Last Minute Kanazawa

We were supposed to pick up a car at 9am, but decided to squeeze some more Kanazawa in, so up at 7am for some early touristing. Bus to the castle again but went for the garden, which like Adachi, are in the top 3 of Japanese gardens. And indeed it was worth doing so, sun, blue skies, warm and quite busy, the gardens were gorgeous. The bottom left photo is of a tree with its branches supported by wooden poles, something we have seen regularly on our trip, some trees would even fall down without them. We don't know if this was to save the trees, or to make them grow where gravity would prevent them... probably the latter.

Bus back, car picked up, began our 300 mile drive north to Yamagata. We'd decided to use this day to leap up north so didn't plan much else for the day. We did take a detour to the Hoshitouge Terraced Rice Field in the mountains but as we got close we saw snow piled up at the sides of the road, deep snow. The roads were clear and fine and it was warm, but it meant the rice fields were also covered in snow. Spring and the thaw must come later here. However, you could see the rice fields and the view was still lovely. Reached our hotel by 10pm, we'd forgotten our room had a big deep spa bath so we all jumped in together. Tomorrow we go back to a more leisurely pace.