Bachwig travellers: Discovering coffee, old Kanazawa and some shopping

Day 9 - Discovering coffee, old Kanazawa and some shopping

Kanazawa

Sunday, 6 July 2014

When it came to breakfast we couldn't face laying hotel prices for the breakfast buffet so went out to try and find something. There is a Starbucks downstairs and of course that is NOT an option. Lots is wandering later and after rejecting lots of donut places (to Michael's disgust) instint took us down a side street over the road. And we found a sign that said Seattle Style coffee! Sol and Yuko have moved to Kanazawa and set up Curio Espresso. They even knew how to serve a flat white! So we enjoyed Yuko's banana bread and some pastries, great coffee and conversation.

We bought a pus pass (conveniently there is a sale post in our building)-and headed into to the JR station and to the Information centre with it's English speaking help. We wanted to go to the Ninja Temple and it needed a booking so we got them to do that for us. We headed off to the Higashi Chaya area on the bus. Chaya is a traditional place of feasts and entertainment, where geisha (traditional female Japanese entertainers) have been entertaining people by performing dances and playing Japanese traditional musical instruments since the Edo period. The central part of Kanazawa was dotted with a number of chaya houses in the past. These chaya houses were moved into four districts distant from the central part in 1820. The largest one of the chaya districts in Kanazawa is the Higashi Chaya district.

Here is an extract from the Kanazawa tourism website. The construction of two-story houses except chaya houses was prohibited in the Edo period. A chaya house is characterized with a beautiful lattice called "kimusuko" on the outer side of the first floor and Japanese-style guestrooms located on the second floor. When you enter back streets, you will soon find a maze of continuous alleys. The historical rows of this teahouse town along with Kyoto's Gion and Kanazawa's Kazue-machi have been designated as Japan's cultural assets. There are no other chaya districts designated as Japan's cultural assets. The district includes facilities where you can see the interior of a chaya house that was built 180 years ago. Besides, quite a few old buildings have been renewed into restaurants, teahouses, and souvenir shops.

We enjoyed browsing around here, exploring some of the shops. We saw nests of swallows under some if the eaves! We enjoyed lunch in a tea house/cafe..traditionally they just serve tea, coffee and cake but you can often get a toasted sand which which is what we enjoyed. Often the cafés have boxes or baskets beside the table which you put your bags in which is a very nice idea! We jumped on the bus to head for the temple district and the Ninja temple. Actually this temple never had Ninja's but it has all the tricks that you would relate with Ninja. We got to the area early and were up across the bridge. This part of Kanazawa is quite boring (like much of Kanazawa ) and ugly. We had crossed the bridge and a saw a man picking up the off piece of rubbish. Later on he came up to I - I think he guessed we were going to the temple and pointed us in the right direction. He kept walking with us..and then pointed us down the street we were to go - we thanked him and walked on. We were very early but we wanted to locate the temple and then come back. We found what we thought was it and Bruce started taking photos but then I saw our man waving to us from another one. To out this into context..this street had temples both sides every 10-20 metres or so! This IS the temple district! Nothing is signposted in English. We thanked our 'guide' and explained to him that our booking wasn't until later and we went off for an explore. After our tour our 'guide ' was there too...I think he had brought some other people up. I suspect he just looks for lost tourists and points them in the right direction.

The temple tour is in Japanese only but they give you a written guide that isn't too bad. We weren't able to take photos but it was great to see all the secret rooms and tricks and traps to keep the feudal lord safe and ward off attackers.

After the tour we headed for a shopping district...Michael desperately wanted to buy a watch. He has lost the lively Fossil that Bruce bought him and up until now has been uninterested in wearing a watch and was quite happy for other people to tell him the time. He was getting frustrated during the holiday not knowing what the time was. We found one mall that was clearly about at the young and trendy...and it was sale time. What a noise! sales girls were standing outside each store yelling through loudhailers what I assume were the specials. Definately time to leave!

We needed up finding some areas that were much more interesting for us and it is nice to see another side of life. I didn't really enjoy this city apart from it's older areas and the garden/ castle from a look and feel perspective but it is still good to see how things are I'm another country. After browsing the shops it was time to head back to the hotel for some wine and cheese before dinner.

For dinner we unsuccessfully looked for somewhere. There is a nice looking mall over the road which had nice restaurants but they were more than we wanted to pay. We ended up finding an American/Mexican place and had incredible soft tacos. Though Bruce got carried away with the chilli sauce which was amusing. We had desert at the Italian cafe over the road and on the edge if the market.

	Kanazawa train station [Map]		The loop bus..not just for tourists [Map]
	Photo 1 [Map]		Photo 2 [Map]
	Higashi Chaya [Map]		Photo 3 [Map]
	Photo 4 [Map]		Photo 5 [Map]
	Photo 6 [Map]		Photo 7 [Map]
	Photo 8 [Map]		Photo 9 [Map]