The Return of Jack Frost

One nondescript weekend in November, Isabel, Andrew and I made our way up to Lake Tazawa to get our (heinously cheap) ski rentals for the year.

If you’re an ALT or Akita International University student もごころ(Magokoro) rentals near Lake Tazawa if your place. ￥4000 for skis, poles and boots for the season.

Gardeners in Kenroku-en

That evening we joined in a board game night in Kakunodate, where a local business owner opened her restaurant for us to take over and fed us for a small fee.

The next morning Isabel and myself were awoken by Andrew’s chilling announcement of ‘guys, I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s winter’. Sure enough the view outside his apartment window was off a 4 inch thick blanket of snowy white. We were not prepared for this.

After recording their latest podcast for their series J.E.T set pod (shamless plug: can be found on sound cloud) which I was invited to make a guest appearance in, Andrew and I headed out into the elements and down to the local community centre to get bundled, tugged and bound into kimono. The girls got a chance to wear a traditional wedding robe, that not only turned out to be rather heavy, but also cost thousands of dollars just to rent for a couple of days.

Kenroku-en feat. trees with snow ropes

Fast forward to 6am Thursday morning and Steph, Liam, Kate and myself had bundled into Kate’s car and begun making our way south to Kanazawa, Ishikawa prefecture. Our first stop was the Kenroku-en gardens, boasted as one of Japan’s three most beautiful gardens, and fortunately due to how far south we were, still shrouded in koyo.

Unable to resist the siren call of coffee shops, we stopped in at ‘full of beans’ for lunch. After a short recuperation at the Airbnb (I’ll leave out the hectic parking situation caused by the impossibly narrow road) we walked back down into the CBD, our target: The Cottage, Irish café and restaurant. Walking into the small cosy restaurant decorated with fairy lights, it really did feel like Christmas. The owners, Tony and Momo, were fantastic hosts (to the point where we all decided we wanted them to adopt us) and we were treated to roast chicken, pizza and tea. We spent the rest of the evening wandering through Kanazawa’s Tea district and hopped between a couple of bars.

Late night in the tea district

Friday morning it was another reasonably early start, a short stop for a Lawson breakfast, and then inland to visit the thatched roof Villages of Gokayama in Toyama and Shirakawago in Gifu Prefecture.

We were not prepared for the weather. I have never seen such large clumps of snow in my life. At risk of sounding counterintuitive it would have been better if it had been colder. As it was the temperature was still above zero and as a result we spent the morning trekking around in slush, feeling our toes from cold, to freezing, to numb. I had previously visited Shirakawago in January with Henry on our winter holiday but the scenery had been nothing like this. The thatched rooves were sprinkled with white dust and the view from the lookout at Shirakawago was stunning.

Shirakawago, Gifu

There may have been a small debacle when Kate lost her go-pro down the snowy bank and we had to ask the shop assistant for something to retrieve it with. The young girl cracked up laughing when we explained what had happened and hurried off to grab tools for us. Armed with a snow scoop and pole we tested the stability of the section of bank before Kate and Liam climbed over the fence (we had drawn a small crowd by this stage). With Kate hanging onto Liam, Liam hanging onto the fence, myself holding onto Liam and Steph to Kate’s bag, Liam lowered Kate down into the snow and undergrowth. A few minutes later we returned triumphant to the gift shop to return the snow scoop and pole.

The decision to return to the Airbnb to thaw out ( I had to wring my socks out once back in the car) was unanimous and we swung by the McDonald’s drive through to avoid having to put our damp shoes back on.

Shirakawago, Gifu

That evening we found a Thai restaurant for dinner and watched the skies flash with lightning before unleashing a hail storm that turned the ground white in minutes. We continued to partake in our new favourite pastime – bar hopping. A favourite for the night was the Kanazawa music bar where all four of us fell a little bit in love with the stunning lass who was the designated record disk jockey. We also couldn’t resist a trip to H&M.

Tojinbo Coast, Fukui

Saturday saw us ticking off the 4^th prefecture for our trip; Fukui. The coastal drive took us to the basalt cliffs of Tojinbo. The first word that springs to mind on seeing the hexagonal stone pillars is ‘rugged’. With dramatic chasms and bluffs carved out by the violent waves with area is sadly also a popular spot for suicides (after our trip to Kegon falls we seem to be making an inadvertent habit of this…). In the early noughties a retired police officer grew tired of fishing bodies from the sea and began patrolling the cliffs for people looking to jump, he and his organisation is said to have saved over 500 lives over 11 years. The popularity of Pokémon Go has also helped to deter suicides due to the Poké stops at the coast drawing visitors after dark where it would previously have been deserted.

Oshima Bridge

We wandered back up to the lane of shops to indulge in some of the local delicacy, crab (served by a very bewildered Jii-chan who seemed perplexed by our general existence). A short stop for kinako (roasted soy bean flour) flavoured soft cream and we continued around the coast to the Oshima Bridge which spanned from the mainland to Ojima Island.

Returning to Kanzawa we spent the rest of the evening bar and restaurant hopping, our food stops including hot cakes and a Korean restaurant. Wandering the city looking for another bar to grace Liam spotted coloured lights on the 9^th storey of a building so, drawn like moths, we ventured over to check it out.

The small selection of soft cream flavours we had to choose from

On arrival we were delighted to discover that it was an ‘ethnic garden bar’, paying our ￥500 for a self-poured drink we collapsed into the outdoor furniture style table and chairs and toasted to finding somewhere interesting. About 15 minutes later we noticed a pole being erected on the small stage, then the lights were turned down, then we noticed that about 98% of the clientele were male.
And then we noticed the slim, bikini clad Thai lady in platform stilettos making her way to the stage…  

Following the events of the garden bar we spent the next hour meandering through the streets and around the drunken salarymen going down like dominoes left right and centre. We finally came to a French bar that had no seating charge. The three brothers that ran the place were half French and half Japanese, with their father being from Kanazawa they had visited every year before deciding to open a bar together. Seeming to enjoy the English conversation, one of the brothers came over for a chat and we talked about standing out in Japan as ‘foreigners’ (a word that I have come to despise) and how in spite of being half Japanese and speaking the language almost fluently, he was still an outsider.

Slightly less impressive than the Kurobe Dam

Sunday saw another early start and brisk breakfast of Lawson coffee to fuel our long journey northward. We had planned to visit the Shomyo falls and Kurobe damn in Toyama on the way home but after taking a 2 hour detour to get there, were informed that due to the unexpected amount of snow, they were unreachable unless we took an additional four hour detour and approached the mountain path from the other side.

Defeated, we returned to the coast and continued north through Niigata and the rain that we were convinced had stayed there since our decent on Thursday morning.

As I’m writing this on the 1^st of December, the first official day of winter, a sheet of white has slowly been spreading over Konoura.

Winter has come again.



And having just typed this my JTE returned to the staffroom from the corridor and curled into a ball in front of the heater like a cat before the fireplace.