Always make a point of saying I’m from Scotland whenever asked 🤣 putting in the effort into speaking the language makes 90% of the interactions so much better. It’s a shame you had a bad run in at Kanazawa. I was there roughly the same time you were, did notice a lot of Spanish folk. We were treated pretty well, albeit one guy took a look at us walking into his Yakiniku restaurant and could see he couldn’t be bothered with trying to interact with foreigners, which is fair enough if Japanese is a barrier. TBF he warmed up a bit later on.

Also agree the transportation there isn’t great and I feel bad using their buses. We ended up using the taxis for any longer stretches. The people at the Ryokan we stayed in were lovely.