"Noto Peninsula" Ishikawa-ken by goshawk301

The Noto Peninsula was a real discovery of my last trip to Japan. The landscape of the peninsula is beautiful and surprisingly unspoiled by visible signs of the modern Japan. This is a gentle land, and the locals say "Noto is gentle even down to its earth".

Noto's coastline is varied: Its western and northern shores are cliffy, pounded by the rough waves of the wintertime Sea of Japan and visibly eroding in places, and has a desolate feel from place to place. Its eastern shore in contrast is gentle, with one beautiful major inlet, the Nanao Bay, and several nice beaches.

The interior of the peninsula consists of gentle, rolling hills covered with forests. By Japanese standards it's not heavily populated, and you can definitely get the feeling of being away.

We took a tour bus to explore the peninsula. This may however be one place in Japan where renting a car is advisable for exploration. It's really a kind of region that abounds in little, memorable places that rewards exploring in your own time.

Noto was described to the west by the American polymath Percival Lowell (who lived in Japan for a few years and who later gained notoriety as a passionate advocate of the idea that there is civilization on Mars) in a travelogue Noto: an unexplored corner of Japan (1891). You can download the text of the travelogue from Project Gutenberg at: http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/2605