Golfing in Toyama

The cold that I had the bad luck of catching here has indeed gotten worse. I'll spare you the complaining but it has put on hold a number of things that we intended to do here in Toyama. Playing a round of Golf at Hana's Dad's country club was one of those things. Because of my illness we decided to put it off for a couple of days.

On Wednesday we finally got around to hitting the links. I'm not a great golfer and I haven't had the pleasure of playing on many golf courses other than the public ones around Regina but the Yatsuo Country Club in Toyama is unbelievable! Nestled up in the mountains, this place is a sight to behold. I would compare it slightly to the course at the Banff Springs Hotel but this course might actually be nicer. Even though I was feeling ill, this place really lifted my spirits.

Hana's Dad has a membership here primarily for business purposes along with the fact that he loves golf. It is very expensive to golf in Japan as there is just not enough land available to build courses. I won't tell you how much this round cost but it was considerably more than we pay at home. I also won't tell you how much Hana's Dad's membership costs -- it is a heck of a lot more than I would be willing to pay though! Regardless, if you can afford it, this is a great place to golf and relax.

We rented our clubs and picked up our automated golf cart. That's right, an automated golf cart; no need to drive. The cart actually follows a predetermined path throughout the course and you either control it from inside the cart or via remote control. I had been to the course once before and had seen these carts driving around by themselves; embarrassingly, I thought that they were runaway carts! It was indeed neat to ride in these things and control them with a remote.

Now, Hana and I are not very good golfers but we had a great time. Hana duffed her way across the course and I hacked and sliced my way. None of this mattered though as the day was beautiful and the scenery was breathtaking. I don't even know what my final score was (and I don't want to know!) but being able to use a facility like this would certainly peak my interest in getting a bit better!

The strangest thing about the course? There are teahouses half-way on both the front and back nine. These teahouses though were a very nice touch -- you knew for sure that you were golfing in Japan.

This was one day that made the long plane ride to get to Japan well worth it! Now if I could only get rid of this congestion and cough!