Gardens and Ninjas

Day 4

BIG day today..... we are going to Kanazawa.  The name "Kanazawa", means "marsh of gold", and is said to come from the legend of the peasant Imohori Togoro who was digging for potatoes when flakes of gold washed upmarsh.  So we are off to look for gold!!!

Kanazawa is also well known for its old traditional Geisha, Samurai and Ninja districts.  Sounds like just the place for us.......

Kanazawa is about 2 hours from Kyoto so we were up and out nice (!) and early..... getting to Kyoto train station for 8am.  Unfortunately, this meant we were also amongst the crush of poor people going to work. However, the train to Kanazawa was less crowded and we got a good seat so I could watch the Japanese landscape go by.

We are making our way through mountain areas with some fantastic scenery.  We stop at one station - Kagaonsen and spotted this.......

It's absolutely huge!! We tried to Google it, but all we found out was that it a Godess Kannon holding her child.  She is about 73 meters tall and was glistening in the early morning sunshine.  We only saw her for 2 minutes before the train moved off again.... but she was quite a surprise!!!

We are now at Kanazawa and bought our all day bus passes. First stop is Higashi Chaya-gai.  This is where the Geisha perform and there are a lot of Tea Houses.  The streets are narrow and the tea houses are very traditional - some of them are hundreds of years old. They are still used for entertaining and are quite exclusive but the Shima House is open to everyone so we could go and have a poke around there. Here we met a lovely Geisha lady who chatted to us for ages.  Apparently she spent a lot of time in the UK and studied English at Oxford University.  She was really nice and asked if we wanted to see the Geisha performance........ but it was on Wednesday - not today!!! 

Aaaargh!!!!!!

We wandered round here for a while and came across a gold leaf shop (remember the gold story??). Well this shop sold everything and anything covered in gold leaf ..... Jewellery, boxes, handbags, cakes, tea, sake with gold leaf and some makeup products. It was amazing.  We were directed outside to this small building in a small garden area.  The small building was literally covered in gold leaf - inside and out. Obviously they don't let you in there and I tried to take a photo - but hasn't really worked.  There's some money there!?!?!??

So moving on from here, we decided to tackle the gardens and castle. Kenroku-en Garden is one of Japan's top three gardens and is HUGE!!!!  This garden is gorgeous and lives up to its reputation..... And goes on for ever. The gardeners are starting to put poles on the trees - this is to protect the trees 
from heavy snowfall... Impressive!!!  We spent AGES in here just wandering round. Mam and Dad would love it here. I doubt we would get Dad out!! There's also little tea rooms and a tat stall (isn't there always a tat stall??). 

Time is moving on so on to the next stop .... Ninja-dera. Scott was looking forward to this one. However, when we got there, we were told we needed to make a reservation - but they let us join the next tour - Whoo hoo.  Now they tells us we have to have the guided tour and it's only in Japanese - doh!! But  they gave us a book that explained everything the guide was talking about.  Basically there are 23 room and 29 staircases and a number of hidden passages - all designed to protect the Fuedal Lord.   There were so many different ways to hide and also sneak up in the emery and cause them great pain - all pretty amazing stuff.  Local legend has it that there is a tunnel going from this temple to Kanazawa castle, but no one has been able to prove it..... It's a long way!!! 

At the end of the tour, the back page of our booklet tells us that this is a place of worship and that the Ninjas owning this temple  are a myth .... WTF???? Meh - what do they know.... There were too 
many trap doors for this not to have Ninjas!!!!!

Next stop - Samurai Town. It's starting to get dark now, but Scott wanted to see the Ninja and Samurai districts. They looked a lot like the Geisha district - wooden houses, but we found out that this area has nine of the original houses and are all replicas. Ahhh - never mind, they still looked good. 

We are now flagging a bit and we still have that 2 hour train journey home, so we decided to make a move.  It seemed to take forever to get back and it was after 9 when we finally made it home. I picked up some Onigiri from the Lawsons - that's a rice ball covered in seaweed and mine had salmon in the middle. Scrummy ...... Just enough to keep me going after a long day.

Time to pass out now..... Scott and I made a deal before we came out that if we did have a long day, the next day would be quieter .... A deals a deal, so quiet one tomorrow - Osaka!!

So until next time..... Oyasumi Nasai xoxox