After our day on the trains into Kurobe Gorge, I had us booked to stay in another traditional ryokan with a private onsen in the room. This time at the very well known Enraku Unazuki Onsen. Our stay came with a Nodokuro seafood kaiseki dinner which was absolutely amazing.
The lobby was lush, and set a beautiful warm and welcoming tone to the ryokan.
Our rom was on the 11th floor with a large deck and garden that overlooked the gorge. The living room was set up for day use with some low chairs and tables on a large tatami mat space. 
Just past that was a sectioned off area with a dressing table and basin, fitted out with all sorts of amenities (toothbrush kits, hair brushes, shower caps, razors, shampoo, conditioner, lotions, face mask treatment things – all individually wrapped)…
…opposite that is a pair of low chairs and a table for reading, relaxing or sitting and having a drink.
Then past that room is a large deck with a sizeable cypress onsen bath, an area for washing off prior to bathing, and a cute little garden – beyond that it is 11 floors down to the base of the gorge.
The bath was so inviting we jumped in almost as soon as our attendant left the room. 41C and absolutely divine. The rail trip up to gorge was great and it’s mostly a summer activity (closes down from end of November until April in fact) so it was rather cold sitting in the open sided carriages for quite a long time today.
Back inside off the vestibule, (yes there is an entrance space that is most aptly described as a vestibule!) is the interior actual bathroom area… which consisted of three more rooms! A dressing room, a separate toilet and another shower and cypress bath area. 
This bath is set into the floor and fully 70cm deep. The whole space is made of our cypress and smells amazing.
After our dip in the onsen we caught up on some emails etc for a while until it was time to go to dinner – which was being served down the hall in a lovely private dining room.
Our meal consisted of some assorted amuse bouche type things – one of these was tofu with a walnuts in an unknown but delicious sauce, another was some pickled something or other with some Imari, and the third was a mushroom tofu thingamebob that was fantastic. 
A grouper soup…
The personalised menu…
Lily bulb and some fresh sashimi served with irizake dipping sauce…
Accompanied by some sweet shrimp sashimi.
Then it was fish soup and some red rice…
Female snow crab… 
Karaage shrimp!
Grilled black throat fish with miso yuan and some heavily marbled waguy beef to cook on a black stone. 
After that it was cod shabu-shabut time with some ponzu flavours.
Then a small bowl of local Toyama rice (which apparently is some of the best in the country and explains why there are so many saké breweries around here) served with some red miso soup filled with mushrooms. 
Finally topped off with some fresh fruit – I have to hand it to the Japanese, even though I come from the sub-tropics and fresh fruit is plentiful year round, the Japanese have amazing quality fruits.
When we got back to the room, our attendant had made up our futons for the night and we let dinner settle and then hightailed it back into the onsen for another soak!
After just enough saké to sleep like a dead thing, we closed all the doors, turned off all the lights and there wasn’t a single evil LED in sight! Darkness and the tranquil sound of the water in the gorge below… bliss!
Woke up feeling rested but a little stiff – these old bones aren’t used to futon mattresses anymore – but nothing that a soak in the cypress onsen bath with this early morning view couldn’t fix:
Then it was back to our private dining room for breakfast.
Breakfasts in these ryokans are nuts: grilled fish, tomago, salad, shrimp sashimi, tofu, fresh vegetables, rice, various pickles, miso soup, fruit, juices, green tea… 
It was all delicious… I’ve eaten so many things this trip already that I have no idea what they are. Shortly after we went down to check out. The lobby was empty; check out that amazing custom carpet!
Outside the valet had bought around our car and packed all our bags for us. There were four staff members seeing us off, including these two gardeners who came down from ‘winterising’ this tree to say goodbye and bow as we drove out. 🙂
The railway runs a daily schedule of open carriage trains from April to November every year, and shuts down for the winter due to the heavy snowy conditions.
The startlingly green colour to the water here is due to the white granite below – I imagine in the spring it looks particularly lush and green. There are a lot of photos in this post, it was so beautiful I had a hard time editing them out. 🙂 
There are multiple waterfalls down the rugged cliff sides along the route. This place has a spectacular location. The railway winds its way up the gorge past many beautiful vistas, through loads of tunnels and past several stops – some of which are open for the public to stop at and explore and others that are for the access of workers and equipment.
It got quite cold – especially in the chilly air in the tunnels and we were glad to have bought coats , scarves and beanies. I failed on the footwear front though – I should have put on my boots!
Kurobe Dam
The autumn colours are gorgeous. 
At the end of the scenic railway track is the Keyakidaira Station where you can disembark and spend some time exploring. They have very thoughtfully built viewing platforms, a pedestrian walkway to go further into the gorge, a gift shop (of course!) and restaurants. 
We found ourselves some warming chicken and curry for lunch and I mostly just found that saké was helpful to warm back up again! 😀 Mr K was pretty happy wish his wash. 
Found a new favourite light and dry saké (I’m not super keen on the sweet ones). This one is from the Tateyama Sake Brewery and it’s called Honjozo saké. Turns out their brewery is on our way to Kanazawa tomorrow so we might try and stop by to check it out if it is open to the public. ( www.sake-tateyama.com/en/ … that’s more for me than for anyone else).
Mr K on the bridge, starting to do ‘the YMCA’… 
One thing we did notice was that there didn’t seem to be a lot of wildlife visible from the train. I mean, we did see some cheeky monkeys near the monkey crossing bridge on the way back but that was pretty much it. Mr K spotted this poster which was asking members of the public to report sightings of local wildlife… I have no idea what this funny looking llama crossed with a dik-dik thing is, but we didn’t see any of them.
The views on the way back were just as spectacular – though some of our travelling companions mustn’t have thought so as there were many on their phones and I even saw one man sleeping on the way back.
I believe the building behind this bridge with the red roofs is the Enraku – the ryokan/onsen that we have booked to stay tonight. 
Oh and just because I love a good taxidermy fail – I have included this bear that I saw at the Kurobe Railway Unizaki Station! Spectacular! 
This warning is sign says “water!”, but is presumably meant to be read more like “WATER!” to let hapless passers-by know that there may be water in the rice paddy fields? The roads are all largely built up on banks about 3-4 feet above the level of the rice/water but I imagine plenty of people end up driving into the drink with the way people habitually speed around here. There’s some legislative loophole here where the police can’t have speed cameras as it is illegal to film someone unless they are engaged in illegal activity. So the convention (ie: the internet) says that you can do up to 39km per hour over the speed limit in a 100 zone, and up to 29km per hour over the posted speed limit in a 60 zone before the cops will care at all; because that is the limit where disqualification of license is the penalty. The result of which is EVERYONE is doing 70 in a 50 zone and so on… 
This is the first ‘fish market’ we visited – the Shinminato Kittokito Fisherman’s Market. We did not stay long,… there were no workmen sorting and slinging about their fresh catch. There were no barrels and barrels of fish splayed out on ice waiting to be auctioned – so we determined it is a ‘tourist fish market’. A suspicion that was borne out when a bus load of Chinese tourists came in and started shoving each other out of their way to get to a large and very modern canteen. Not a bad spot if you want preserved fish products and souvenirs, but the place doesn’t even smell like fish and there isn’t any seabirds anywhere! 
There is plenty of shopping here to lighten your wallet, and it is redeemed a teeny bit by having an amazing little saké shop.
I had heard (read: saw someone raving about it on a YouTube video), about the famous shrimp flavoured ice cream here and felt that must be pretty weird so naturally had to buy one to try it.
Mr K said “That is the most Instagrammable thing I have ever seen you do – spend 350JPY on an ice cream because someone else on the internet did!” To which I replied, it’s only the most Instagrammable thing you’ve ever seen me do if I buy it, take a photo, post it on bloody Instagram and then dump it!” Which wasn’t my intention, but I have to say it tasted bloody ordinary, so most of it did unfortunately end up in the bin. Whoops! 
And he has the audacity to pick on me and my ice cream… exhibit A, if it may please the court:
Yep! Okay, this is definitely a fish market. Fresth fishy smell -check. Wet concrete everywhere – check. Seabirds squabbling all over the place – check! We arrived around 1pm and all the auctions for the morning’s catches were over but the restaurant was busy as all giddy up – as promised. So we took a number and waited to be called. Which took about 20 mins given the time of day.
Inside was a modern hustling restaurant that seated about 60 and was half closed off (I think it’s off season now for visitors). Mr K liked the robot waiters, I was drooling over the menu. 
Some boring non-descript fish and rice for Mr K, which was served with a optimistically labeled bottle of ‘SAUCE’ that turned out to be ponzu. LOL.
Naturally, when there is no soft drinks on the menu (that one is able to decipher) saké is the go-to whether it’s lunch or dinner (hell, I’d probably have saké for breakfast if it was an option…). I have no idea what brewery it came from but it was very quaffable. 
And then… the main events! The mixed sashimi platter full of all good things.
And a yellow tail platter full of, well, yellow tail. BEST SASHIMI I have ever tried in my entire life. Quite five times better than anything Sono in Brisbane has ever served. *chef’s kiss* totally worth the mystery drive and the wait above the busy fish market. Don’t be taken in by Tourist Fish Market in Toyama, people!
Himi Banya-Gai. This one is sooo touristy it even comes with its own tourist information centre, a government looking facilities block and about seven fishy canteens, a glass shop, shops full of pastries and preserved fish products – so much so you feel like you are in the food hall of a major department store.
This is what passed for premium fresh yellow tail here: some weird foil wrapped packets labeled 1st class, 2nd class and 3rd class yellow tail. And all for way more than what we paid at the port. 
The squidly products looked interesting, but without refrigeration to take them with us, they stayed in the shop. 
All pre-packaged fish products. 🙁 I’m sure it makes a nice trip out here if you live in the area to stop up on pantry staples, but I’m so glad we found the port restaurant for some super fresh offerings. 
Ah, finally some fresh fish – for you to buy and take home and prepare…?
The original castle was built in the 1500s but this building is a replica re-built in the mid-1800s after an earthquake, which is quite a common story with Japanese castles. 
From there it was back to our lodgings at the Dormy Inn Toyama and would you believe it? More saké was on the menu, and tonight a cheap and dirty take-away curry for dinner. Long day was long.
The building itself is quite impressive with the most amazing open atrium… 
At the moment the 6th floor houses a large exhibition show casing the works of Dale Chihuly – an American glass artist who is various lauded as either overrated (given a lot of his production is done in a workshop with a plethora of unnamed artists) or iconic, as he most definitely had a huge global impact on the glass arts over the last fifty years.
Toyama Reeds – 2015. This piece is 3m wide, by 4m deep and 5.3m high. These blue glass reeds are very impressive and give the impression of looking through a glass forest.
Toyama Persian Ceiling – this installation work is most reminiscent of the ceilings in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas and was created around the time when Chihuly’s primary interest was in sea forms and creating these large ridged / fluted plates. 
Toyama Float Boat – 2015, glass 9m long, 60cm high and 65cm wide comprised of 117 boat ‘floats’. This is an amazing piece! Yes it is mostly large balls of glass, artfully arranged in brilliant colours, but it also looks like a boat full of planets, or marbles, or sweets, or Christmas baubles. It is colourful, playful and really visually attractive. 
The next Chihuly in the exhibition is the Toyama Mille Fiori – also from 2015, it is an enormous 9m wide, 5.8m deep and 2.8m tall. The reeds, spirals spikes and balls in this ‘garden’ work together in the dark installation space to creat an alien-like garden that seems to change from every different angle it is viewed from. 
You can not deny that his work has Brough international prestige to the art sculpture and glass blowing communities – these works are visually arresting to behold. 
yes, I probably took far too many photos of this Mille Fiori garden – but it was so beautiful and so well curated, that I fell in love with it. 
These pieces contain a sliver of napthothene which deteriorates if exposed to oxygen – it is safety concealed in the glass and resin of the piece but would disintegrate quickly if exposed to the air… it is frozen in time, which is a central theme to the artist’s work. 
Time of Migration by Fujii Yurkia, 2015
I had a feeling this gorgeous weather wasn’t going to last and it turned out I was absolutely right. 
Me in the car: “There’s some snow on those mountains; I bet it’s chilly up there.” #famouslastwords
We have noticed that Sondora shows us the topographical /literal map of things and sometimes it looks like spaghetti junction, and no sooner does that happen than you get on a highway and it turns into a graphic representation of the destinations rather than a literal visual description (*think of a London Tube map compared to the A-Z). 
And then suddenly, it was fucking snowing! Mr K says he saw a monkey run across the road in front of us – but I think he was pulling my leg and just wanted to have one up on me. 
Beautiful!
We noted that Sondara was showing some pretty spaghetti/worm like road maps coming up – just what you need when it is unseasonably and unexpectably snowing on what you thought might be a fairly uneventful drive. 
Then we came out of a tunnel and we were up in the mountains and it was a winter wonderland! OMG – so beautiful. I haven’t seen such gorgeous scenes since we did Christmas in Canada in 2017.
It was just so beautiful… 
We stopped at a Okuhida Onsengo Kamitakara restop which had these weasels everywhere as a mascot – and we expected to find it full of weird Japanese weasel mascots and of course, fried chicken… instead we found : 
As quickly as we entered into the snowy altitudes we were returned to the autumnal glacial alluvial valleys again. 
We eventually made our way to the Dormy Inn in Toyama City – which I guess is like an American Holiday Inn or an Australian Rydges… there wasn’t much happening here by the time we arrived quite late in the day, but we did find an nice izakaya open and managed to have a nice fishy dinner. Below: miso crap, sashimi plate (salmon, snapper and yellowtail) and some sea cucumber). 