To Kanazawa via Shirakawa-go

Our journey continued west-ward, with a stop at Shirakawa-gō, a village located in the valley of Shokawa, in the midst of the Japanese Alps. Shirakawa-gō is known for its Gassho-zukuri houses. Gassho-zukuri means "prayer-hands construction" - rather aptly named so due to the thatched and steeply slanting roofs of the houses, resembling two hands joined in prayer.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?),  Shirakawa-gō is one of the last places where these beautiful houses are still preserved - in general, it's one of the rare examples of truly well-preserved traditional villages in Japan we've seen. And the place is truly astonishingly picteresque, there are postcardesque views to be had in all directions, with the rice fields & traditional houses framed by the beautiful alpine landscapes. Needless to say, the memory card in my camera was heavily stressed.

There isn't that much to see as such, but the village is a really delightful place to stroll around. This being Japan, there were naturally plenty of delicious food options available - this time we went for various types of street food (the Hida beef brochettes were particularly delicious).

From Shirakawa-gō, we jumped on the bus to Kamazawa, located on the Western coast of Japan. Kanazawa is a major urban centre in this part of Japan (so back to "urban Japan" after a few days of peaceful countryside), that has nonetheless managed to keep a lot of Edo-era architecture.


On arriving at the train station, the first impression is one of your typical modern, Japanese metropole. But as we crossed the city and made it to our Ryokan, located in a more traditional part of Kanazawa, more and more of the atmosphere of Edo was evident. After checking in, we decided to stroll around the Ryokan sort of randomly, and ended up in one of the most famous parts of Kanazawa, Higashi-Chayamachi, the old geisha district.

Here one could almost imagine being back in Edo - the old wooden houses are really quite evocative, especially at dusk, which is when we were there... Plenty of wanna-be geishas (or just people dressed in kimonos -- some of whom were thankfully happy to pose for photos!) add to the atmosphere.

Dinner-time was approaching, so we decided to head towards the town centre for a bite to eat, passing by another historical district of Kanazawa, Nishi-Chayamachi (another, smaller, but also rather atmospheric, geisha district).

Strolling along through the modern parts of the city, we finally found ourselves in the third historic area of Kanazawa - the one I was rather looking forward to visit: Nagamachi  - the Samurai District ;-). By now it was dark, so a bit too late to visit the area, but one could (or I could, at least!) easily imagine samurais preparing for battle behind the stone walls linking the main street (well, actually, the district is made up of a single street...).

Enough touristy stuff I say, and time for dinner! After walking around near the samurai district for a while, we decided upon a very Japanese-seeming eatery, located by a canal. And what an excellent choice it was - we were treated to one of the best meals on our trip so far (and that's saying a lot) - dish after dish of delicious and inventive sea food, served by a friendly waitress and the equally friendly chef. Communication was a bit challenging, but all the more fun for it ;)

So needless to say, our impression of Kanazawa after just a few hours was very positive indeed! After a peaceful night at our lovely Ryokan, we got up, full of energy and eager to continue our exploration of Kanazawa (wary of the weather forecast announcing the return of rain, unfortunately).

Since the predicted rain was to arrive by around noon, we decided to start our day with a visit to THE major tourist attraction of Kanazawa - the Kenroku-En garden. I'm normally more of a castle than garden guy (the Kanazawa castle is just next to the garden), but apparently this particular garden is considered one of the top three gardens of Japan, so I suppose a visit was mandatory. And indeed the place is well worth a visit - even if autumn probably isn't the best time of the year to visit the place. It was a very nice place to stroll around - that is until it started pouring down...

So time to seek shelter then! And what better place than the local fish & vegetable market, located not too far away. Not quite as impressive as Tokyo's Tsukiji market to be sure, but still an excellent place to spend a rainy morning before having lunch ;-) And what better place to have a proper sushi lunch, come to think of it? So we decided to do just that - and were in for yet another culinary treat. (before that I made a failed attempt to visit the famous Ninja temple - much to my annoyance I realized upon arrival that I didn't have my wallet to pay the entry fee - aaargh....!)

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Kanazawa, enjoying the laid-back, historic atmosphere of the place. Before dinner I decided to have another walk in the samurai district. It's a pretty nice place to stroll around, historic in a more manly way compared to the geisha district - even if the area is very small.

We met at the train station for dinner - and actually ended up dining there. That's the great thing about Japan - you can have a great meal just about anywhere - even in a train station!

The next day, alas, it was time for us to push on towards Nagano (we decided to head straight to Nagano instead of attempting the Alpine Road as originally planned - it just seemed a bit too ambitious to tackle in one day). Kanazawa is a very fascinating place indeed - thankfully still off the tourist trek (that may change once they finish the Shinkansen line from Tokyo to Kanazawa next year).