Kanazawa [金沢]

[Part 7 of 2008 Winter Road Trip]

Kanazawa [金沢] is in Ishikawa Prefecture [石川県], up near the inside of the 'elbow' of Japan, facing the Japan sea. Unfortunately, the weather was not so good when we went. So the photos all look a bit dreary...

Parts of the town had the traditional mud walls, which were partly covered in straw sheeting when we went (we thought it was to stop them from getting too damp. Anyway, this is apparently the Nagamachi district[長町] of Kanazawa - where the samurai used to live.


Wondering around the Nagamachi district, we came across a very nice little ceramics shop (which also included a small museum and coffee shop - but we just went into the shop part). Unfortunately, the things that we liked were around a million Yen...so a little out of our budget. The ceramics were very impressive, we were particularly taken by some small tea cups (with lids) which had very fine Japanese calligraphy penned on the *inside* of the cup. One of them was barely bigger than a thimble.

Kanazawa also has a very funky looking torii [鳥居](usually a gate to a temple) outside the main railway station. Underneath the torii is a water fountain, which both tells that time and tells you occasionally that 'Kanazawa is good!'.