Kanazawa

So, under the heading of tips for young players, I will say this.

Book your train tickets early if you can. There is always the option of the non-reserved car(s)

but avoid it if you can, especially when travelling to or from small towns on very popular trains, otherwise you may find yourself stuck standing for a large portion (if not all) of the train ride.

Additionally, for context: I normally do about 10,000 steps on a weekday (if I don't walk down the street for lunch it is substantially less). In Japan, my average has been around the 20,000 steps a day mark. I think DisneySea was the highest, at around 26,000 steps, however that was mostly flat.

According to my watch, the day beforehand in Takayama we had walked 21,636 steps, most of which was up fairly steep hills/steps carved in the side of mountains.

We had tried to book tickets the previous day, only to discover that the train was booked out. So we arrived quite early to the station and still managed to not get a seat in the non-reserved car.  

Standing room only.

Apparently turning around and saying "Hey, only 80 minutes left to go!"
in a cheerful voice was not the correct thing to do.

 Eventually we changed trains at Toyama to a Shinkansen that we had reserved seats on, and arrived in Kanazawa.

Ohmi-Cho market

Kanazawa castle gate

Same from above

Kenrokuen Garden, next to the castle

This place at least doesn't care if you fall off their bridges and die

Yellow Koi is still here, although I was unable to find my mate the turtle.