Tag: cherry blossom

The Golden Marsh of Japan

On By cockneykiwi15Leave a comment

Kanazawa, Japan

April 2023

We took a public bus to the train station, to catch the train 1.5 hours to Kanazawa (public transport here is so efficient and easy), the capital of the Ishikawa Prefecture. The train took us through the beautiful Japanese Alps, passed rural towns filled with cherry blossom, overlooked by towering snow-capped mountains.

Kanazawa is a UNESCO City of Crafts and Folk Art and upon arrival I was wowed by the incredible architecture of the train station which is an interesting combination of both modern and traditional Japanese design.  It has a massive wooden traditional torii gate combined with a beautiful glass dome.  A very impressive welcome to the city.

Our hotel was just a few minutes’ walk from the station and as it was too early to check in, we dropped our overnight bags (it was here we were to be reunited with the rest of our luggage) and went out for some exploration. 

Our first stop was to be lunch and for once, the guide’s recommendation for lunch was not a convenience store, but … Gusto, a Cat Robot restaurant.  We all jumped at the opportunity.   It was just like a diner with lots of food choices (both Japanese and western), bottomless soft drinks AND, most importantly, a Cat Robot as a waiter!!   The food was not bad, and the service was fun – I for one definitely enjoyed the experience. 

From here we boarded a local bus and headed to the loop bus to Nagamachi, the Samurai district where middle to high-ranking samurai used to live with their families.  The city was once the economic and administrative centre of the Kaga Domain, making it one of the largest castle towns in feudal Japan.  The area is pretty well preserved as the city avoided the WWII bombing that other Japanese cities endured, and today you can walk down the narrow cobbled streets, surrounded by restored houses, waterways (useful to fight fires) and original earthen walls.

One of the houses is open to the public , the Nomura Samurai House, the home of 11generations of a high-ranking samurai family who served the ruling Maeda family from as early as 1583, right through to the end of the Edo period in the middle of the 19th century.  The appearance of the house has been well preserved including the beautiful rooms and the gardens which includes a 400 year old myrtle tree.

It was then a 15 minute walk across the Sai River (still lined with abundant cherry blossom and views back towards the mountains) to the Nishi Chaya district – one of the geisha districts of the city, where we visited the Kanazawa Nishi Chaya Shiryokan Museum.  The museum is in one of the Chaya houses, a traditional place of entertainment and it was interesting to learn a little more about the elusive geisha culture.  (Apparently, watching the Netflix show “The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House” gives a good insight in to the culture and traditional of the Geisha and it was next on my train viewing list, once I finished the Age of Samurai.)

By now we could check in to our rooms, and thankfully today was one of those rare days when I had time for a short rest before heading out to dinner at a nearby restaurant.  The food was not amazing as the set menu was mostly fish and nothing special in the way of vegetables or other food to try but I made the most of it by trying the local drinks (as it was all you can drink for 2 hours !) Sake, plum wine and local beer.  All of which aided a decent night’s sleep.

I was up before 6am to do something very important on day 7 – laundry. The hotel had machines that took 2 hours so trying to find the right time where I had the time and there were free machines was a challenge – for me early morning was that time.

Let’s pause for a minute while I do my washing to talk about the wonders that are Japanese toilets! 7 days in and they are always clean, always have a heated seats and various washing functions – some even have privacy sounds (played whilst doing your business) and our Kanazawa hotel one even has its own hand basin that runs water when flushing!  Despite the brilliance of the toilets, public toilets rarely seem to have anything to dry your hands with🤔, no towels (paper or otherwise) or hand driers – I wonder why??

Washing and toilet musing done, it was time to enjoy what was (and would continue to be) the best hotel breakfast of the trip.  I started with chicken cutlet with Kanazawa curry (yum) and then sweet potato and coconut milk sweet soup with Warabi Mochi, a chewy, jelly like cube made from Warabi starch (a type of fern) rather than rice starch (yum yum).

With a full belly I was ready to start another day of exploration.  There was no need for the Loop bus pass that our guide had recommended, as we discovered that most places on our list for the day were within 10-20 minutes’ walk from each other so off we went on foot towards the first stop of the day at the Omicho Market, the largest market in the city since the Edo period! 

The over 200 shops in the covered network of ‘streets’ mainly sell fresh fish and produce but you can also find a whole range of other random items such as flowers, clothes, household items …  if I was a fan of seafood (which I am not), this would be a great place to enjoy the freshly prepared delights including oysters, eel and horny turban snails!

From the market it was just a short 10 minute walk to the Kanazawa Castle Park.  Not surprisingly on the grounds of the Kanazawa Castle.   Kanazawa, grew around the castle, which was the seat of the powerful Maeda Clan, lords of Kaga, once the second most powerful clan in Japan (this is sounding more like Game of Thrones by the day!).

Much of the castle has been rebuilt numerous times, the last time after a fire in 1881.  We had decided not to go into the castle, but enjoy the beautiful park with its cherry blossom as we walked through and the Ishikawa-mon Gate (dating back to 1788) and into what used to be the castle’s outer gardens.  Today, Kenrokuen, which literally means “Garden of the six sublimities”,  is considered one of Japan’s most beautiful landscape gardens.

The “six sublimities” relates to a Chinese landscape theory of the six essential attributes required to make a perfect garden.   Spaciousness, seclusion, artificiality, antiquity, abundant water and broad views.  Having spent some time walking around the beautiful gardens, I can agree, that it definitely meets those criteria. 

There was a small area of shops near the entrance to the park where I decided it was time to try a local delicacy – a soft serve matcha ice cream, covered in gold leaf!  Now, the matcha ice cream is probably a Japanese wide phenomenon, but the gold leaf is unique to Kanazawa.  Kanazawa actual means ‘gold marsh’, and the city is Japan’s ‘Gold Leaf capital’, producing 98-99% of the nation’s gold leaf.  Hence the use of it wherever they can lol.  I can’t say it tasted of anything, but it certainly looked pretty lol.

Upon entering the gardens, we paid ¥500 (around NZ$6) for a combined ticket that gave us entrance to the park as well as to one of the nearby museums.  (We learnt afterwards that if you entered via a different gate there was no charge!)  The gardens were beautiful, some trees still in full blossom, others already ‘snowing’ petals.  Lots of people dressed up in their traditional outfits having photos taken (here it mostly looked like local people but that is an assumption).

One of the key attractions in the gardens is the iconic, two legged Kotojitoro Lantern (most stone lanterns have only one leg).  It is a symbol of the gardens as well as the city (even appearing on its manhole covers) and I expected it to be huge (well, it appeared huge in all the photos I had seen of it)!  So we walked around the gardens, looking for the famous “thing” – turns out we had already passed it and taken photos of it without even realising it was the “thing” lol.  I had expected it to be 10 metres tall when in fact it was only 2 (and part of that is submerged in the lake).

Given that Kanazawa is the city of Crafts & Folk Art, we thought it only right to visit the small Museum for Traditional Arts and Crafts, just on the edge of the gardens. The museum houses beautiful examples of local handcrafts include gold leaf (of course) and dyed silk.

We exited the gardens and walked down a beautiful street where the cherry blossom was snowing and blowing around in the breeze and head towards one of the other geisha areas of the city – the Higashi Chaya District.  This is the largest of the preserved Geisha districts in the city and apparently Geisha culture still flourishes here. 

To have a “tourist” Geisha experience, it is necessary to book months in advance, so we just enjoyed a Tea House experience in one of the preserved Chayas.  With a menu only in Japanese our choices were a bit hit and miss but I managed to get a coffee and a pretty, if not particularly tasty traditional confectionary.

After another huge walking day, I was ready to head back to the hotel so left the others back at the market to enjoy a seafood dinner and made my way back home. 

(After thought – another great quirk about Japan is their adherence to rules.  They will stand at a crossing waiting for the ‘green man’ even if there is no traffic in sight!  I made the mistake a couple of times of just crossing and got some odd looks from other pedestrians who were waiting patiently lol)

Cherry blossom & castle

On By cockneykiwi15Leave a comment

Matsumoto

April 2023

This morning I woke early again (but at least it was 5am and not 2am 🥴).  It didn’t help that my roommate decided to turn on a light and read in the middle of the night, my sleep so far has not been great!!  I wanted to go up to the roof terrace for sunrise but for some random reason it is closed till 6.30am.  Now of course I could have run down to see it at the temple but that would have involved getting dressed which I was not quite ready to do 😂

By 8am we were out the door of the hotel and on the walk passed the local temple (for the last time) to Asakusa station to catch the subway and then a train before boarding our Japan Rail train to Matsumoto – easy to find with the markings on the floor!  For many Japan Rail trains, you need to reserve a seat in advance, so we soon settled into our seats and I set up to do some Japanese research … by watching the “Age of Samurai” on Netflix.👍🏻 (FYI it was actually really interesting and gave me some good background to things we were to see in the coming days.)

As the train travelled out of central Tokyo we travelled though small suburban areas, then small farming areas, passed tree covered hills and snowcapped mountains in the distance.    We managed to catch a glimpse of Fuji, popping up from behind the other mountains 🎉so happy to see it.  (Luckily, I did not make the effort to go out of town yesterday to see it as it had been covered in cloud 🥴).   The little rural towns were lovely with cherry blossom everywhere and oddly there were no farm animals to be seen.  There were however fields of solar panels lol.

It took just over 3 hours to reach our destination for the day, the small city of Matsumoto and from the train station it was a short walk to our hotel.  I was suitably impressed when I went to use the toilet in the hotel lobby and the toilet lid opened automatically – toilets here really are next level!  

To be honest, Tokyo overwhelmed me, and I was glad to be somewhere smaller (Matsumoto has a population of around 240,000 compared to Tokyo’s almost 14,000,000).  That said, writing this after the trip, I would have liked to have had a couple of days back in Tokyo at the end of the trip when I was more comfortable and confident with Japan and all its quirks.

Matsumoto is famous for its iconic castle – Matsumoto Castle or “Crow Castle” because of its black colour.  It is one of five castles in Japan designed as “National Treasures” and is the oldest original castles left in the country (most temples and castles that we see are reconstructions).

The walk to the castle took us through part of the very walkable city, past a couple of sites I planned to head back to, and I enjoyed noting the nice little local touches such as the Samurai lamps on the street and the beautiful manhole covers with local handicrafts on them.  (Manhole covers became a bit of a theme of the trip with each city/region having their own local design.  I will need to make a collage to show them all!)

When we arrived in the castle grounds, Rinrin (our guide) gave us some time to have lunch – as she directed us to the nearest convenience store!  I decided not to waste so much time eating and set off to walk around the outside of castle.   The gardens were beautiful and filled with cherry blossom, in fact some of the blossom here has not even peaked yet!  With the blossom and the snow capped mountains in the distance and the fact that there was nowhere near as many people as in Tokyo, I loved it.

Along the outer castle moat, the cherry blossom was particularly pretty, with the castle turret in the background.   In fact, the castle complex use to be vast, but in 1872, the Meiji government ordered the destruction of all feudal fortifications!  Most of the castle structures were destroyed but thankfully the locals rallied together to save the castle.  Today the foundations of these other buildings in the complex are only visible by them being marked out on the grounds around the castle.   

Having completed my walk around the entire complex, I meet up with the others as they finished their lunch.  I still had time to have something to eat before joining everyone to go across the moat and inside the castle walls to have the obligatory group photo with ‘fake’ samurai and ninja before entering the castle itself.  (I should note you can enjoy the castle garden.) for free and only have to pay to go into the castle itself)

The beautiful five storey medieval castle was built in the late 16th century when one of the main ‘characters’ from my Netflix series, Oda Nobunaga ruled the area.  Although from the outside, the castle looks like it is five stories, on the inside it is actually six stories with a hidden or secret floor inside. Apparently, it’s black colour represents loyalty to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, another samurai who stared in the Age of Samurai (that programme really was great research lol) and who is credited with unifying Japan.

Whilst we waited to go inside the castle (sometimes the queues can be hours long, for us it was only 15-20 minutes), we were warned that inside there were “steps as tall as a small child” – it was true.  😂.  We walked through the one way system, up through the 5 (or is it 6) levels, each with small exhibits of items found on or near the castle grounds such as early guns and other weapons, armour and coins.  Always looking through the small windows used for soldiers to aim their arquebus guns or bow/arrows out of, or larger ones for throwing rocks out of.  

As I touched some of the old worn timber beams, I could not help but think of the samurai who touched the same beams before me.  Being immersed in history like this makes it so real, and I love it!

From the beautiful castle we split up and I walked with my crew to Nawate Dori, often known as Kaeru Machi or “Frog Street’ as it is dedicated to all things frog!  Apparently, this is because there used to be a lot of frogs along the banks of the Metoba River that runs alongside the street. They left for higher ground after a flood in 1959 and have never returned so have been replaced with stone frogs including the three very large stone frogs are positioned at the main entrance to the narrow brick street which has been a shopping hub since the 1500s. 

Frog Street is lined with small food and gift shops, many of which are frog themed.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there, many of the shops were starting to close (we are soon to learn that shops and even restaurants do not stay open late in Japan) but I did get a chance to buy a small frog trinket (which would be the start of another odd collection of quirky Japanese things) from a lovely old man who was keen to share the history of the street with me.

From Nawate Dori we crossed the river and walked a little down Nakamachi Dori.  Another narrow street lined with preserved buildings, this time white warehouse type buildings which once housed many of the city’s merchants.  We clearly missed the hype as most of the shops were closed and most of the restaurants were not yet open! 

Back on the main street, we decided, for the sake of research to visit what appeared to be a British pub (the “Old Rock”) advising beer from the local Matsumoto Brewery.  The local brew was pretty good, and we asked a local guy sitting on his own, to join us.  Tomo, a doctor from Tokyo did not seem to mind that his quiet dinner for one, turned in to a loud drink for 5 lol.  One of the things I love about travel – a Pol, an Irish, an American and a Kiwi sitting in a random bar with a Japanese guy … 

Whilst enjoying our drink, time got away from us, and we had to rush back to the hotel to check in and meet the group for dinner – which ended up being cancelled as the place the guide was going to take us was closed!  To be honest this was fine with me as I wanted to prioritise exploring over eating, as we were visiting on the last night of the 10 day long Corridor of Light. So we headed back to the castle to see the lights around the cherry blossom.  There were actually more people than there had been during the day, but it was beautiful and worth the second visit. Reflections are something I love and these were perfect.

But, by this time it was 8.40pm and almost everywhere we are trying for dinner was closing at 9pm and would not serve us!  I decided to give up head back to the hotel whilst the others continued to keep trying.  All in all, it was a lovely day.

Day 4 started off well.  I managed to sleep until 6am and then had an amazing breakfast spread, offering English and Japanese options. I had the weird combination of pineapple, French toast, dumplings, soba noodles, which apparently this place is famous for, fried chicken.   All very random, but all very nice.

Awake, packed and breakfasted more than one hour before we left, I decided to go out for exploration.  I found another shrine on the map and headed to it – Fukashi- jinja Shrine.  It was a beautiful more, cold at around 4C but the there was blue sky, and it was sunny, and the shrine was so peaceful, and I was ready for the day ahead.