurion Lounge but it was smaller and much, much darker.) This is a special dessert made for Children’s Day. I guess there’s supposed to be a koi in there (not a real one).

Then it was time to get on the plane from HND to SEA.

The food on the plane wasn’t bad, and I watched Mercy (pretty bad), the rest of No Other Choice (which turned into a black comedy after all), Shutter Island, the rest of the available episodes of High Potential, and most of Point Break. Why didn’t anyone tell me how awful Point Break is?

Had a pretty uneventful wait in the Seattle Delta lounge (still not hungry and I had a mislabeled Coke – I think it was Diet) and the quick flight down to Portland. 32 ½ hours after getting up, I was back in my own bed. The woman sitting next to me on the plane said she missed her flight the night before and spent the night in the airport. She took much longer getting home than I did!

And that’s it for my trip!

I stayed at a hotel that I was told was “okay”. It’s usually only about $50 US per night but for Golden Week it was closer to $130. The rooms were tiny, the walls were on the thin side, and the big bath in the basement wasn’t that big. But it was fine. The breakfast was pretty good.

There was an automatic pancake maker. Wave your hand over the switch and two small pancakes came out. The pancakes were pretty good.

After that I just mainly put on my white-ish shirt, my new black Uniqlo pants, and what I thought were black socks from FamilyMart that turned out to be dark blue. Then I went to the memorial service for the elder Dr. Kawasaki (the dad of the other two Drs Kawasaki) and I was the only non-family-member there. I was also surprised that the one-year memorial is where they place the cremains into the headstone.

After that we went to an onsen. This wasn’t everything. We still had more fish dishes and the silver lid is hiding a very tasty pork dish.

Then we took a dip in the onsen which was very sulphury and then just hung out in the lobby eating snacks and drinking a bit from the free drink bar. It was a a lot of fun and quite relaxing.

Not many pictures today. I packed and got a morning set at Doutor, where I should’ve gone the past two days.

Then we drove to the JA Store to look for some gummy candies my sister wanted. Last night we checked the intarwebs and Google said we can get them anywhere but we found them nowhere else. I think there’s one from every prefecture (there’s 47 prefectures) but they only had six so I bought one of each one they had.

Then we went to eat a ton of sushi. The first branch we went to had at least 100 people in line 30 minutes before opening. We went to another branch in the local shopping center and we only had to wait a half hour. They were quick serving the sushi so we were done in a half hour. And we ate a lot.

After that we drove to the eldest Kawasaki sibling’s house in Tsubame-Sanjo. Then it was on to Niigata city. I guess I ate a tasty soft ice cream cone at a rest area but I never took a picture. Oh well.

Anyway, I’m on my own in Niigata for a bit but it’s raining. On the recommendation of the elder Dr. Kawasaki I got tare katsu at Tonkatsu Tarou at the station. It was another thin (but not that thin) katsu but with tare rather than Worcestershire sauce like I had in Fukui. It was pretty good but I think I like the sauce version better. I’ll eat either. The Tonkatsu Tarou store was kind of a mess, though. It was tiny and the cash register was out in the mall hallway. No one knew where to line up and I stood in front of the cash register for a long time before they told me to line up to the side and made a guy pre-pay for his family’s food. By the time they were ready to take my money, a line had formed in front of the cash register (I was to the side.)

I made it back to the hotel, borrowed a weird cordless iron and realized there’s a big bath in the basement that they didn’t tell me about when I checked in. I took a bath and ate a strawberry dessert I bought at the convenience store that’s connected to the hotel. It was the best combini dessert I had on the trip but I forgot to take a picture.

It’s late-ish. Time to hit the hay.

This was the day I was planning to head for Tokyo, but I’m hanging out with old family friends instead.

I started out looking for a morning set and was striking out. One place my sister and I went said on Instagram that they open at 7am but I guess they changed to 10am now. I ended up at Choco cro and had a small ham end egg thing. It was good and they even heated it up for me. This was my third cup of coffee since there’s a Nespresso machine in my fancy hotel room!

I had some time to kill since my friend was driving his EV minvan down from Niigata to Toyama. I went to a park that was surprisingly near the station. There’s a big walkway around the river and this is a pedestrian bridge in the park. You can go up both of the towers and get a good view of the area.

Here’s the view of the Northern Japan Alps and “the most beautiful Starbucks in the world” (someone may have stuffed the ballot box). But it is nice and the area is pretty.

I met with my friend around 10:40 and we went to his mom’s. We used to visit here all the time when we came to Japan with my mom. The three of us went out for ramen. I made even more mistakes. I got the chashu ramen with extra spring onions because the picture on the menu of the normal ramen seemed to have neither. But it had both! I didn’t need the extra onions nor did I need the extra pork. (This picture is sure to horrify my sister who hates all things onion.)

We had to go to a fast charger to charge my friend’s EV. They do have a small charger at his mom’s but it would take days to charge his car enough to drive back to Niigata. We also went to three different stores to look for some JA (the agricultural collective) gummy candies my sister wanted but we struck out. Two grocery stores didn’t have anything and the JA store closed at 4pm, shortly before we arrived.

We ended up buying too much food at the grocery store for the three of us but we ate most of it (like almost all of it.) It doesn’t show the five korokke that we also got.

Right now I am kind of mad because I’ve ordered the same pen twice from Amazon and it was canceled both times. Now it says the shipping will take so long that there’s no way I’m getting it. I think I can get it in the US for only a little more so I’ll give it a try there. Wish me luck.

Mistakes were made.

Kanazawa station doesn’t have many options for breakfast. I was counting on going to Tully’s and getting a breakfast hot dog but it turns out they don’t open until 10am. My train was at 9:07am. I just went to the 7Eleven and grabbed a coffee and a melon pan. My sister said, “I bet it wasn’t as good as the one in Juso.” Ha.

Oh, I downed the coffee while standing in line waiting for the train because the whole trip is only 18 minutes. I really didn’t need to rush. 18 minutes is plenty to enjoy a melon pan and coffee.

Arriving so early meant I could actually get a morning set in Toyama. I went to a litlle bakery hoping to get some toast. THEY WERE OUT OF TOAST. (Turns out they just weren’t doing the toast during Golden Week.) I got a cold hot dog and cold hash browns. I could’ve gone to Mickey D’s. I even asked two businessmen who both had McCafe coffees about how the coffee was at a Japanese Mickey D’s and they said it was good. The bakery coffee was not as good as the coffee I get at my local Mickey D’s in Portland

The weather forecast called for thunderstorms but I headed out anyway. Went to the Loft to ask about the pen I’m looking for. I already found one silver Uniball Zento Signature for my sister but I kind of want the brass one but I’m probably going to have to order it online for twice the price. I’m OK with that. I keep looking for it because it’s kind of a fun quest.

Anyway, it was off to the castle (a reproduction of course). There’s a history museum inside the castle and lots of SE Asians inside (about a third of the patrons). A couple of Filipino families and a couple of Chinese-speaking families.

I also went to the art museum on the castle grounds which were a private collection that is now shown to the public. It had some very nice scrolls and screens.

I wish I could post the live photo of this. It was really coming down and it was also quite blustery.

I decided to walk the 15 minutes to the Glass Art museum and on the way there was a Daiei department store where I went to look for my pen. Of course, no dice. Everyone is pretty nice about it, though. They were also having a Hokkaido food fair and I looked through that as well.

I spent a couple of hours making my way through the Glass Art museum. It was pretty cool. I was kind of weirded out when the first exhibit was all by Dale Chihuly. I thought, I know that name. Born in Taco Town, I mean, Tacoma and got his MFA at RISD. Quit famous and did some interetsing work. Unfortunately I did see some signs requesting that you not post pictures online. I only took one photo anyway. Here’s one of the museum from the top floor though.

The next floor down was an exhibit by Jiri Suchi, an instructor from the Czech Republic who was about to move back to Europe. I kept seeing a guy standing around and thought, is he the guy or am I just being that Asian guy who thinks all white guys look alike? I finally asked him and it was him! He answered all my dumb questions about his art and I even got a selfie. I do not know why my eyes are closed and I was talking during the picture. I guess I never take selfies and I was a little nervous talking to an artist at his exhibition.

After seeing four floors of glass art, I was feeling a liitle off. I realized I hadn’t eaten any lunch and it was 2pm! I decided just to get a snack at the art museum. Brewing a cup of coffee and cutting a piece of cheesecake (who am I kidding, the pieces are pre-sliced) took them over 20 minutes. I think they just forgot about me.

Would anyone with any sense go across town to the beach on a day with thunderstorms and high wind warnings? Second question: do I have a lot of common sense?

There are fishing boats near the beach and I asked a guy walking around if anyone goes fishing in this weather and he looked at me like I was nuts.

Norm from Tokyo Lens has shamisen lessons and there’s a shop around here where he gets the shamisen he sells online. I decided to go take a look and walked 20 minutes in the wind and rain. My Wirecutter-recommended folding umbrella held up incredibly well. I guess you shouldn’t just walk to a store during Golden Week and expect much (I wasn’t expecting much, just messing around.) It was closed. That’s OK. I had to get my steps in (though I didn’t hit 15k today).

I got on the tram to head back to the station. The tram station was weird. The old station was a community space and the new waiting area just looked like a covered bus stop.

I’m embarrassed to say that when we got to the main train station I pushed my way through the people who seemed to be standing around thinking they weren’t getting off. I didn’t look back but they were probably all getting off but were being incredibly patient. I’m not sure.

I got my local EkiTag (an electronic stamp-collecting game) and headed to the hotel.

I had to juggle hotels at the last minute to see friends and I switched from an APA hotel to the JAL Hotel for two nights. I guess I splurged because it’s $283.91USD for two nights and I’m on the top floor. I think the APA hotel was going to be almost as expensive so I decided to just get a nice room. I’m sharing a wall with the elevator and I hear nothing, which means excellent construction. I have a Nespresso machine in my room and they gave me barley tea and two rice crackers.

I was busy writing this nonsense until I realized I’d better go get dinner. I told the guy at the front desk I wanted to try Zetteria (a local fast-food hamburger chain) and he said BUT YOU’RE IN TOYAMA so have some of our great fish!. I went to his suggestged spot, Toyama Sushi. There’s two next to each other and one has sushi on a track. I picked the non-track restaurant and waited in line for what felt like a long time because it was cold outside. It was worth it. Once again I thought I was spending a ton of money but dinner was only $35 USD!

I didn’t get much breakfast and had no real lunch so I ate two pieces of the sushi before I remembered to take a picture. Same with the white shrimp tempura. (So good.)

As I was leaving I asked the lady next to me if I could take a picture of hers since she got the same thing I ordered. She was taking pictures with her phone and I gook a quick pic. Then she got out her DSLR and said she had to get a good picture. Hahaha.

I was still hungry and I thought about BK and Zetteria. There were way more people at Burger King when I went by and almost nobody at the Zetteria but instead I went and bought sweets. Not one but TWO. A cake from Fujiya (and a ¥5 fork) and a financier from the German Bakery.

They packed the cake with a mini cold pack!

The cake wasn’t too sweet. The financier was a financier.

And oh boy, I forgot to look for something my sister said she wanted. I still have time.