Friday. Leaving our spa town behind, we took a JR train back to the Hokkaido airport for a one hour flight to Komatsu. Then a one hour, fully booked bus where we were the last ones onboard and so sat in the aisle in drop down jitney seats. But we made it! A short taxi ride from the Kanazawa train station took us to our first 5 star hotel. Hotel SANRAKU Kanazawa.
After a day of travel we were ready for a good dinner. And it turned out the highest rated sushi place was a block away plus our concierge managed to get us in.
Kourin Sushi is a tiny, family-run place but we had hoped to sit at the sushi bar. Instead, we were sent to a back room that looked suspiciously like a musician’s recording studio. Guitars on the wall. Keyboard under wraps. Of course, Andy had to pluck a few strings! And that’s when the night became electric! Or rather acoustic!
The sushi chef hears the plucking, comes in and tells Andy he wants to jam later. Later didn’t mean after hours. It meant whenever he could steal a few minutes from his chef duties. Meanwhile glorious, fresh sushi and a delicious hamachi collar start coming to our table.
A short time later, in bursts Takeshita again and the two musicians try to find a common ground musically.
And there it was. Two strangers bonding over the Beatles “Blackbirds singing in the dead of night…”. So fun and unexpected
And then, a bluesy jam sesh on the next break. By the end of the night we were friends. What a great start to our stay.
Why did we pick Kanazawa? Blame Claude AI. It met all ourI criteria: Great arts, culture, architecture, food, parks and gardens and not too touristy. Further research touted it as less crowded than Kyoto but with a geisha area, red gates, a historic castle and a top rated botanical park.
Saturday morning, after an instant oatmeal and coffee breakfast we made in our room (we are definitely not the 5 Star type), we walked two blocks up the hill to one of the castle entry gates. We also noted a trendy coffee shop enroute that will definitely be visited tomorrow instead of our “room service”!
The castle is amazing and it even has a moat. There’s spacious parkland around the main building that was all part of the Clan Lord’s estate. The castle dates from the Edo period and was home to the Maeda clan for 14 generations. Lovers of the arts, artisan crafts flourished from gold leaf making to silk spinning to ceramics.
We wandered into a VR show about castle life and got a deeper impression of how the rich and powerful lived back in the day.
After, we crossed a bridge to Kenrokuen Gardens. Considered one of three perfect gardens in Japan, we wandered the many paths and photographed virtually every beautifully-groomed tree on stilts.
By then, we were starving and nowhere near food. We had the hangries and we had it bad.
We walked down the hill outside the park and re-entered civilization. But where to eat. We were now yelling at each other when I convinced Andy to check out what appeared to be a festival in the park right across the street.
Not only was it a festival. It was a sake festival and there were food and drink booths galore. We used the universal language of finger pointing to someone’s tickets and they pointed the way to the ticket booth.
We had great food bites and found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of locals enjoying the opportunity for heavy day drinking! I think we were the only “Westerners” there and we loved it. We had some grilled fish, grilled veggies and carrot and corn ice cream cones. All oishi.
Sated and tired, we cabbed back to our hotel. Another great dinner (izakawa style) was on tap for tonight At Furoya, Andy finally fulfilled his wagyu dream… pictured at bottom!
Since it was an early dinner, we decided to check out the Geisha district afterward. It was nothing like Kyoto. It was alleys full dark, decrepit old tea houses with nary a geisha in sight. Just a few, sad little bars with no one inside. It was actually a little scary wandering here in the dark, nearly empty streets. The four other poor schnooks wandering around were also clearly victims of Claude’s irrational exuberance.
I went to bed with a little scratchy throat. I woke up with more. Luckily, we did all our outdoor activities on a beautiful, sunny day. Today it was grey and drizzly.
We settled on going to a museum. This one was all about the arts and crafts of Kanazawa and it deepened our appreciation for their artistry. By the end of our museum visit, I was clearly feeling coldish and tired so we stayed home the rest of the day except for dinner. Which I could barely eat.
We packed up for a long, long day of rail travel on Monday.
Monday is when our trip went off the rails…
How’s that for a cliffhanger?
