Crowds swarm to see the legendary Kenroku-en garden which has 6 attributes of a perfectly designed landscape garden: spaciousness, seclusion, artifice, antiquity, watercourses and panoramas. Originally the outer garden of the Kanazawa Castle, it’s morphed into its present configuration after the efforts of a few local lords, Harunaga, Naringara and Nariyasu between 1759 and 1874 – who added a waterfall, teahouse, and winding streams with stone bridges. Gorgeous! It takes about 1 1/2 hours to stroll through the garden’s featured areas. Got up early and started perambulating at about 7.30am. I was so glad I did, within an hour…busloads started arriving, ugh.

I don’t know how this took off as a craze, but gold-leaf encircled ice cream cones are the latest ‘buzz’ in Kanazawa….after my stellar walk this morning, felt like a bit of brekkie was in order….

Gokayama…has a World Heritage listing, so I thought I’d visit…at around 2000 metres, its in an alpine valley with mountains arising. Famous for being one of the villages in the area with ‘gassho-zukhuri’ farmhouses (wooden beams combined to form a steep thatched roof that resembles 2 hands together), they are ‘invaded’ daily with bus groups wanting to stroll through. Income generation a positive for the village, certainly.

Decided to travel to Takaoka to see the Great Buddha, said to be one of Japan’s 3 largest. Impresssive! It was completed in 1933 after 3 decades of work, utilising bronze casting techniques. It stands at 15.85 metres, and weighs 65 tons.

Running through the centre of Toyama city, is the Matsukawa river. Its lined with 500 cherry trees stretching over 2.5kms, and their blossoms should be out…unfortunately not. Boo hoo!

My final stop for the day was the Toyama Glass Art Museum, to see some of Chihuly’s work on exhibition from Seattle and that of Ohira Yoichi, a designer from the 20thC, who was exhibiting some of his Venetian glass designs….inspired by Picasso and Chagall paintings and Murano glass blowing traditions.