Being in Kanazawa, the snow crab was the famous seafood of the town, but oysters were also huge. I need to get a hold of tries some of these Noto oysters.

If you stay at the Hyatt Centric/Hyatt House in Kanazawa you’ll notice there is a small row of night time food stalls called “yatai” at the end of the street.

One of them offered oysters so I decided to give it a try.

This place had a cap for the grill and the staff told me to:

1. Place the coasters on the flat side and grill for one minute with a cover on,
2. Flip it over and to grill for another 4-5 minutes with the cover on.

I tried it, and to be honest, it worked perfectly. When I flipped it over, I could hear the oyster pop open around the four minute mark.

The cover also blocked the explosive banging of the shells as they crackled and through shrapnel everywhere. It protected my kids from having oyster shell in the eye, I think I will have to make one of these covers for my bbq back home.

My next question for oyster took me to the Noto peninsula, specifically the Noto Shokusai Food Market Ichiba. Here you can, purchase pressure, oysters, shrimp, and other seafood at the merchant stalls, and then take them to the back restaurant to grill. All you have to pay as a table sitting fee.

Armed with my new knowledge from the other oyster store, I feel confident coming to this restaurant. However, I was disheartened to find out this place did not have a cover for the grill, and my oysters were already open. So the question was, how would I flip them over without losing all of the wonderful oyster juice and what would be the timing?

In the end, I would have to fend for myself, and here’s my result.

I didn’t want to get food poisoning so I started on the flat side first and grilled for one minute, allowing some precious juice to drip.

I then took the tones, proceeded to flip them over quickly, and let them grill with the shell on for 6-7 minutes.

My results were mixed. Two oysters came out perfectly well to overcook. I’m sure there were a number of reasons for it but I didn’t want to keep opening the lids to see how they were done.

However, even been the over cooked ones had plenty of flavor and it was a great meal.

I’m sure you always your pros out there have some great advice for me so let me know a better way to do it in the comments below!

Chirihama Nagisa Beach Drive Way was one of the more surprising activities that we enjoyed during our stay in Kanazawa, Ishikawa prefecture.

Little did we know that it is one of the most recommended tourist spots in Uozu City.

The exclusive and unique road is an approximately 8-kilometer-long sandy drive along Chirihama Beach.

Not only cars, but also buses, motorcycles, and bicycles can travel along the sandy beach.

The exhilarating feeling of driving by the water’s edge is quite addictive once you experience it! I only meant to drive it once but ended up driving it EVERY time we went from Kanazawa to Noto Peninsula and I enjoyed 3-4 beach days by parking along side the road. The summer water was super warm and it was one of the most memorable places on my trip.

The secret of this road lies in the size of the sand. It’s super fine, almost like a powder and features grains that are about 0.2 millimeters in size.

Sand of the same size solidifies firmly by absorbing seawater and makes it possible to drive over whether it’s a two-wheel drive or a four-wheel drive vehicle.

More than anything however, it just feels weird and fun driving on the sand and having the waves break so close to your car. Definitely a must try!

Take a look at the Naminoko gai, and Funabashi gai digging onto the sand. They are all over the beach and kept us entertained for hours. They are famous for “riding” the waves and then burrowing into the sand as the waves retreat.

Supposedly, they have a very great flavor and people have used it since the old days for miso soup and other broths.

Here is a live cam of the Chirihama Nagisa Drive cam.

One of our most unexpectedly memorable adventures during our stay in Kanazawa was north toward the Noto Peninsula at the Noto Island Aquarium.

Our trusty Kei-car took us up the Chirihama Nagisa Beach Drive Way, through beautiful country scenery and up to the aquarium.

To be honest, we didn’t expect much, and we were just looking for some sort of activity to do in that direction. My first impression of the place was that it was old and from the Showa Era (golden years of Japan 10-20 yrs ago).

We paid the reasonable entrance fee and made our way in. The sun was blistering and it was a super hot 35°C outside. We took the walk from the parking lot and freely rushed into the air conditioner building.

Unlike other aquariums, the Noto Aquarium opened up immediately into one of its main attractions, the huge whale shark exhibit.

It wasn’t as big as the Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa but it turns out that this aquarium is the only one in northern Japan that houses, whale sharks, so that was sort of cool. The whale sharks seemed like younger ones, and were accompanied by other two sharks, a bunch of stingrays and other larger fish…

I didn’t think my kids would be too into it, but they spent a fair amount of time in all, just staring at the fish and at the ominous blue light. The path spiralled around the water tank, giving us multiple views of the aquatic environment.

After that, we walked through some actually pretty innovative and clever projection mapping displays and other illuminated walkways that really updated the feel.

It showed that the staff were actively trying to update the entertainment factor as much as possible. That is something that we really appreciated.

After that, we made our way through variety of different, aquatic, displays, fish, and crustaceans, which I kids really enjoyed.

After moving from building to building, we enjoyed the dolphin show outside and got up close with the penguin walk. Each penguin had a name and they were probably more than 30 of them. It was funny, watching the younger caretaker try to figure out the name of which penguin was giving him trouble. The more experienced caretaker was quizzing him on bodily markings and other hints.

We also got to feed the fish. That was actually more enjoyable than expected. There was a discreet little box with some fish food and a sign written in Japanese saying leave ¥100. Foreign tourists would totally miss this but it was definitely a lot of fun. The fish were used to getting fit so they were swan wherever you were. Try to throw the food as far as possible to watch them. Consequently, other tourist could walk underneath that particular aquarium, so they probably had a great show watching the fish swarm in different directions.

After lunch, we noticed a pier where you could go fishing for a fee. You could rent all the equipment and it is something we will definitely try it the next time. Even on other local, attraction, blogs, that fishing pier is highly rated so I think we will check it out.

The drive up there was also half the fun taking you through quaint old fishing villages and beautiful country sides with old school Japanese houses.

I’d give the aquarium a 3.5 out of 5 for facilities bit a 4 out of 5 for fun.

It’s just an enjoyable place to be and I look forward to going back there again.