Golden week is finally over! It's time to go back to the tourist hotspots. Our first hotspot is Kanazawa. A city that I did not know that much about. Apparently, before and during the Edo Period, this city was pretty rich and thus has a lot of very interesting sights to see!
Kanazawa is called the Seattle of Japan (because of a lot of rain/wind) and today, it gave us exactly that: A lot of rain. The rain didn't even stop for one second.
Check out an interactive Map of the places we visited here. I will update this map as we continue our Journey. This post is about Day 10.
In the morning, we left Gokayama by Highway Bus. The mountains were foggy and looked mysterious.
We reached Kanazawa around noon which was too early to check into our Airbnb. That's why we took some time to explore the city on foot. Kanazawa is not that big and so it does not take long to walk from the central station to pretty much all touristy spots.If you are into western-style bars/cafés/restaurants, you are in for a treat in Kanazawa. There are so many cute and interesting places that have a pretty western style. Esther was reminded of the UK with some places. The picture above shows a wine bar. I love how the ivy gives the building a lot of character.Kanazawa is extremely green. One upside of having a lot of precipitation, I guess.After about 15 minutes of walking, we reached the Samurai District, Nagamachi. In this district, a lot of the historical places where the Samurai (the highest cast of the ancient Japanese society) lived.The rain made for some interesting views of this district. Not a lot of people where around and Esther and me were in photography heaven. We took so many pictures.We also visited a traditional Samurai house, Nomura-ke. In contrast to a lot of the Samurai-houses in Japan, this one was still in the state it was in, when the Samurai lived in it. The garden of the house was extremely beautiful with Koi fishes, a waterfall, lots of pretty plants and so on. We partook in a tea ceremony which was just wonderful in this setting.Kanazawa also has some interesting modern architecture. In this shot, I like the reflection of the surfaces that reflect back light from different directions.This pink monochrome staircase is very mesmerizing. It just appeared out of nowhere and caught my attention immediately.In contrast to the very organized and clean look, that a lot of old and new buildings in Japan have, there is also this completely messy side of Japan. Those electricity metres, combined with the umbrella and random wires sticking out of the wall are something that I am not used to see in Germany.The rainfall got worse and worse over time. Our shoes were getting wetter and wetter. Luckily, we bought umbrellas earlier so the rest of our clothes were fine.
