Eastern Noto Peninsula Drive - Ishikawa
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July 2, 2015 - Eastern Noto Peninsula Drive - Ishikawa
Well after a drizzly day, I was happy to see that the weather had improved. As such - I decided to continue my driving holiday around the Noto Peninsula by covering the sparsely populated east coast.
As you can see, I kind of completed a U shape around the east coast. Overall, I covered around 150 KM's today.
More detailed map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zp0MtAJdtIro.kxeafFLd0Sjg&usp=sharing
For today, I visited the following attractions in this order:
(1) Senmaida Rice Fields
(2) Sosogi Coast
(3) Tokikuni Residences
(Unnamed) Suzu Eden Mura
(4) Rokkozaki Lighthouse
(5) Gunship Island
(6) Yanagida Park & Blueberry Picking
(7) Gyoneji Temple
For my first stop, I went to the Senmaida Rice Fields which looks a lot like Vietnam. As you can see, its quite beautiful and like many places on the Noto Peninsula there is a road station to buy omiyage and food.
For my second stop, I visited the Tokikuni houses which are not as nice as the other samurai house lower down the peninsula on the west coast. For one of the houses it costs 500 yen to enter, for the other 620 yen. Unless you have a thing for old houses - I'd skip these.
Another 20 minutes drive away is Suzu Eden Mura or the Salt Factory. It costs 100 yen to enter and is quite interesting One thing I noticed is that as I left most locations the same tour bus would pull up. Interesting....
The beautiful but expensive Lamp no yoda. Located close is the new Blue Cave which honestly looks like a tourist trap. For 500 yen you can climb a 10 meter lookout to see a slightly better view and for 1000 yen you can go and look at the blue cave. Even though I did not enter - it's kind of put me off entering everything like I normally do.
One place which is a bit off the tourist trail is Yanagida Park which I thought was meant to cost money to enter. However - when I visited they just waved me through which was a bit strange. Well anyway - this is a large park which has a large number of hydrangeas, lilies and cherry blossom trees. It's also a great place for kids to come to have a run. It's nothing really special though but it's a nice walk at least.
As I was driving away from Yanagida Park I noticed lots of Blueberry signs and lots of blueberry bushes. As such - I decided to visit. For 1000 yen, you get a reasonably small bucket to fill (around 250 grams) and one hour to pick you berries. It seems as though the high cost is for a reason - you pick your berries but eat 3 times as much as you take home. I'm also aware why blueberries are so expensive at home - they take ages to pick!
For my last visit, I went to Gyoneji Temple which is again known for it's hydrangeas. It's free to enter and has a nice walk around the back for around 15 minutes.
Even though I enjoyed today, I felt as though there was not actually that much to do on the east coast of the peninsula. It was however a rather relaxing day which is something that I've needed after doing a little bit too much in the last couple of days. For tomorrow, I'll be driving down to Wakura Onsen.
Further information:
General Drive (English): /e/e4252.html
Yanagida Park (Japanese): http://yanagida.main.jp
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