Day 6 - Toyama to Asahi
If the weather is clear, the mountains are always in your eyeline in Toyama, but as we head up the eastern arm of the bay, they loom closer and become a more intimate part of the landscape.
Route
Today is more of a sightseeing day, with just over 50kms to travel and no climb to speak of, that leaves plenty of scope to see the sights. Another windy day but from our back, making an easy riding day even more enjoyable. Even the flats felt like downhill. All the party agreed this was the best day of riding to date, through beautiful scenery, on mainly quiet, well maintained roads. The clear skies and warmer weather also contributed to our enjoyment of the ride.
Stay and Eat
Country Kitchen (カントリーキッチン) was an outstanding find by Beloved for a lunch stop. Her assessment was "best curry of the tour... no, in Japan." Curry Rice is such a popular dish, its ubiquity often leads you to think of it as 'just' curry rice, which makes the standout ones really pop. Why is it called Country Kitchen? Well, it's a home based business surrounded by rice paddies out in the countryside. If you can't come by bike, come by car.
Shiroyamasou is where we'll lay our head tonight. There's not a lot of options around the 60km mark from Toyama and once you are around the corner and heading for Joetsu, it's a long time between drinks. It bills itself as a country inn which is a fair enough assessment. It's an old building that seems to be getting some overdue refresh but is well run and the welcome was friendly and helpful. Get in now for the genuine Showa era charm before it's completely renovated.
The ryokan listed cod soup as the menu highlight for the evening meal which didn't excite us. Given how tasty breakfast was, we probably should have rolled the dice. As it was, we opted not to have dinner at the ryokan and were in need of refreshment. There was a yakiniku restaurant and an izakaya within walking distance. We opted for Kanda izakaya, maybe try the yakiniku joint...
See and Do
Our primary planned touristing for the day was a stop at Nizayama Forest Art Museum. It looked great in the photos posted online but the reality was quite disappointing. It's a great space in a decommissioned hydroelectric generator room. Previous exhibitions seems to have made great use of the space with one piece creating a school of metallic fish flying out of the rusted old inlet piping. Sadly, I think whoever created this space has now departed and a dead bureaucratic hand is on the tiller. There was a confusing set of complex rules about what photography was and wasn't allowed with constant surveillance and chiding over a PA system when rules were contravened.
The primary sightseeing was actually repeated stops to take in the spectacular snow capped Tateyama range towering over the landscape. Toyama Bay is a beautiful location.
