A little trip around Kanazawa

A little earlier, only two weeks ago, my friend’s Japanese family invited me out on a little day trip around Kanazawa. Nothing grand, just a few museums (most of which either prohibited photography or were difficult to caption in a photo), but it was still nice to have some fresh air, see some pretty things and also (literally) taste Japan.

This building was the main point of our trip, but it turned out that it's closed due to renovation. It comes from the Meiji period (1868-1912) and was of use to the military, which I think you can kind of see. To me it looked a lot like buildings in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but maybe that's just me.

In the Nakamura Memorial Museum, dedicated to Mr Nakamura who collected old tea ceremony tools (and where photographs weren't allowed) we had some tea, which came with this little gem of a sweet treat.

It was all top quality there, even the tea was served in bowls which probably would make a small fortune at an auction.

The garden just behind the Nakamura Museum, which we could also see from the room where we had our tea.

Part two of the Nakamura Memorial Museum: a building where he allegendly lived - and where are a few other national treasures that he managed to collect in his lifetime.

The memorial museum of a philosopher Daisetz Suzuki. This part is dedicated solely for contemplation (some examples of Suzuki's work are accessible in pamphlet format for free in English and Japanese). And I must admit, if the museum entry was free, I'd be coming here more often. It was so calm in this part of it that I felt very much at peace.

An accidental discovery: half-vintage, half-Range Rover, made by Mitsubishi (most likely a custom made).

After those few museums, since it was still quite early, we popped out to Higashi Chaya-machi (東茶屋街), that is the Eastern Geisha District. At such an early hour there was no way we’d see even one geisha, they were probably sleeping off last night’s performances, but I found the whole place very enchanting. On the one hand there’s this short, quite simple street representing the Japan that has gone – but all it takes is to go to the end of it and we’re in a rather ruined part of the city, which, although its “glory” days are over, still is quite notorious. Sometimes it even seemed as if this ruined part was creeping in further to destroy the illusion that old Japan should still exist. Very, very fascinating and I have to go back there, we didn’t spend nearly as much time as I would’ve liked.