After I finished up with the Dinosaur museum, I jumped back on the train which took me to Kanazawa.  This was the biggest place along my train route and allowed me a good place to settle down for a few of the things I wanted to do.  I opted to stay n Kanazawa for three nights and had a few activities planned for my stay.  I arrived at my hostel, dropped my bag and then met a few people that wanted to grab a beer to two in town.

I saw that there was a brewery in town and so suggested we start there.  Oriental Brewing was just down the street from our hostel and was very clearly aimed at ex pats as prices were artificially high and all of the people in the joint were foreigners.  They had 5 beers of their own on tap but no flights, so I had two pints and they were pretty tasty.  A few of the people in the group had not had much craft beer and they also enjoyed it.

After the brewery we opted to try and find a local bar that had a good vibe.  We headed into town and wandered around for a little bit not really sure where we wanted to go.  We walked around town for a pretty long time and eventually decided to head into an izakaya for a few bites to eat.  After a bit of food we headed to a bar that our hostel host had suggested and it was great.  Beer was decently cheap and they had mega jugs full of purple drank which we shared among our group.

The evening was really fun and we had a pretty great random assortment of people.  The next morning I woke up and went for an adventure run around the city of Kanazawa.  I headed to downtown, checked it out and then looped around to the castle grounds which had Japanese gardens, castles and wonderfully kept grounds.

The castle was pretty cool but the gardens surrounding the castle were also pretty nice.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves on this one.

The gardens were pretty nice and I felt kind of bad about running through it, so instead I slowed my pace and took a nice easy stroll through the garden before continuing my run.  I ran by an apparent brewery by the river but it was closed and I couldn’t figure out when it was open.  The river was pretty nice to run by and there were several other runners on the trail.

After finishing my run, I decided to jump on a train and go somewhere.  I looked at the map and saw that there was a spur line I had access too that ended in a place called Wakura Onsen.  In Japan, an Onsen town is one that is near a hot spring and therefore there are lot’s of natural hot spring spas, dotted around the town.  In this case I was going in blind as I had done no research on what there was to do in the town.  The first thing I noticed when I arrived in town was that there appeared to be cute egg mascots dotted all around the town.  The traffic cones even had eggs on them.

At that point i figured I should at least do a google search to see what there was to do in this town.  Turns out they are famous for their public square, where there is a place to cook your eggs in natural hot spring water.  On my walk through town, I saw a park with even more egg statues.

At the edge of the park, there was a public footbath which had fresh natural hot spring water flwoing into it and there were a ton of townspeople hanging out soaking their feet.  I joined them for a little while and had a nice soak.  It is also very interesting that in Japan, the different hot springs have information boards which share the mineral contents of each of the baths.  It was all in Japanese so i had no idea what it said, but it was kind neat that they did this.

The view of the lake also really nice!

I had a great soak and then continued my wander through the city.

There were a lot of high end resorts taking advantage of the natural hot spring water and many of them had fancy spas.  I wandered through town and eventually found the town square which had the egg cooking fountain.   It was near a pumping station that apparently pumps water to much of the town through what appears to be municipal water pipes.

The fountain was pretty small but there were several locals hanging out waiting for their eggs to cook.  Some people had a full dozen eggs and others had a few less.

The little sign near the fountain said that cooking eggs for 15 minutes would make a soft boiled egg where 20 minutes would result in a hard boiled egg.  I didn’t have any eggs so i went to a nearby supermarket.  I looked up how to say egg in Japanese and made my best effort to communicate what i wanted.  Eventually the lady figured it out and piled 4 eggs into a little bag suitable for cooking in the fountain and I was on my way for about a dollar.

I put my eggs in the water and then sat down to wait for my eggs to cook.  There were several locals all waiting around and some of them smiled at me and attempted to say a few things to me with varying success.

After about 20 minutes, I checked on my eggs giving the first one a try.  It ended up being a little soft so put in the remaining three eggs in for a little longer.

The rest of the eggs weren’t much more cooked, but I made it work!  I guess I was eating eggs for lunch that day.

After finishing my eggs I headed towards the public Onsen in town which is the one that is relatively cheap but is very no frills.  I got my first chance to bath with naked Asian men in Korea, so was much more ready for this experience as it was very similar.  Outside of the public onsen was another egg statue and fountain.

I obviously could not take pictures in the bathing area, but it was just a few pools of varying temperatures as well as a sauna and outdoor pool.  The set up was similar to the Korean one where everyone was naked and there were parents with their kids and everything was just super casual.  I had a great, relaxing time and came away feeling nice and refreshed.

After finishing up at the public bath, it was time to head back to the train station to catch my train nack to Kanazawa.  That night there wasn’t too much going on at the hostel, so I stayed in and caught up on some research for the next days adventure.

The next day I embarked on the Takayama Kurobe Alpine Route for which I have already posted a blog post about since it was so cool.  You can find this

HERE

I woke up super early in the morning, boarded my bullet train and was off on a full day adventure in the mountains.  Please do check out the post above for an awesome recap of this adventure.

I got home in the evening and the prior evening we had made arrangements to go out with the manager of the Hostel for a beer or two.  He brought us to one of his favorite places which was just the type of place I like.   Hole in the wall, cheap and great atmosphere.  We had a few sate and drank a few beers and Shaq told us about his business and how he became the owner of a hostel.

The night was equal parts chill and fun and I had a great time chatting with Shaq and my Australian friend who was also doing some long term travel.  We eventually called it a night and returned to the hostel for a good nights sleep.

In the morning it was time to move on from Kanazawa and make my way to the next destination along the train route.  Spoiler Alert, there are monkeys, beer and adorable older Japanese people as well as a really cool train.