Thank you Anthony.
August 3-4, 2018
When we decided we would be visiting Japan, we did what we usually do when planning a trip and watched any Anthony Bourdain episode that is filmed where we will travel. While watching every episode of his on Japan we saw one where he comes to Kanazawa and were instantly sold on this city. After we later heard the sad news of his death, we realized how much he has impacted both our love of travel and learning about cultures through food. As we began to plan further and every blog or article discussing the city described it as a food lovers paradise, we knew we made a good decision. Also, be prepared for us to discuss all the food we ate here.
One our first day we walked through the Nishi and Kazuemachi Chaya Districts. These are old geisha and tea house areas, with some buildings being hundreds of years old. Although all the buildings were closed by this time, it was nice to walk through the streets with few people and take it all in.
The beautifully kept Nishi and Kazuemachi Chaya Districts.
Being a fishing village area, this is the place to come for fresh fish and we made sure to eat as much of it as possible. We found a sushi restaurant and were lucky to get a table since it had just opened because we read they often require reservations. We ordered sashimi plate, which is the chef’s selections from what he has purchased at the market earlier in the day. It was the best sashimi we had ever had and there were so many varieties that we had never seen before.
We began our next day with a traditional Japanese breakfast with egg, rice, tofu, and several other small bites. We also had green tea which is much more common to find here than coffee, much to Chuck’s disappointment.
Despite the intense heat (still), we went to Kenroku-en Park, which was developed between 1620 and the 1840’s and was previously the outer garden of Kanazawa castle. As we began walking, we could hear a drum performance and followed the sound to the Museum of Traditional Arts and Crafts, where there was a drum performance. We got to watch this and then watch a local artisan (a certified artisan of Buddhist altars-according to the sign) hand carve wood into various figures. We were glad we stumbled on this and then continued walking through the park.
The park was easily one of the most beautiful we have ever been to. All throughout were old park were Karasaki Pines with low wide branches making huge canopies. There were old stone lanterns and pagodas throughout and stone bridges over creeks and ponds. There were also several old tea houses throughout. We stopped at one on a pond overlooking a waterfall and pagoda and got to have matcha tea and a sweet bean dessert here.
As we left, we walked past Kanazawa Castle. The entire castle and walls have been rebuilt over time and is not original, so we decided to skip a visit there, but it was another pretty castle from the outside.
For lunch, we headed to the Omicho Market. Here fresh fish from the Sea of Japan is sold every morning and tons of markets sell this fish, along with other local items. We stopped at one of the many restaurants at a stand and ordered a local specialty, Kaiser don, a bowl of rice topped with sashimi. Here this meant about 12 pieces of different fresh caught fish. Again, there were varieties we have never seen before and each piece was better than the next. We also tried urchin for the first time. We thought we had the best fish ever the previous day, but this topped it!
We continued to walk through the aisles of the market, bought some mocha rice sweets filled with bean paste.
We went to Nagamachi Samurai District. Here the buildings belonged samurais and their families and later to merchants. We saw the one of the old samurai homes that is now a museum and visited the Shinise Kinenkan Musuam, a restored pharmacy which also served as the home for the family. We also went to a ceramics shop where we were able to see painted ceramics from different artists. This building was the oldest pottery building in Kanazawa. They had a sign saying they had one prizes in previous world’s fairs and when Chuck asked a worker about this he took us to a back room to show us an exhibit showing all the world’s fairs they had work shown in, their awards, and replica pieces of work. One piece showed how artists would compete to write in the smallest font possible. A lot of pieces also had a type of painting style that would like regular paint strokes from far away, but up close you would see it was made a thousands of tiny dots of paint, utterly amazing!
We decided to walk back to the tea house district, as all the shops were closed the day before. When we arrived we were lucky to catch a group of geisha’s waiting for cars to their jobs. After days of seeing tourists dressed up in these outfits, it was easy to spot the real deal with their impeccable hair, makeup and kimonos. There were also tons of other tourists who spotted them and rushed to take pictures of them. We actually felt a little bad for them as they were surrounded by people taking pictures, snapping selfies, and getting very close to them without acting like they were real people. Although Chuck may also have been one of those people...
As we continued walking through the area we stopped at various shops and were reminded of another one of their specialties here, gold leaf. The city started producing gold leaf in the 16th century and it is said that they produce 99% of it in Japan. Thinking back to all the buildings and items we have seen with gold leaf, this was pretty amazing. This also meant that they sell everything here with it, from soft serve ice cream covered in a sheet of it to face wash with flecks of gold leaf, you could buy it in almost any form. We stopped for cocktails later and Anna was even given a drink with gold leaf sprinkled on top.
For our last dinner here, we decided to take a break from fish and try another local specialty. This one was found in the basement of the market we visited early and was known for it’s curry rice and fried pork cutlets. After eating all the food Kanazawa had to offer, we are off to the next stop!
We really enjoyed Kanazawa! With less tourists and crowds it almost felt more like what we were expecting Japan to be like. Once we stepped away from the crowded historic streets during the day, it was nice to be in an area that didn’t feel like it was mainly marketing to tourists and had a really authentic feel. All the signs were in Japanese and we found ourselves eating at restaurants with only locals a lot of the time. Of course, the incredibly fresh fish we ate may have also made us love this city a little more.
