Met with our tour group last night for a quick get to know you, before heading back to our room and bed.

Met everyone in the lobby before beginning our trek to Tokyo station to board our bullet train to Kanazawa. We all split up to purchase our Bento box lunches before boarding the train. It was a very pleasant journey with varied scenery through farmlands, small cities, and housing much different than I was expecting.  The fast speeds (300kmph) made for a short travel time.

Once we arrived in Kanazawa, it was a quick walk across the street to our hotel.  We had 10 minutes to drop off our luggage before boarding a city bus to Higashi Chaya District with its 200-year old traditional wooden buildings.  We watch a demonstration about applying gold leaf to create beautiful boxes, trays, statues, etc. Even the bathroom was papered in gold leaf.  

It was a lovely area to explore till the sky clouded over and it started to pour, so we marched off in the rain to the bus stop and huddled under a building till our bus arrived to take us back to our hotel.  We dropped off our wet rain gear before heading out for our first Japanese 7 course meal with the rest of our tour mates.  We are not sure what we ate, but there was lots of raw fish, noodles, tempura, hot sake.  We learned later that we had also eaten horse!

The entrance to the train station is quite spectacular.  A great day!