The market consists of many seafood stalls and restaurants.
Everything looked fresh and and there were also live crabs and fish.
The market was lively with shop owners and staff were touting for the passers by.

We finally entered one of the seafood rice bowl restaurant’s which looked very appealing and offered a good price too. You could choose from 5 kinds of seafood on top of the rice. The price was around 1500 yen which we thought was quite reasonable for what you got. The Seafood was fresh and delicious! Although the salmon was frozen when it was served, we defrosted the salmon putting them under the warm rice then it successfully defrosted ok.

Just walking around and looking at the various seafood and fish stalls and restaurants was an enjoyable experience and fun to do.

Then it was time to make the long journey to Akita back not the main island of Honshu.

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Although the journey was not to bad for the Shinkansen is very fast and comfortable. Though we noticed there is less room on the Shinkansens leaving Tokyo, compared to for example the Shinkansens in Kyushu.
To get from Kanazawa to Aomori involved two Shinkansens, then a transfer at the end to a local train.
The first Shinkansen was the Kanazawa Shinkansen & the second was the Tohoku Shinkansen.

Catching the Kanazawa Shinkansen to get from Kanazawa to Aomori

Transferring to the second Shinkansen to get to Aomori in Japan.

Once we got to the Aomori train station June realised that she was not sure if she had booked the hotel accommodation, for the website she had used had crashed during the booking. She checked online and yes the booking had not gone through. Not a problem through Aormori was not busy and the Onsen Hotel we wanted had plenty of availability.

Arriving at Aomori station in Japan

Finding out that we had no hotel reservation in Aomori, Japan.

As mentioned we were staying in an Onsen hotel, interestingly enough the Onsen is actually open to the public at a reasonable price. So it was quite busy. Nige also noted that Aomori people seem to like their TV for there was one in the Onsen sauna.

Next we tried to find a local restaurant preferably iszakaya (pub food). Unfortunately the area we were looking at was full of Japanese chain izakaya’s and we ended up going to a Kagoshima chain izakaya, which was a little overpriced and not so tasty.
Again they had TV’s in the restaurant booths.

Having Kagoshima izakaya chain restaurant food in Aomori, Japan.

Walking around Aomori town centre at night time.

Everyone in Aomori used different accent of Japanese, called ‘Tsugaru-ben’. Aomori dialect.

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Catching Thunderbird Express from Kyoto to Kanazawa

The train station at Kanazawa was nice and modern and had recently added a Shinkansen line (Bullet train).

Arriving at the nice modern train station of Kanazawa

Unfortunately it was raining in Kanazawa which limited our opportunities to have a look around.

Exploring Kanazawa in the rain

The hotel was a bit larger and more comfortable than your average business style hotel.

We decided on choosing a Yakiniku restaurant close by because of the weather.

The Yakiniku restaurant offered all you can eat course (tabehoudai). We decided on the 1980 yen course and it was with the price!
Beer was also reasonable price and Nige decided on the trying a dai nama for his second beer and showed the difference in size between a chou nama (medium beer) and dai nama (large beer).

Having all you can eat barbecue (tabehoudai) and drinking chu & dai nama. (medium & large beer)

Small streets in Kanazawa were are authentic Edo style and are very beautiful to walk around.

We made a note to visit Kanazawa again to spend more time to proper explore and experience what Kanazawa has to offer.

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We then moved from Osaka to Nara. Unfortunately due to the heavy rain we had to cut short our trip in Nara.

Firstly we went to Nara koen, or Nara park where lots of deer were just hanging around waiting to be feed. Be careful when handing rice crackers, deer have been known to aggressively harass . (You can buy rice crackers for deers at the park, you cannot feed them anything else.) In fact the rice cracker vendors will react vocally if you attempt to feed the deer with anything other than what is bought from the vendors themselves.

Passing through the gates to get to Nara Temple.

Then we went visiting Nara Buddha, Todai-ji Daibutsuden (Todai temple Buddha house). It is a famous huge buddha. You can walk around the Buddhas. There’s one big buddha & other 2 smaller buddhas.

Visiting the famous Buddha of Nara, Japan

The Nara koen park is huge, you can walk around and see other temples or shrines if the weather is good.

Nara is an extremely popular tourist spot even when the weather is bad there will always be a large volume of tourists.

Nara is well accessible from either Osaka or Kyoto.

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We went to Ikebukuro station to buy JR pass which we had prebooked in Perth Australia. We gave the staff exchange order with some documents and was successful.

Then we had cheap Tonkotsu ramen and went to Ueno park for Hanami. We did not do proper Hanami (have any drink under the trees) but were walking under the cherry blossom and it was so beautiful.

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