Noto Peninsula

Booked ourselves a Japan Hour experience at a seaside onsen hotel in Wajima town, Noto Peninsula (a narrow peninsula jutting out into the Japan Sea near Kanazawa).

Went there by a sightseeing bus, which took the coastal road and stopped at some scenic spots. Check out our super cute bus! Looks really cute when it's moving on the road, like a train trundling along.

Chirihama beach. The only beach in Japan (according to the bus driver) where vehicles are permitted to drive on. Really windy and the sea is quite rough (will definitely make at least one of my scuba diving buddies puke).

This was really beautiful. This area has many rock formations due to the rough seas (like the 12 Apostles in Melbourne) and there's actually a little shrine on top of this huge rock formation and a thick rope connecting it to the next rock.

When we arrived, we were welcomed by our very own attendant who immediately made us tea in our room.

Room overlooks the sea.

After an onsen bath (there was a rocky outdoor bath facing the sea), we went to our very own private dining room to enjoy dinner. The Noto Peninsula is famous for snow crabs, so no prizes for guessing what was the highlight of dinner.

There was so much crab! There was one whole crab steamed (I liked that best, the flesh was so sweet and so much of it in the legs!), half a crab in nabe (soup), and another half was grilled. There was also sashimi and some other stuff. We got exhausted from eating!

At night, there was a taiko performance and an enka performance provided by the hotel. It started off with a taiko performance by these lao char bohs who were honestly not great although they were obviously putting in a lot of effort...and I thought, no wonder it's free lah.

Then the real deal came out. Apparently the traditional taiko performances of this area had the performers wear devil-like masks. They were good.

Then this lady came out and sang some enka songs. Enka is a genre of Japanese music - basically old songs, the Japanese equivalent of Shanghai Tang, yue liang dai biao wo de xin (Moon represents my heart), and the like. She used to be signed under EMI so I suppose she must be considered not bad. Anyway, she acted like she was pro, coming down from the stage to shake people's hands. Partially fulfilled my uncle's dream of watching an enka concert.

After her performance, the audience started going up to stage for a karaoke session and she was the judge. There were a grand total of 3 contestants and 2 won prizes.