Down By The Seaside

For the first time we seemed to wake at 8am today relatively easily, we must have had a good sleep! Our goal today was to get to the Japanese Alps by 6pm and take in the scenery as we drove up the west coast then down to the mountains.

It was interesting heading north to see the jagged hills on the right covered in trees with towns and villages on the left. We thought the mix of Japanese houses with their sloping roofs, and the hills, looked just like Switzerland, and we hadn't even reached the alps yet. We had great fun jesting by asking each other "Where is that town?" or "Where does that road go?" and answering "Fukui", then responding "Naw, Fukui too!". Apologies mothers, but don't worry, that's the only time we'll let Ms H get away with saying that too us!

As soon as we hit the coast it was seaside town after seaside town for miles, all seemed full of Sunday day-trippers out for a swim, alongside some fabulous coastline. These are mainly my blips and extras. We eventually shot over to the express-way to get a move on. The non-seaside photo is of a baseball net which there are loads in each town or city.

Some driving anecdotes now.... most of the express-ways had tolls and as I said yesterday, the ETC card in our car paid the toll automatically as you were driving through. We realised today that our satnav in the car, as it listed the next highway exits, advised how much the toll would be on leaving the express-way. So the longer you drove on it, the higher the cost. At one stage we were up to about £28 (oof) but the good news was when you exited, it was only £17. It looked like if you didn't use the express-ways it would take much longer and you'd use more fuel. We'll see when we return the car. Oh yes, next anecdote... speed limits... 80kmh is the highest I've seen. I've just double checked and that is almost 50mph. Almost every other car was doing far more than that, like 100kmh (62mph) or 120kmh (74mph). I googled it and the advice is, most motorists go faster than the speed limit. I have only seen one police car so far which was on it's way to help recover a bumper that had come off a car and slow down traffic by waving flags!! Anyway, googling more tells me they don't bother if you are 20-30kmh faster than the limit! Wow... it seems crazy, why have a low limit? Even the satnav doesn't shout out you are speeding until you are 20kmh over the speed limit... and before both of our mothers question why I know that, I read it in the manual. Me speed? Really?

Ok back to the journey... when we reach Toyama we began heading south to the mountains... we had loads of tunnels, snow-sheds and rock-sheds to go through (some tunnels so far have been several miles long!) while winding down the valleys beside a river - it was quite stunning.

We reached our Onsen hotel (natural hot springs and half board) in time for dinner at 6.30pm. It was a traditional dinner we've been a bit worried about for the past week or so... none of us liking seafood or raw fish etc... so it was a bit of a risk. We were served many small courses while our individual little stoves cooked Hida beef, potato, rice and veg. While it is cooking you are supposed to eat the food already served. When deciding to come here, I decided not to eat seafood or raw fish... but they brought it all out anyway. I took the plunge and had some raw tuna, salmon and another fish - I survived. I left the big prawns. The hida beef was lovely. It was quite an experience.. Ms H was brave enough to try a few things she had not tried before, which was good. Although we didn't eat everything, we were full. We walked a bit then went to the open air hot springs which were set in amongst massive boulders. There were male, female and family springs, and you were given some clothing to wear. The water was toasty and it was a lovely evening - I may blip them tomorrow. It's all quite confusing here... when we arrived our shoes were taken off and we use slippers sitting at reception, another pair for outside, another for the toilet, Washing/showering also looks complicated which we will learn tomorrow!

We've heard there were reports about heat wave etc and people dying here... it was already very hot in our first week, about 32 and today it reached 38, but we were mainly in the car and could cope walking outside for up to 15 mins... we'll see how we cope tomorrow!

On a side note... a facebook post advised us that a woman back home who'd we met through the school and sort of knew, had just died after a few months of being ill. She'd been very open about her condition on facebook, always taking a positive and light-hearted approach to what must have been a worrying time for her family. But in the past week it worsened and died unexpectedly to us. Her positivity kind of made it not quite as serious as it must have been, so we were all shocked to hear the news.