Our ride today took us to Kanazawa, a city on the northern
shore of Honshu (the major island of Japan). Kanazawa, a city of 460,000, has
the distinction of being the rainiest nontropical city of its size or greater
in the world, with an average of 193 rainy days per year. Despite that, we had
no rain today, continuing our record of not a single drop of rain during any of
our 16 cycling days on our trip so far. Geographically, Kanazawa is on the Sea
of Japan (near which we cycled most of the day today) and borders the Japanese Alps.
These mountains, which lie in the middle of Honshu, are up to 10,400 feet high.
A week from now, we'll be spending a few days traversing the Alps as we cross
from the northern shore of Honshu to Tokyo on the southern shore.
On our trip so far, we've noted that virtually all
non-mountainous land is occupied by towns, agriculture (mostly rice fields), or
industry. Today was no exception to this rule. There were rice fields
everywhere, often massive, except for land occupied by houses and factories in
the towns.
We like to take a mid-morning snack, usually at a 7/11 or
similar convenience store, but were having trouble locating one on our route
today. Fortunately, we came upon a large, popular bunny rabbit tourist site,
with rabbits wandering around freely to be petted by kids. The gift shop, with
a large selection of stuffed toys and other bunny-themed products, had food and
drinks for our break.
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| Biking beside one of the many rice fields we saw today |
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| A massive set of rice fields |
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| A pretty farm house |
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| Biking through a town in northern Honshu |
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| Biking along the Sea of Japan |
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| Mid-morning break at a bunny rabbit tourist spot |
Our favorite item in the gift shop (click to play video)
