Nice sunny pootle for 40 miles along Route 8 from Toyama. The exhaust was still blowing from the joint which parted company on the voyage from Vladivostok, so as I entered Kanazawa I stopped at a Kawasaki dealer and showed them the problem (no English spoken but a blowing exhaust is a blowing exhaust in any language). The bike went straight into the workshop, and within 10 minutes was fixed at a cost of about a fiver. They were most impressed by the patent BMW exhaust ring wrench, and even supplied two replacement cable ties to fix it back on to the panner frame again. Can't see all that happening in Britain.

This is a pretty large city (pop. half a million). It's interesting how the old and new are right next to each other. Immediately behind the hotel, which is on a main drag, is the old Samurai quarter with its narrow alleys and traditionally-built houses and gardens. Beautiful. Had a wander around this afternoon.

Turns out I need a quad-band phone for Japan (tri-band is old hat) so I shan't bother - my phone works perfectly well everywhere else, and I can always use a public phone if I need one. There are ISDN phone boxes on every corner where you can plug in a laptop if you want. Amazing.

Predictably, all the museums are closed on Thursdays (and anyway it's raining heavily) so I'll do them tomorrow. Then it's off to Hiroshima on Saturday via whatever place I stop at. The JAF road atlas is spectacularly unenlightening due to my complete ignorance of Katakana.

I'm learning a few words of Japanese already but I keep getting mixed up with Russian. I'll no sooner get to grips with this than I'll have to start on Thai. Oh well.