Kanazawa

We were off for a weekend trip to Kanazawa. The train north goes alongside Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan, and through the mountains. It’s a city with sprinklers on the main roads to wash away the significant snow falls of winter and a local saying that “even if you forget your lunchbox, don’t forget your umbrella.” We were, in fact, quite lucky because rain had been predicted, but we had none.

Kanazawa is a beautiful city with a well-preserved Edo era heritage, such as Kenrokuen or the Garden of Six Attributes in the heart of the city. Kenrokuen is often cited as one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan.

Kanazawa Castle is across the road from the Garden. Ishikawa Gate is one of the few remaining original buildings from its 400+ year history.

On the other hand, the Myoryugi Temple or “Ninja” Temple is very well preserved and a hot tourist destination where reservations are required for no-cameras tours by fast-talking (Japanese only) guides who move groups along on the hour-long tours at an impressive pace. That said, seeing the temple was well worth it. It appears to be a two-story building from the outside, but is actually four stories in seven layers. It’s an ingeniously constructed wooden defensive bastion with secret rooms, hidden passageways, traps, and stairs through which to spear intruders (23 rooms, 29 staircases), besides being a continuously functioning place of worship.

It seems that everywhere we go in Japan is well-known for its food, especially seafood. Kanazawa is no exception, being on the sea and tucked up close to mountains (as is most of the country). We loved this fish egg lady in the fish market.
The oysters were enormous. If anything, the photo minimizes the size. The oyster itself in the ones pictured is easily 5 times as big as a good sized oyster on Cape Cod.
And, Kyle accepted the challenge.
We were pleased with lunch, whether raw shrimp (garnished with some of the gold for which Kanazawa is known) or soba or udon that you cooked and assembled yourself.
We started out Sunday morning by taking koto lessons Kyle had called to arrange. The simple song of Sakura was mastered only by Amanda. Jim was especially thrown by the notation being in kanji, reading the music vertically from right to left, and the lower notes being further away from the player – at least, that’s his excuse (and he’s sticking with it).
Sunday afternoon, before catching the train back to Kyoto, we strolled through the old entertainment district where tea houses with geishas have been almost entirely replaced by sweets shops and other stores more geared to the modern entertainment of sightseeing. However, take a look at the white van in the background of the middle picture. Amanda spotted a maiko (apprentice geisha) walking to the van and joining two other women inside. This was a rare spotting, as kimono-wearing by women is relatively common, but seeing a geisha or one of their apprentices on the street is certainly not.

In putting together this posting, we saw that we’d neglected to take a photo of the Kanazawa train station and so shamelessly poached this one off of the Internet. The public architecture, especially of train stations, is very nice indeed. In addition to this monumental tori, Kanazawa has a fountain in front of the station that spouts water to indicate the time and spell out messages. It’s a lot of fun and, of course, we were once again a little sad to leave yet another city. Add Kanazawa to the list of those worthy of a return visit. The numbers of foreign visitors, by the way, are likely to increase significantly because Shinkansen service to the city from Tokyo was just begun during our visit to Japan and Kanazawa seems to be the new “hot” destination.