My Spring Vacation (Part 2)...

Part 2 of your heroine's adventure took place in the lovely prefecture of Ishikawa. Shiloh, Gen, Alice, the Hot Scot and I piled into a mini van and made our way to the capital city of Kanazawa early Thursday morning. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones on the road. We were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours and we didn't even leave our prefecture yet! But we were together, we had tunes and jokes, a beautiful warm day and the freedom of stopping and starting when and where we wanted to. We saw some beautiful cherry blossom trees in Shirwaka-go, a place well known for it's gassho houses which we stopped to shoot and then continued on. It took us about 7 hours to reach out destination when it usually takes about four, but we got there.

So the plan was to camp and BBQ for three nights and that's what we did. Unlike my previous experience camping in Japan, making camp in Ishikawa wasn't so easy breezy. Some camp sites required a reservation of up to 2 weeks prior to your intended stay! But we got lucky every step of the way and found sites that were convenient and somewhat easy to find. Since there were five of us, we had two seperate tents with Dave and I sharing one. It was pretty small but very cozy and warm even though it got a little chilly at night. A week prior to our road trip, it got pretty cold and it hit me that I was going camping by the sea in May. Oy...but a week and several sleeping bags later, everything was toasty.

We spent a lot of time in the van driving around the coast and I was amazed by all the amazing scenery we saw and the fine weather we had. I can't really remember all the notable sights (I guess they weren't so notable after all), but we visited one place that was breathtaking (see left). I don't remember the name of the place, but I really loved it. We only stayed one night but it was awesome. We also met a group of wild Thai boys who hooted and hollered late into the night. We chatted with one of them and he had the cutest/thickest accent I've heard here in Japan. He was a trip.

And that's about it. It really was one of those "you should have been there" trips. What can I say? We laughed, we played, we talked (maybe too much - my bad) and they went swimming. I want summer to come as badly as everyone else, but I haven't lost my damn mind. It was too damn cold. The water was so cold, it even looked cold. When Dave got in, I heard him hollering from from the other side of the beach. He screamed, "there is no pleasure in this". Indeed.