Kanazawa, Japan

DAY 11

SITES: Kenroku-en Garden, Kanzawa Castle, Higashi Chaya-Gai

2018-08-12, 19:13, JASON

BUDGET, STAY: AirBnB

A bit off the tourist rail, on the western side of the main island in Japan, is a town called Kanazawa. The Japan Rail previously did not reach this place so it was only reachable by bus. Since 2016, the JR rail opened up a path and it has received more tourists. We'd only heard about it from our Japanese who'd recommended it to us. So, we took our JR rail pass and spent two days there.

While Tokyo had clear skies, Kanazawa, by nature of being on the west coast, had much more rain and snow. It records large amounts of "fall" from the sky (be it snow, rain). On the way in, we pass by Nagano, which is where the winter olympics used to be held. Peering out the window, I see blue sky, then heavy rain, thick snow, blue sky, and then rain. Looks like it's going to be a wet trip. The "Seattle of Japan."

As the bus from the station arrives, it's already raining, but we're determined not to let the rain stop our tourism. First stop is Kenroku-en Garden, which is at the heart of the city. By now we've been to several Japanese gardens, but of all the ones we've seen, I liked this one the best. It's the most intricate one, and the one with the most variation. Ponds, shrines, weird scaffolding things, pagodas, waterfalls, etc. Every part was preserved so well, with gardeners still slowly cutting away even in the rain. There's an interesting mixture of color, and the water reflects the grey skies and produces a deep teal color, contrasted against the reds and greens of the shrubbery. See what I mean:

I probably have a hundred pictures just from the Garden, but here's just a brief selection.

Afterwards, right on the other side, it's the Kanzawa Castle. The weather's a bit iffy, with on and off rains, but so far it's holding up quite well. That is, until we get to the castle and it starts pissing it down. Still, not about to let some rain ruin our time.

In the night as the weather becomes colder and wetter, we venture over to one of the old geisha districts in Kanazawa. Apparently, some of these geisha houses have been well preserved in their original layout. Now that Kanazawa is more "on the map," the tourism bureau has tried to preserve this while allowing the public to sightsee the interior, while some have been converted to non-geisha teahouses. At night though, there's hardly a soul in this district. Most of the tourism happens during the day. It makes for some great pictures. The darkness makes it all the more.. Japanesey. It's like out of a Miyazaki film.

Yikes. We ditch the geisha district in search of some food since this place is dead.

Heading closer back towards the train station is a supposed izakaya that's very famous. We show up and it's too crowded (as in, all 6 seats are taken and we don't want to wait), so we go next door to a small noodle shop run by an older Japanese man.

He smiles and greets us as we go in. The menu is entirely in Japanese so we do a point and nod. He asks us a few questions, we have no idea what he is saying, so we just agree. Here's what we get.

Not bad I'd say. Never fear the unknown when it comes to food.. just point, and go! The worst thing that could happen is that it'd taste bad but, hey, you have many more meals. And, it's Japan, rarely anything tastes bad. After we finish, the man smiles and asks where we are from. I tell him Taiwan, and Thorin says the U.K. He is really happy to see tourists coming from abroad, and smiles. He'd asked us where we'd been that day, what we plan to do tomorrow, and everything. He scuttles to the corner of his restaurant, and pulls a small leaflet off from one of the tables: it's a map of Kanazawa in English. He gives us some suggestions of where to go, "Fish market.. nice! Samurai.. nice!" and based on the pointing and the map, we slowly etch an itinerary out for tomorrow. We leave the shop and bow and he bows back with a smile that covers his face, his monolids fully covering his eyes.

And, what do we do at night? That's right -- sento. In a rainy city, the post-sauna feeling is that much more warming. Here's one of the few sentos we took pictures of since it's weird to usually take pictures outside of public bathhouses. You can't see much, anyhow.