When we got up the weather was pretty miserable, with light but steady rain, but the weather reports said that things should clear up by the time the event actually got going, so we packed umbrellas and ponchos and took an early bus downtown to meet up at Kanazawa Castle (starting and ending point for the event) at about 7:45AM. People trickled in and we managed to register and collect the green cards that would be stamped at each checkpoint we passed. There were some speeches in Japanese, while we stood in the rain in the muddy field waiting for things to get going, but within ten seconds of the event actually starting, with inspiring music playing to motivate the walkers, the sun came out, the sky cleared, and it was suddenly about 25F warmer. This verged on ideal and was worth carrying the rain gear the rest of the day.
The 14 miles took us from about 9AM to 3:30PM, and we walked large quantities of Kanazawa terrain, but we also stopped a few times along the way for local attractions.
This is not real close to where we started
The first stop was at a village shop selling soy sauce ice cream. The village has a soy sauce refinery, and another teacher told us that all of the children she teaches from this area have been insisting that their soy sauce ice cream is both famous and delicious, and that we should all sample it forthwith. I was skeptical, but it turned out to be delicious. They only added a faint hint of soy sauce, using it in place of the salt normally in ice cream, and it added a faint nutty, savory flavor to the ice cream that was quite pleasant. I would purchase it in place of vanilla at least sometimes if they sold it in our supermarkets.
Outside the soy sauce ice cream place
The second "local attraction" was a ramen restaurant where we got lunch. It was a local restaurant for some teachers that live rather far from our place and they attested to the superiority of the cuisine. Apparently, this place also won some awards for best ramen in the prefecture or something too. We were eating a late lunch after walking about 3/4 of the course and were hungry, and found their offerings to be generous in size and very tasty too. The broth of the ramen was very thick, and the thin-sliced pork placed on top of the liquid melted into pieces and flavored the whole bowl. It wasn't greasy, just rich. I found that nori (seaweed paper) was delicious when soaked with the broth. It's a pity the place is probably an hour's bike ride away - too far to be a regular destination.
Not a bad ramen shop if you're in the area
Most of the long walk itself went through fairly undesirable and not-scenic routes. Starting in the downtown area they sent us all the way down to the industrial part of the waterfront and then back down a very commercial and very not-scenic road. The checkpoints for the course were all in parks that were nice enough but nothing special. The real pleasure of the event was just hanging out with people and talking. The walking aspect was secondary, though 14 miles was a fair bit of walking.
It's safe to say this was the nicest place we walked through.
One of the historical districts - some of the people we were with mentioned all kinds of things worth seeing in this one that we hadn't known about and didn't have time to see while walking
At the end they gave us some goodies that are pretty standard prize-package material here: towels and tissues, with a few magnets and various papers thrown in. We're not sure what was "green" about the walk - did it raise money for the environment, tour the green areas of Kanazawa, involved walking around instead of driving, or what? In any case, we had a good time, though next year we might just have a cookout with friends and skip the walking around the city part. We have enough mini towels already.
The welcome end of the walk, aside from the field still being really muddy
Hooray for towels and magnets, I suppose.
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