We got up early and had the usual breakfast. Every Wednesday in Santa Monica they close off a small section of streets and have a Farmers Market take place. On our way along the beach walk Helen “Hung Tough” and easily beat Dave by going the distance! “Contender READY!” The Farmers Market is great for getting a variety of fresh foods from fish, vegetables, fruits, flowers and breads. It can be a little pricey for the budget traveller but even if you don’t buy anything is a nice little morning stroll. Here is a list for the events…

• Wednesday Downtown. Arizona Avenue (between 4th & Ocean). 8:30am – 1:30pm

• Saturday Downtown. Arizona Avenue (between 4th and 2nd Streets). 8:30am – 1:00pm

• Saturday Pico. 2200 Virginia Avenue (Pico Blvd. @ Cloverfield Blvd). 8:00am – 1:00pm

• Sunday Main St. 2640 Main Street (in Heritage Square). 9:30am-1:00pm.

Helen headed off with Sarah for another dose of yoga teacher training and Dave got on his bike and headed south along the beach. The path does run out shortly after Muscle Beach, but you can head east along the main road for about 0.8 miles and follow the bike path signs (Google map route). These will take you past the Marina and eventually back onto the beach path.

It’s a lovely ride on a concrete path through the sand and along the sea front. Manhattan Beach (10 miles away) has a nice pier with a mini aquarium at the bottom as well as quieter beaches than Venice and Santa Monica. Watch out for the hang gliding crossing and beginner lessons a few miles north from the pier. This looks like a great spot for learning the art of hang gliding, if only we had the time here and the additional funds!

Tonight is our last night with Matt so we took a few photos of our home for the last week and cooked ourselves a great dinner. Packing will commence tomorrow for the move closer to the beach!

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f/2.0, Leica 90mm f/2.8, Zeiss 18mm f/4 ZM & Olympus PEN EP-1, 17mm f/2.8 & 100mm f/2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

Up early with the hope of reaching a lonely planet recommended organic cafe not far from our Minshuku. This was our third time of trying to get into this place – the opening hours are 8-11.30 in the morning, but it wasn’t open!! For some reason many of the shops and cafe’s say they’ll open at 8am but don’t actually open until 10am, something to get your head around. So we had hoped for an organic breakfast but we settled on an art decor cafe further into town which provided us with fruit, eggs and some good chunky toast.

We checked out shortly afterwards and went to the station to wait for the train. Ivan and Kim turned up and we were set for a good few laughs on our journey. We traveled with them as far as Toyama where we had to rush to get the train to Kanazawa whilst they went in search of a way to get the famous Alpine route. Kanazawa is a fairly large town based on the west coast of Japan above Kyoto, it has a number of historic sites, castles and one of the most beautiful and written about gardens in Japan. We stayed at the very cosy Guesthouse Namaste not far from the station along with several other backpackers from around the world. Our host showed us around the retro designed kitchen, we could cook our own food at last!

Our first night was in a Japanese style room but we were to be moved upstairs to a western style room the following day – a good thing really as it was located right next to the wash areas. So with only a few hours to spare before the sun would set we explored the local market, went to a great little coffee boudoir type of place- the most amount of care taken over making coffee we have ever seen. Then on our way back to Namaste we picked up food stuff for the next few days.

Whilst we’ve been traveling through Japan many of our guesthouses haven’t allowed for the opportunity for us to cook our own food so we were pretty excited about getting things in to cook and also for the prospect of enjoying some long awaited porridge! In the kitchen we heated up some gyoza, enjoyed noodles and our own style broth and a lovely fresh salad. This was enjoyed along with our fellow house mates and we chatted over beers, exchanged creative projects and planned for the next day. Simon from Quebec had won an International short film competition in Tokyo and had won his trip to Japan so we all loved watching his 40 second award winning short film, here is a link…

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)