Monday, September 3
Today we're on our own for lunch and dinner, so we tanked up at the very good hotel breakfast. We are staying the day in Kanazawa, so no early bus ride. After a leisurely feed, we got on the bus with the intrepid Otska-san at the wheel for the short, although tortuous, ride over to the 25-acre Kenroku-En -- the Garden of Six Qualities. These are the gardens attached to the former Kanazawa Castle, which no longer exists.
Your genial guide with map. This place had endless beautiful views, but this was one of the nicest. The bridge is a very popular spot for nearly every visitor to pose upon, and I was lucky to get this shot off before the adjacent hordes descended.
A fast shuffle and we beat the horde. Hey, we're tourists!
It takes a lot of work to keep places like this looking good. With tight spaces like these, it's all manual labor. We have no idea what these guys were sweeping in the river.
Couple of locals taking in the scene. They only met 48 years ago!
Random scenes. On this hot, humid day, all this shade was mighty welcome.
On most of the Collette tours we've taken, they throw in some special things that are out of the ordinary sightseeing. We get to do one today. Back on the bus and we drove to Kanazawa Katani for a lesson in decorating lacquer boxes with gold leaf. Naturally, given my nature, I was dubious, but we all were won over. We tried to listen closely to the instructions, but the accented English was pretty strong. They pretty much pantomimed everything and it was just fine. The first step is to pick out a stencil pattern from the boxes.
I chose a crane, along with a dot to represent the sun (not shown). The first step is to peel the backing from the stencil and affix it to the lid of the box. Then you take these absurdly thin sheets of gold foil and drape them over the stencil. Using the little padded bag, you sort of mash-spread the gold onto the lid. The instructors then took them away to do some magic to remove the excess glue and gold and fix the remainder with lacquer. The result is quite lovely.
The thin gold leaf was very tricky to work with. The guy next to Chuck in the pic below had his take flight when a very small gust of wind blew in. It floated up over his head and landed on Chuck's shoulder. Don't know what the gals are laughing about; they didn't share. Loni's box came out nice. Everyone was having a good time. Kudos, Collette.
Next stop was the local fish market which smelled like the sea, not at all "fishy." The place was huge, but we were only in the retail section, not the larger commercial one. Yoshiko said that housewives come daily here to pick up something for dinner. No weekly shopping.
Afterwards, the group split up for an afternoon of free time. We went back to the hotel to dump our stuff, then headed out to walk, in the heat, a mile or so to what was billed as a Ninja Temple, complete with secret doors and rooms, and with a live-action performance. After a few wrong turns, we found it, only to be told at the box office that it was by prior reservation only, and even though it was not full, we couldn't just buy tickets there. Bah! After deciphering the vagaries of the 7-11 ATM, to assuage our disappointment, we had to stop at the "German Bakery" along the way for fresh juices and a lemon muffin for Loni and a cream puff for me. Take that, ninjas!
C&A opted to cab it back to the hotel, but we decided to walk and take in the Kanazawa Castle Park. All that remains of the park are some storage buildings and soldiers quarters, plus a small part of the moat. Still, it was quite beautiful and quite large.
I think Loni, with her iPhone, took the best pictures of the park:
The clouds were just starting to build, a reminder that we were due to experience Typhoon Jebi tomorrow. Enjoy the scenery while we can! We walked back to the hotel to collect C&A for dinner. The hotel was right across the street from a Daiwa shopping store which had a huge food level in the basement. Along the way we met up with Betty & Norman from Australia, so they joined us in picking out a place for dinner. Alice was determined to have tempura shrimp, so we decided on a restaurant with the right pictures in the window. Sadly, her shrimp came floating in a soup and was soggy. Loni scored with Udon noodles in a "starch ginger" broth, filled with mushrooms and veggies, with a gelatin-like film over the top. A stir with a spoon and it dissolved into the nice chicken broth underneath. She said it was delicious.
Next up: The Gathering Storm.
Oooooooooh . . . .
