Kurobe Gorge, 24.04.24

 Kurobe Gorge, 24.04.24

Today we had several options for sightseeing. One was to do part of the Tateyama Alpine Crossing which involves train rides, a cable car, bus and a trolleybus plus a bit of walking. However the weather was not all that good so no point. Another option was to go to Shirakawa-Go and Gokayama two old villages with distinctive thatched farmhouses. Now while I like being a tourist I was not keen to traipse around people's backyards with hordes of other tourists taking selfies. So we decided to visit the Kurobe Gorge. 

It is a lovely, wooded ravine in the Japanese Alps. There are hotsprings, a lake behind a dam and several onsens on the way. Getting there involved a train ride from Toyama to Unazuki where we had to change onto the sightseeing train which gives access to the gorge via several bridges and many tunnels. The train is like a toy train. Unfortunately some of the bridges got damaged in the January 2024 earthquake and the journey was quite a bit shorter. 

That was fine and saw much of the gorge with still some cherry blossoms to be seen and the fresh new foliage of the maple trees was spectacular. The river was deep down and running clear fed from the snow still in some of the gullies. The dam was kind of odd as the service building was constructed like a European castle. It all took about four hours and we were back in Unazuki in good time. It is quite a lovely little spa town with hotels and guesthouses. We returned to Toyama by the local train, slow and very wobbly past rice paddies, through villages and small towns. 

In Toyama we went for a walk in search of food and drink. The whole town is very modern with wide boulevards lined with new buildings. There was also a lack of people, hardly anybody to be seen in the streets and indeed around nine o'clock everything was quiet and empty. Finally we had enough and took a tram back to the station and went to the same restaurant as the night before and had a tempura vegetables set and two beers of course.