We left Kyoto behind and traveled four hours north to Japan's west coast. Whenever we mentioned to locals that we were traveling to Kanazawa, they universally gave us the thumbs up and said that it is very nice. It is the only place we visited that had not been bombed at all during WWII, so there are a lot of older and original buildings.
There aren't really any big tourist attractions in Kanazawa. It is home to a lot of temples, including the Ninja Temple, which was about a five minute walk from our AirBnB place. The city is also known for its gold leaf production (it accounts for 99% of Japan's gold leaf), Japanese food market, many temples, and original geisha districts. This led us to a lot of aimless, though productive, wandering.
There are a lot of little alleyways snaking through old temples in Kanazawa.
I cannot read this sign which has information about a temple. There are many like it in Nomachi.
Like many places in Japan, it is a pretty quiet city that seems to shut down fairly early. Looking for a place to eat the first night led us into one of the only sushi restaurant that was open in the area. An ancient couple runs the place and the bar counter was heavily tilted from years of leaning customers. They didn't speak English of course but we had learned enough Japanese and picture pointing lessons that we got on ordering just fine. They were very sweet and the food was great. They served the most delicious pickled ginger; it gave me a respect for pickled ginger I'd never had before!
After the sumo tournament that was on TV ended, a story came on about a woman who was found murdered outside the U.S. Military Base in Okinawa and a contractor from the US had who had been arrested. The older woman running the sushi bar pointed to the TV and said some things to us in Japanese, shaking her head. Melissa used Google Translate to say, "You're right about that, that's terrible we agree that the military shouldn't be there." She replied with a vigorous nod and "Hai, hai," evidently accepting our broken, Google Translate apology. It was a small but poignant interaction reminding us of past, and current, indiscretions by the U.S. military. President Obama was to visit Hiroshima during our time in Japan, which was often on news programs during our trip, again reminding us of the impact that America has had on Japan. Another group of people came into the restaurant right after this exchange, breaking the awkward moment and we left soon afterwards.
Look! Cute animal sculptures on some temples steps!
We found this somewhat hidden park on our last day wandering around the castle and market area. Unfortunately, most of those paths were blocked off because I think it was still under construction.
This was not the only place where we ate remarkable food. The Ohmi-cho Market is a mix of small restaurants and market stalls selling all manner of Japanese goodness. We burned our mouths on awesome croquettes, then slurped some incredible ramen in a small, one man shop. We visited this market a few times also hitting up a conveyor belt sushi place and grabbing a bag of delicious fresh ground coffee.
Fish eyes. Really nutritious I hear.
We saw this "octopus arm man" sign all over the place. I'm pretty sure they found some tiny graphic of this sign online and tried to trace it but just f'ed the whole thing up. I later saw the same sign in Italy but it was a "normal arm man" sign.
"Fish heads, fish heads. Roll-y poll-y fish heads. Fish heads, fish heads. Eat them up. Yum."
When we weren't stuffing our faces, we were taking pictures of the plethora of temples in the Nomachi area. Right behind our studio apartment, the entire area has been filled with old temples. They were dismantled and moved into the neighborhood from their original locations all over the city.
The aforementioned Ninja Temple was a neat place. Despite the name, no ninja had ever infiltrated or trained there unfortunately. It is so named because of the concealed passageways, sneaky stairs, hidden traps, and cleverly designed floor plan to hide the fact that it has five levels instead of the lawful three. The temple was built to help the spies of the Shogun’s enemies. We were told many times that the tour was only in Japanese and you may not use an interpreter. We were fine with that. The group of Japanese women who were also part of our tour group “oooh-ed” and “ahhh-ed” expressively at every hidden passage and secret revealed.
Temples everywhere. This one was on top of a hill near the Higashi Chayagai geisha district. We got lost on this hill.
So much amazing carving all over the place. I like the flow of this one.
And more temples. Look, a Japanese maple!
Much like most of Japan, the details on all of the buildings are amazingly crafted.
Some other areas of interest in Kanazawa are the geisha districts. There are three districts in the city - Higashi Chayagai, Nishi Chayagi, and Kazuemachi. We visited two of them but one of them, Nishi Chayagai, was little more than two short blocks of closed restaurants. Higashi Chayagai is the largest and most frequented by tourists. The district is also home to some gold leaf production and tours of old tea houses. You can actually make appointments to see real geisha perform, though I think they are mostly for the Japanese. If you are lucky, you will see actual geisha walking around. We were not lucky.
We just go ahead and eat some gold too. Why not?
This is a very old tea house. Geisha's would perform for guests here.
Using these instruments.
And people would make food and prepare sake for the guests in this kitchen.
There is a fairly large and lively bar and club scene in Kanazawa all concentrated in the Katamachi area. We popped into a tiny, six stool jazz bar and had a good, halting conversation with a couple from Yokohama. The little jazz bar was full of stuff! It looked like a hoarder house bar. There were stacks of jazz CDs along the bar to browse in amongst piles of knick knacks, like old snoopy toys. The bartender served us squid ink, sashimi, and a ham and cheese plate.
I had some beer and Melissa drank local shochu. We all shared cat pictures on our phones. When we were about to leave, the man said, “I love you!” but after some discussion, it kinda translated into, “Very pleased to have met you.” I also got to show off some of my mad guitar skills* on an old, incredibly out of tune acoustic piece. Melissa may have been just slightly embarrassed by this display. Ever so slightly. I think we really made their trip.
We visited the Modern Art Museum, surprisingly, one of the few museums we visited in Japan. They had a few good pieces but one of their main installations left a lot to be desired, despite taking up a large portion of the museum. It was another example of multi-media not used very well that we have encountered throughout our travels.
Under the pool art. A lot of people have fun with this installation.
I think these are actually cast bronze covered in latex.
This is a section of a really large textile piece. It's thousands and thousands of small pieces stitched together and it kinda looks like digital noise.
This room had all kinds of "art over time" experiments in it. Growing yeast in jars or, like this one, tar poured over some objects and a time lapse of it slowly dripping down into a giant petri dish being recorded.
Our four nights in Kanazawa came to a quick end and we prepared ourselves for the last two stops on our trip. We head first to the legendary Mount Fuji and then on to our final, and highly anticipated stop, Tokyo.
*I do not have mad guitar skills.
We had fun under the pool thing too.