Noto peninsula and the Seihakusai festival 3-5.5.2003
Noto (能都半島) is a relatively sparsely inhabited peninsula
reaching some 70 kilometers to the Japan sea. In the beginning of May
2003 I rented a car with Olo, Konrad, Nina and Lubi for three days,
spending the first two days driving around the peninsula and then
heading to Nanao (七尾) for Seihakusai (青柏祭) festival.
Especially the west coast of Noto has many impressive rock
formations and nice villages by the sea. Our first target was Gammon
(巌門), which gathers perhaps the biggest load of tourists with it's
impressive cliffs, including a stone tunnel formed by waves rushing
through it. From Gammon we took the coastal route and found the two
next superb places by accident using the method "Hey, see that bunch
of cars stopped by the road - there must be something interesting".
The first of them was a beautiful shrine built between two small isles
and the second Yoshitsune no Funakakushi (義経の舟隠し).
Funakakushi means a hiding place for a ship and Yoshitsune was the
name of some ancient warrior who according the legend had been hiding
with his ship there. It a few dozen meters long narrow passage from
the sea towards inland, indeed a good place to hide. However, we
didn't just take a look at the marked sight but turned right and
climbed down where the cliff was not so steep. It was low tide and
going down revealed all the details of the geological formations:
different colors, small caves, complex shapes, in short one of the
most varied rock sceneries I've seen anywhere. A few locals were
standing on the outer cliffs fishing and enjoying the sunny day.
We had still time before 17:00 which seems to be the time when all
the sights close in Japan, so we paid a visit to Sōji-ji temple
(総持寺) and appreciated it's nice surroundings. Then we continued to
a small village called Minazuki (皆月) where we had made a reservation
at a youth hostel. It had simple but nice tatami rooms, some of them
with direct view to the sea. Unfortunately they didn't serve dinner
and apparently there weren't any restaurants in the village either so
we had to drive about 15 kilometers back to get food. Then back to the
hostel where we had a beer each chatting with the owner and a couple
of other guests before going to sleep. One of them was an eccentric
Japanese who had tried to learn English completely by himself -
resulting in a half-decent vocabulary but next to no knowledge about
sentence structure. He refused to speak Japanese and wanted to use his
"English" even when talking to the hostel owner who naturally didn't
understand a thing.
The next day we started early to see the morning market in Wajima
(輪島) around 8 o'clock. The famous market turned out to be of only
medium interest, it might have been more enticing if we would have had
means and knowledge how to prepare some of the special seafood and
other local goodies sold there. The best sights of the day were a
couple of huge old thatched-roof houses in Sosogi (曽々木) and a
slope full of tiny rice known as Senmaida (千枚田) or Thousand paddies
which was by the roadside between Wajima and Sosogi. We also had fun
at the lighthouse at the outermost cape of Noto, where we found a
stone plate on the ground showing directions to some major locations
in the world and used small stones to add a few relevant cities they
seemed to have missed. :-)
It was a bit rainy and cold so we gave up our initial plan to camp and
called another youth hostel. Surprisingly they had room despite it was
the Golden week (very popular time to take a short vacation in Japan)
but we called a bit too late to have dinner. Too bad, because they
were serving some delicious-looking food just as we arrived, and the
restaurant they recommended as "backup plan" had maybe the slowest
service and worst tempura I've ever got in Japan. The hostel owner's
instructions to a nearby hot spring were also heavily misleading, but
after a good deal of driving around we finally found it and had a
relaxing bath in the outside pools. The hostel itself was superb,
again a nice location by the sea, clean Japanese-style rooms and
friendly service.
On Monday we drove to Nanao (七尾) to see the Seihakusai (青柏祭)
festival. We had prepared for traffic jams but the trip went
surprisingly smoothly and we even found a parking place less than a
kilometer from the center. As many festivals in Japan, Seihakusai
featured a lot of people wearing bright-colored festival clothes,
having fun while not hiding of being a bit drunk, different kinds of
music and presentations plus numerous small booths selling food and
gadgets. The special part of Seihakusai were three huge 20-meter high
festival floats which were dragged around the town. The height was
apparently dictated by the electric power lines which were less than a
meter higher than the tops of the floats.
The float pulling was definitely worth seeing but the music and dance
program for the afternoon didn't seem to be as good as we had already
seen on various occasions in Kanazawa. Therefore we continued to
Notojima (能登島) island which we hadn't explored yet. I took a swim
in the sea, others labeling me as a crazy Finn and just watching
without any intention to join. Actually the water was quite warm, I'd
estimate 16-18 degrees.
On the way back to Kanazawa we had still a chance too see sunset at
the "beach highway", a five-kilometer stretch of beach which can be
legally driven by car. Maybe there have been disputes over it in the
past but at least currently the local authorities seem to consider it
a permanent tourist attraction: the exits leading to it from the
highway are clearly marked and impossible to miss. A perfect place to
take photos for car advertisements - I have one to sell for Toyota if
they're interested. :-)
Copyright Arto Teräs
<ajt@iki.fi> 2002-2003.
Redistribution of this document as a whole or any of the pictures
individually is permitted in any medium provided this copyright
notice is preserved.
Last update 17.07.2003.
