Blog - Kanazawa day 2

Kanazawa day 2

September 23, day 2 in Kanazawa.

We started the day by getting on the bus down to Nomachi where is located Myōryūji aka Ninja-dera™. The temple really has nothing to do with ninjas, but it's the fact that it's full of hidden rooms and stairs and even traps that got it nicknamed like that.

The temple looks quite normal on the outside, but actually it has a total of 23 rooms and 29 stairways! Back in the day temples were only allowed to have 2 floors, and this one looks to respect this from the outside, while it actually has 4! There are sliding doors that lead to two different places depending on the side they're open, and just plenty of tricks like that. The offertory box is also a trap that enemies could be led to fall into, and there's a well inside that's said to be a secret tunnel that led to Kanazawa castle. It was all really fascinating.

The temple visit is a guided tour, and they even provide an English book with the translated tour text. While my Japanese isn't bad, this was helpful for me to understand every trick in detail. Photos aren't allowed inside but I was sure to get the souvenir postcard set. :) A highly recommended stop to anyone who likes this type of stuff! (Be sure to place a reservation by phone a few days in advance at 076-241-0888.)

We then walked a bit around the area, in Nishi-chaya-gai, another old part of town, and Kōrinbō, a much younger district with lots of shops.

Around there is also a very nice street along a canal, named Seseragi-dōri, and there we found CD/clothing shop Rallye where I bought Lullatone's latest album. Later in the day when we passed again we also bought some cakes at Saint Nicholas.

But meanwhile, we went to have lunch at a famous sushi restaurant called Komatsu Yasuke (小松弥助) located on the 1st floor of Katamachi Apa Hotel. We sat at the counter, where an old man with some charisma prepares sushi for the customers. We ordered the fixed set, and even though at first he asked "is there anything you don't like?", it didn't change the menu, after serving me uni he said "Oh, did you say you didn't like uni?" Haha. :) We had about 10 each, and it all was truly delicious, probably the best I've had!

His sushi was very soft and delicate, ojiichan style, and had to be eaten by hand (no chopsticks). He precised for each whether they were to be eaten as is (because it already has some sort of sauce or salt) or to be eaten with soy sauce. I did a mistake once and dipped one that wasn't supposed to be, and he said "no shōyu!" with a smile.

Our stomachs full we went for a little walk just west of Kōrinbō, in an area named Nagamachi-bukeyashiki-ato, which is also an old area with many old houses, some with beautiful gardens that can be visited. The one below is free to enter.

Then we walked down to the 21st Century Museum, famous for its permanent exhibition of Leandro Erlich's swimming pool, a trompe-l'oeil installation that looks like a pool from above but below is actually a room where you can also go in.

For dinner we went to Grill Otuka (81-1 Urokomachi), another old restaurant that serves hanton rice, although theirs not only contains fried white fish but also fried shrimps. It was great too! Gotta love hanton rice. :)

After taking the bus back, we went to the an oden restaurant in Kanazawa station building, for which we had found some free drink and food coupon on a map from our hotel. That sure made the whole deal very cheap.

Stay tuned for the last of this 3-day trip. :)

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on October 2, 2008 at 23:05 | Tweet |

---

Trackback

---

Comments RSS

---

© 2003-2024, chi­pple­.n­et