kanazawa highlights: red light district woes, breakfasts of champions, parade party, and shrines galore

We left Sapporo to embark on our long travel day to Kanazawa! After two flights and a bus ride, our faces say it all! (and still no luggage lol)

Regardless of the long day, everything went very smoothly and we made it to our hotel no problem. After getting off the bus we were greeted by more liveliness than we had initially anticipated…. and there are men with posters promoting clubs and seemingly meeting up with women…. hmmmm… What did we get ourselves into…

All jokes aside our hotel was very close to the red light district in Kanazawa which was unknown to us and apparently very popular! I did some digging and turns out Kanazawa used to be its own domain ran by the Maeda clan for nearly 300 years. Due to this, a large number of samurai’s took up most of the region surrounding Kanazawa castle, so if war broke out, they were nearby. However, when the threats of war diminished, the samurai having experienced some of the perks of a wealthy lifestyle, decided to maintain those hobbies. And yes, that includes escort services, but more so the fine arts. Kanazawa is a national UNESCO site for fine arts and you can tell the value creativity and expression everywhere throughout the city. Our first few days were spent taking in the surrounding area and just getting established. We started with a delicious breakfast from a small cafe called townsfolk. We’ve been stopping at a lot of cafes that roast their own beans in house and the variation and flavors are always interesting. We also grabbed this bread cheese combo where the cheese comes from unpasteurized milk… A little frightening but a lot of delicious as well.

After breakfast, we left to checkout a shrine the was nearby which accidentally stumbled into a 3 hour endeavor. As we discovered, this beautiful and serene shrine just…kept…going. It led directly into the main castle and public garden area for Kanazawa castle. The architecture and nature surrounding the grounds was unbelievable which was probably why we got so distracted. No complaints here!

After the castle/shrine/gardens, we were starving and decided to stop at lunch spot called cafe dumbo (I had an inkling it may be NY themed, but I thought surely not) to our surprise it was! More important than that though was how divine the food her was. Cafe dumbo now hold one if not the best glazed donut and cinnamon rolls I have ever had. We went twice. It was so good, I’m still chasing that high. One thing I will mention here is that Kanazawa has an oddly high European tourist population. I’m not sure what specifically draws them in, but we saw more tourists in Kanazawa than any other location yet, and you can definitely feel it from the locals as well. Most of these tourists are traveling in big tour groups, and from what we’ve observed don’t speak much Japanese if any and make no effort to. As a result, not only do most locals speak english most didn’t even try to maintain a conversation in Japanese with us. A lot of the time we would go to a restaurant and despite our efforts to speak in Japanese, we’d get english in response even the easy things the do you want a receipt. Regardless we tried our best to speak as much as we could, and the people that were willing to speak Japanese with us were often very impressed and got very excited when we’d say simple things like please and thank you or this one please. The way the big tour groups interacted with locals was a bit of a bummer to watch, but we pushed on and tried to be as kind and quiet as possible.

Another day, we headed to this…. interesting beach… an hour away from our hotel and lets just say we did not last long there. The weather wasn’t the best and the beach was not very well kept since we were sort of in the middle of no where, but we made the most of it. That night ended with us grabbing some curry that we thought would be safe because they had a hamburger option and surely the hamburger wouldn’t be fried with the shrimp right??? RIGHT????? W R O N G!!!!! So that was a bummer but I still attempted to eat most of the patty and felt okay after thankfully. The curry itself was really good and has cemented itself as one of our favorite Japanese dishes.

Another day, another tasty breakfast at a cafe near our hotel before heading to the 21st century Kanazawa Museum of Modern Art.

They had lots of cool artists exhibits there, as well as The Swimming Pool which is a huge attraction and is interactive for people to go underneath the pool while it looks like people are existing under water. There were exhibits about Buddism and the meaning of life/suffering, as well as artist making meaning and art of out of mundane objects. We spent a few hours in the museum and then headed to the nearby festival and parade grounds that were getting set up for The 75th Kanazawa Hyakumangoku Festival that we were lucky enough to be able to visit.

The Kanazawa Hyakumangoku Festival is held in honor of the founder of the Kaga Domain, Maeda Toshiie, who entered Kanazawa Castle on June 14, 1583, and laid the foundation of Kanazawa.

Here is a little description about the festival: The parade reenacts the entrance of Maeda Toshiie and his entourage into Kanazawa Castle. It features performers and locals in historical dress, marching bands, and other performances! It starts from the east side of Kanazawa Station and passes through Musashigatsuji and downtown before ending at Kanazawa Castle Park. After the main parade, A “Summer New Year’s Celebration” begins featuring lion dancing, taiko drums, portable shrine processions, and Min’yo dance teams flood the streets from Minami-cho to Katamachi, to dance the night away in colorful yukata.

We both can agree the parade was one of the coolest things we have gotten to witness and be apart of. Obviously, we initially weren’t even going to Kanazawa, and we just happened to be there when this parade was going on and it was mere blocks from our hotel. Everyone in and around the parade felt so joyful to be there and so celebratory of each other and their city. It was emotional and fantastical to watch.

Our last day in Kanazawa was spent packing, and ticking off the final boxes on our site seeing list. Sometimes you just have to be a tourist (Shrug emoji). We wandered to one of the older, preserved tea districts, which gave Kyoto a run for its money. The main location was super busy, and full of very loud tourist groups, which did nothing to help our impression of them, but there was a smaller district near our hotel which was significantly less busy. While there a very sweet tiny grandma yelled out to me in the street “Sumimasen!!!” which means excuse me and gestured to her camera. Of course I happily obliged and she has “grandma 4” I think insinuating that her and her four friends were all grandmas. I took the most horrid photo on her ancient digital camera that had legitimately 4 pixels. It was one of the sweetest experiences that we are still holding on to and they were incredibly thankful.

Our last stop for the day was a cute cafe about a mile outside the city center. I picked it because the reviews talked a lot about it being a good place to sit and relax (japan is kinda cut throat in that many places only have a few seats so if you linger after your food you are taking a seat someone else could use, and although no one has ever complained about us staying to long, I desperately don’t want to be a nuisance, so I have us running out of places as soon as we are done if its even remotely busy). The reviews also mentioned it was ran by a very friendly husband and wife so we needed to check it out for ourselves (and they did not disappoint!). It was raining, so they held the door open and rushed us inside. The whole shop was very cute lots of antique furniture a free to play piano that I was very tempted to play if Fur Elise was anything more than muscle memory at this point (because believe me I tried to remember the notes and I can’t). They also had plenty of books that you could take and read. When we left, the husband asked our names and introduced themselves as Yasuko (the wife) and Shinpai (husband). Also, they requested to take a photo of us to post to their instagram to which we of course said yes. If any of you find yourself in Kanazawa please go to Cafe Hana and give them all your business!

Unfortunately when we walked home, it started DOWNPOURING. Naturally we had no umbrella, and the nearest 7/11 was a 10 minute walk away. The photos do not do it justice. We were soaked through our pants, socks, shirts, and shoes, but we made it fun. We were laughing at how silly we both looked with our sopping wet hair/clothes and trying to admire the empty shrines we were passing whilst trying to run to the 7/11 without slipping and wiping out on the stone streets. At least the rain was warm!

Now we are in Fukuoka to embark on the final portion of our month in Japan. We are sad to have our time here together end, but so excited to meet up with the Graf Bearson crew in Seoul to start our adventure around South Korea!