Wandering Fel

 Do you know what’s the best thing to do after a morning walk by the river? It’s a visit to an old town in Japan. This time we are going to visit Takayama Old Town. The old town has so many kind of shops from daily household shop, souvenir shop, skincare shop, food shops and even sake shop. While all of these shops are charming, I really recommend a visit to the sake shop. This is because the shop owner will allow you to taste the sake for free (while he secretly hoping you to buy few bottles of sake of course). The shop owner (or the tour guide, if you are joining a tour group) will give you a picture of all kind of sake which are available for testing. If you’d like sweeter kind of sake, you can mention the word “amai onegaisimasu” and the shop owner will understand. Well it sounds like broken Japanese I admit, but at least the shop owner understood. Hahaha. 

 

Since the weather is pretty cool outside it’s probably the right time to try out hot sake, especially since it’s only 500 JPY. My brother is not slow to take the offer and the shop owner immediately asked us to go to the drinking area (which looks like a simple cafe) where he puts the machine to heat the sake. He gave us a timer too and told us two simple words “three minutes”. I suppose we just needed to wait for three minutes before the timer alarm us to take the hot sake from the machine. The three minutes rules work for all kind of things I suppose, not just cup noodles. There were no other customers except for two Japanese tourists drinking but I had to admit it was a bit too early for sake-drinking. But hey, we may not be able to visit this place again so cheers!

 

We spent around 15 - 20 minutes drinking sake until our Mum started to nag us to finish drinking it faster cause she wanted to check the other shops but reluctant to go first by herself. But mom, I don’t think sake is meant for one-shot unless we are super depressed about life. Oh well, I eventually tried to finish it faster with the help of my brother but I did not leave the store without taking one cute souvenir, Sarubobo doll in wooden sake cup. Kawaiidesune~

 

 

I reached the town of Kanazawa at dinner time and the sun has already set by then. I honestly just wanted to laze on my bed by then after a fun and tiring day at Shirakawago but Avia tour will not drop us at hotel directly without dinner. And the dinner that they gonna give to us is a buffet. Oh wow, buffet? Just like that I perked up again. I find Western buffet in Japan is pretty interesting. They have a mixture of Japanese items such as tempura and miso soup and Western dishes such as pasta, pizza, salad, cream soup. They have seasonal dessert too and back then in end March was strawberry season so the desserts are all made from strawberry. Strawberry cake, pudding, ice cream, you name it. Since the tour have booked the seats for us, the restaurant have assigned us certain tables which we have to STRICTLY follow because we are not the only diners who booked the restaurant. Some of the tour participants changed the seats by themselves and it confused the waiters/ waitresses so they ask them to move back to their assigned seats. Japan is all about rules and neat order I suppose. 

 

We proceeded to check in at our hotel, APA Villa Hotel Kanazawa/ Katamachi and the hotel lobby is so tiny we have to queue for a while for the small lift which bring us to our hotel room. The hotel looks like apartment from the inside though. We quickly put our luggages in our room and got ready to wander around the streets near the hotel. There are two convenience stores near our hotel, 7-11 and Family Mart which are located right opposite each other. I love visiting Japanese convenience stores although these stores must be normal to the residents. A lot of office workers have just left their office and we saw some of them taking cab together seems to be getting ready to go for a drink or something. Some of them just bought their dinner at convenience stores. One or two dudes were reading manga at the stores too. And there are soft porn magazines available and yeah they are displayed in the open. 

 

By the way, yakisoba (fried noodle) bread does exist. I wonder how does it taste but I was still full from the buffet. Oh well. 

 

Few blocks away from the bustling intersection where the convenience stores are located, there are some quiet street alleys which have a lot of what looks like izakayas. My brother was actually kinda curious and feel like going inside one of them but we figured that izakaya is probably not the place to bring our Mum. I suppose we can go to izakaya next time my dear Brother.