Last weekend, Grace, Johnna and I made the 3 (or so...) hour drive through the mountains, by the sea and down into Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. The weather on Saturday morning was miserable which made the drive interesting, but we still made it down in good time. Our drive through the city to our hotel was a bit difficult, but through the combined efforts of three maps, my Japanese direction-getting skills, Grace's phone call to our ryokan and Johanna's good eye from the backseat, we finally made it!
After we checked in, we grabbed some special Kanazawa-style food for lunch (riiiight) and we decided that, due to the weather, we'd try to do indoor stuff on Saturday and outdoor stuff on Sunday. The main indoor activity in Kanazawa is the gold leaf museum and shop. Gold leaf is, well, leaves of gold that are pounded down to 1/1000mm sheets from ground scraps of gold. There is a rather lenghty process involving fire, foil, pounding, cutting and tying which was explained to us entirely in Japanese (read: I didn't really understand). Gold leaf, in its finished form, is used for various crafts and, perhaps more importantly, Buddhist altars. Our tour guide explained the process to us while we watched two women complete the final stage of the process. The leaves were so light that after they cut the leaf, they literally blew the scraps pieces away where they floated gently to the scrap pile. Our guide then surprised us by handing us a scrap each and then insisting that we eat them. So, uh, we did. And it was kinda weird.
After the demonstration, we headed out to the gift shop where we were served gold leaf tea and spent a good hour or so choosing sounvenirs for family, friends and ourselves. I bought myself a two-tiered lacquer box with a gorgeous gold leaf top with a Japanese scene painted on it. I'm planning to use it as a jewelry box when I get to Portland. And I bought my mom a (late) Mothers' Day gift which I can't explain here cause I just sent it out on Monday and she reads this blog (love you, mommy!). Anyway, horray for tasteful souvenirs!
Gold Leaf Tea
While we were in the shop, the weather cleared up a bit. It still wasn't sunny, but the downpours had stopped. This was a pleasant surprise as we were right on the edge of the geisha district and wanted to walk around a bit. We headed up to the geisha district which was a quiet, old-fashioned street lined with various shops and tea houses. We spent about an hour perusing the shops and picking up more souvenirs. Definitely didn't see any geisha though.
Display of chopsticks
After our walk through the geisha district, we headed back to our ryokan to relax a little and primp before dinner/drinking. We went to a Thai restaurant across the street from the ryokan and then Grace had a little itenerary of bars and izakayas we should check out after.
Our first stop after dinner was supposed to be an izakaya, dubbed by The Lonely Planet as being "so cool it's almost unrecognizable from the street", but we couldn't find it. (This is not the first time LP has been faulty, by the way). So we made an early move to a reggae bar with some absurd name like Pole Pole or something. The bar was quite kitschy with names and countries of its past visitors scribbled on the walls (yes, we signed the wall too), random Corona and Bob Marley paraphernalia on the walls and, ahem, penis ashtrays on the bar. We definitely acted like 14 year olds with the phallic ashtrays, much to the amusement of the bartenders and other patrons.
Mine had a dude on it... or something. Kind of unsettling.
We left Pole Pole after a couple of drinks realizing that 9pm is way to early to go to bars in Japan (or anywhere?) so we decided we'd get some chu-his and go to karaoke for a bit. I've never gone to karaoke with such a small group, but seriously, it was awesome. We sang the most absurd songs and Grace managed to take a couple of videos which could potentially ruin a future political career. In our last 20 minutes, two drunk 30-something Japanese guys stormed our room, sang songs in Japanese, petted my head (ew!) and asked us if we were "Chinese Angels" Umm, ok. So we quietly packed up our things and booked it to the front desk where we paid and ditched our new stalkers.
We attempted to find another bar which came recommended by a bartender at Pole Pole, but, put briefly, it sucked. So we wandered into the next bar with an absurd name we could find. This time it was Jigger Bar. Anyway, we settled in here for a couple of cocktails, cute waiters and rowdy Japanese people at the table next to us. We had intended to stay for one drink then move onto another bar (7 ho?), but we ended up staying at Jigger as the token gaijin till we had all had too much to drink and too much flirting with random J-boys.
Sunday morning I woke up surprisngly hangover-free. I'm sorry, I just need to mention that this is nothing short of a small miracle considering the number of cocktails consumed, but here's what I did: after we left Jigger, we hit up a convenience store where I bought a sports drink, a water, and a rice ball. On the walk back to the hotel, I scarfed my onigiri, and chugged my sports drink. In the hotel, I popped two ibuprofen and happily passed out. And it worked! Awesome!
Anyway, we got dressed and checked out of the ryokan and headed out for some breakfast and shopping before our 12pm reservation at Myoryuji, or Ninja Dera. We all managed to successfully buy things we don't really need and then began the walk to the temple. This turned out to be more difficult than suggested (are you surprised?) and again, between several faulty maps, loss of patience, help from random people/children on the street and a phone call to the temple, we made it in time for the 12:30 tour.
We saw this on the long walk to Ninja Dera
Ninja Dera from the outside
This temple was built in 1643. It is known as Ninja Dera because it appears to be 2 floors, but in fact has 4 floors and 7 layers; 23 rooms and 29 staircases; trick escape routes; hidden rooms and a suicide chamber. The tour was conducted entirely in Japanese, but they provided us with a 17 page English guide complete with pictures that followed the same route as the tour. Impressive. We weren't allowed to take photos in the temple, but suffice it to say, it was cool.
After the temple, we hopped in a taxi to Kenrokuen, Kanazawa's famous park. Roku is the Japanese word for 6. As such, Kenrokuen combines the 6 attributes of a perfect landscape garden: spaciousness, seclusion, artificiality, antiquity, water and panorama. It's a huge and very beautiful park. And the weather was perfect for spending a few hours strolling in the park on a Sunday afternoon. Which is exactly what we did.
Matcha ice cream. Yum!
Aren't they cute!
Check out this dude's outfit. That's weird - even for Japan!
After the park, we packed up the car and headed back to good old Niigata. All in all, another successful roadtrip!
