I spent three nights in Kanazawa at the excellent Shaq Big House, a new guesthouse/hostel run by an amazing guy (called shaq). The place was only open for three weeks when I arrived so everything was brand new. Shaq facilitated a wonderful stay at Kanazawa for me and the other guests at the hostel.

me and shaq on the morning I left

My plan was to cycle to Kyoto via lake Biwa over the next four days, spending a day by the lake before heading into the city where I had bookings made.

This day the aim was to get from Kanazawa out to the coast, the start of Route 305 which I was told was a beautifully scenic route to the lake. Getting out of Kanazawa was not too hard, but the road was busy and I really wasn’t enjoying the ride so I just turned off it. All I had to do was follow the coast, how lost could I get?

Well I followed a bike path I found down by the sea for about an hour. When that ran out I went to look for the road that would take me to route 305. This proved quite difficult and I’d say I spent a good 90 minutes trying to get back on track.

I eventually joined back up with route 305′ which by this time had diverged from the busier highway 8 and took me through the small villages and countryside following a series of small lakes along the way.

I arrived at the sea sometime around 4 and set up on the first beach I found. I had covered some fair distance despite getting lost for a while and looked forward to getting to the lake tomorrow.