Kanazawa Castle

Kanazawa Castle & Kenrokuen

Trip Diary Day 6 - 3 April 2019

Check out Episode 4 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.

Curio Espresso & Vintage Design

Breakfast, bus, barista. That was our morning. How was yours? We made our way back to the Kanazawa Station area for second breakfast (second breakfast should be part of every travellers day-to-day routine) and coffee at Curio Espresso & Vintage Design. You may recall from yesterday’s blog post (you can read it here) that yesterday we had coffee at Blue Monday because Curio was closed. Well conveniently enough for us today Blue Monday is closed and Curio is open. I love it when we don’t have to choose between two great places. Why not do both next time I hear you ask? Third breakfast hey? You have me intrigued, tell me more.

Curio is filled with an eclectic bunch of vintage radios, old accordion and box style cameras, books about coffee and various nick knacks and, yes, curios. It is a busy little place. Lots of people coming and going. There seemed to be a good mix of regular locals and tourists like us.

Sol the owner is our barista. He and his wife Yuko were originally from Seattle but they moved their family to Kanazawa and opened Curio. I think the whole family was working in the shop today. I asked Sol if he had been a barista in Seattle considering some little reasonably well known chain of coffee shops had its beginnings in Seattle. He said no, he is a former locksmith. For a former locksmith he makes a decent coffee. He obviously knows the key to happiness is coffee. Achievement unlocked.

The coffee was excellent. In fact I had two. It was second breakfast after all. Second breakfast deserves two coffees. Yes I know, with the current exchange rate a couple of coffees will probably reduce our kids future education choices. But this is world schooling, they’ll learn more here than at any expensive university.

We shared a pulled pork sandwich and a breakfast sandwich of omelette, ham, cheese and lettuce, and toast with butter and jam. The toast was made from sliced baguette because they were out of out of shokupan toast bread. Noooooo. It’s okay. I’ll live. I still got my toast fix at least. Brandon had a juice filled with frozen berries which looked amazingly refreshing.

Poor Georgia was tired and listless, not her usual perky self, and didn’t want to eat anything. We thought she might be coming down with something. But Kanazawa Castle awaits. Once we got moving Georgia perked up a bit.

If you’ve ever travelled with a 5 year old, hell, if you’ve ever lived with a 5 year old, you’ll know that sometimes for some reason they will get fixated on something for no particular reason other than they need it. Now. Then they are relentless in their demands for whatever it is. Today Brandy wanted lollies, sweets, candy. Walking down a main street with a kid chanting “lolly pop lolly pop lolly pop lolly pop” is unsustainable. He can keep it up for hours. You can distract him for a moment. “Hey, Brandy, there’s a samurai”
”Cool. I still want a lolly pop”
Something had to give. I’m sure many parents won’t be surprised that our parental resolve crumbled and we relented and found a Family Mart. Then we spent 10 minutes perusing the candy aisle for just the right lolly pop. So we didn’t get a lolly pop or Chupa Chup or any candy on a stick in the end. Brandy wanted some small container containing pill size lollies of some non specific flavour, probably just sugar and food colouring. Perfect for shaking madly like a rattle. Oh crap, we’ve replaced “lolly pop lolly pop lolly pop” with the maracas.

It was only around 20 minutes, not including Family Mart stops, to get to the entrance to Kanazawa Castle and gardens. We finally found the Sakura. Most were only just budding but a few trees were in full bloom. After the rain, snow and cold today was sunny and Spring like. Even a few hours of warmish weather may have just prompted cherry blossoms to hurry up and blossom.

The castle sits on quite extensive grounds, much of it gardens and parkland. The castle itself is quite large and has high walls, gates, towers and a moat. Much of the castle has been restored over the centuries. Most of it was destroyed by fire in the 1600s and again in the 1750s and rebuilt with modifications each time. Some of the castle was again destroyed by fire in the 19th century and restored again. Most of the current buildings are reconstructions based on how they looked in the 1850s. Considering the fire risk we didn’t go inside.

We wandered the gardens photographing the cherry blossoms and castle and enjoying the sun. I’m convinced Japanese castles were also designed for aesthetics as well as functionality. They really are quite beautiful. I am also fairly certain they weren’t designed to be fire proof though.

Le Musee de H at the Prefectural Museum of Art

Not far from the castle, and also near Kenrokuen Garden, is Le Musee de H at Prefectural Museum of Art. Le Musee is a patisserie and cake cafe and they have a branch in the Museum. A pastry and cake feast for the eyes. And tummy. You can put on kilos just looking at the display cabinet. Too many different pastries and cakes to try in one sitting. Probably. We had one each so you we could try a few things washed down with a couple of iced coffees - just how I’d make them - espresso, milk, ice cream and whipped cream. We spent 5000 yen all up. We couldn’t resist another piece of cake or two, here a piece of decadent pastry of cake might cost 400 to 600 yen, whereas at home a similar piece might cost 8, 10 or 12 bucks. We really do get gouged for sweet treats at home. We didn’t stay for the art at the Museum. The art was in the cake and pastries. Tomorrow we planned to visit the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art for a culture fix.

Kenrokuen Garden

The entrance to Kenrokuen is across the road to the Museum of Art. Only 720 yen for all us to enter. Free entry for Brandy. Sometimes it pays to have kids under 6. Free entry, free public transport. I wish the airlines would get on that too.

Kenrokuen, also written in Romanji as Kenroku-en, is an expansive garden and parkland of almost 10 hectares - 100,000 square metres. For the metrically challenged that’s about 18 football fields. So reasonably big. Kenrokuen is considered one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan. The other two are Kairaku-en and Kōraku-en. It is believed development of the Kenrokuen Gardens began in the 1600s.

Georgia on one of the bridges in Kenrokuen

It is right outside the gates of Kanazawa Castle. In fact the gardens used to be the outer gardens of the castle. There are tea-rooms and pagodas here that were constructed in the 1700s. One tearoom “miraculously” survived the big fire of the 1750s. That must have been one hell of a fire because it took out the entire castle and some of the buildings in Kenrokuen.

Apart from the historic buildings in the park there are around 8000 trees. Something like 180 varieties including the finally blooming Sakura. Today’s “warm” weather has paid off. Some of the trees, big ones too, have been tied with ropes from the top to the ground. Kind of like a rope tee-pee for… I’m not sure? Either giant sized topiary or tree bondage? It turns out it is called Yukitsuri and is way of preserving trees from heavy snow. There were workers there today, probably removing the ropes since the Winter appeared mostly done.

One of the main features of the park is Kasumi Pond it is a large pond. I’d call it a lake. When does a pond become a lake? There are beautiful bridges and lanterns surrounding the pond including the Kotoji-tōrō Lantern - apparently iconic in Kanazawa. The lake or pond is beautiful. The reflections are gorgeous. This is iconic Japanese garden right here. The park also contains Japan’s oldest water fountain.

Kotoji-tōrō and the wedding photo bridge

A number of wedding parties were trouping through the park. It is a perfect spot for photos. One bridge in particular has the lake and Kotoji-tōrō in the background so wedding parties queue up to have their photos taken.

Like most Japanese tourist spots they have a souvenir gift shop on the grounds. Most importantly they have mochi - dango - sweet stick rice dumpling balls on sticks. We get 3 sticks, with 3 different coloured / flavoured balls of mochi for 320 yen. The sound we could hear was the ambient hum of the city, the wind through the trees, the twitter of birds, the distant sound of children at play, and the satisfied nomming of dango by our pair of weary travellers. Don’t worry, Michelle and I shared a stick.

The golden glow of the setting sun was the perfect time for photos, especially of the pond, but it was also closing time. It was time for us to make our way from the gardens serenaded by announcements through crackly speakers telling us the park was closed so please make your way to the exits.

Yakitori?

We have hunger. We thought we’d walk back up to the Kanazawa station area. There are a number of recommended yakitori places in the area around the station. Surely we’d have to get in to one. Yakitori is grilled things on sticks or skewers. Mostly chicken and chicken bits but other meats and veggies are usually on the menu too. We really felt like some good yakitori. We ended up catching a bus to station because it is too far to walk from Kenrokuen. We walk to 2 near by yakitori places. The first is closed. B I R D the second is full. Walk to third. Also busy. I’m starting to sense a pattern. Taxi to Daiwa store in central Kanazawa because it is close to an apparently good Izakaya on the river / drain / canal. 660 yen. Everybody that ever gives tips about getting around in Japanese cities says avoid taxis because they are very expensive. Possibly because the flag fall is expensive if you’re only going a kay or two possibly? But any time we’ve been in a cab we seem to spend less than 900 yen. The meter seems to sit in the 500 to 700 range for ages. Anyway we went to the wrong restaurant. The friendly man in the restaurant said we have to go further down below on the water. We were on a lane above the canal. The canal appears to have a metric shit load of restaurants and cafes along it. They all looked full so I bet you guessed that the Izakaya we were looking for was full too. Another friendly man from that Izakaya recommended another place to us not far away. He even marked our map for us. Guess what? We got in and had the best meal of our lives. No, not really. It was also full. Well this was a quite shit turn of events. Just about every yakitori or izakaya we wanted to go to was unavailable for walk-ins or closed. We’d gone from going to have an early dinner to now worrying about last orders. Many restaurants in Japan stop taking orders quite early. We’re definitely not on Spanish time in Japan. One of the exceptions is ramen joints. They tend to stay open later. So ramen it was. Hopefully.

Uguisu Ramen

At least we didn’t have far to go. We had a couple of understandably tired whingy kids by now. The walk was only 5 minutes but we had to do some serious cajoling to get them there. The ramen shop was almost next door to Sushi Ippei from our first night in Kanazawa. Uguisu Ramen is awesome. 4800 yen for 4 huge ramen and big Sapporo beer served by two young men who jumped into action second we arrived. There weren’t any other customers. There’s only seating at the counter for about eight so you could describe it as cozy.

Tired family waiting for ramen

Uguisu Ramen, Kanazawa

Like at a sushi shop sitting at the counter gives you a ringside view of the artistry in assembling a bowl of ramen. From boiling the noodles, to pouring the broth, the placement of the slice pork and boiled egg and seaweed, and the sprinkling of spring onions and the dried condiments. We had no need to go to the museum of art today. This is in your face performance art right here.

Can’t talk, eating

Uguisu Ramen, Kanazawa

The proof is in the tasting. Delicious, rich, full of flavour. There is real depth to the flavour not just the size of the bowl. The noodles are perfect. The pork is porky and tender and the egg pops and oozes in your mouth. If ramen in Tokyo can be awarded Michelin stars how good must it be when this is so very good. Yeah, we love a good ramen. This was good ramen.

We’d crossed the main street of Kanazawa to get to Uguisu Ramen and I noticed there was a big Taito game store next to an arcade of gachapon machines. We were hoping Brandy hadn’t seen them. No such luck. On our way home Brandon demanded we go to the Taito games store. Really though it was no biggie. He, and Georgia, had been dragged around castles and gardens all day so a few minutes and a few yen in the games arcade couldn’t hurt. We played a couple claw grab rip-off games. Does anybody every win something with The Claw? We played a basketball game where you throw as many basketballs into a target you can in a minute or two. That was fun. After that we went next door to the gachapon arcade to buy a couple of gachapon capsule toy thingies for brandy and Georgia.

The only thing to be done now was buy supplies including corn flakes. Rather, it is Japanese muesli like stuff that looks like it has corn flakes in it. It’s called Calbee Frugra, and it is one of my new favourite Japanese foods. Lawson, 7-Eleven, Family Mart, 777, we went to them all. No one has Calbee or any kind of breakfast cereal. I’m gutted. First breakfast will be disappointing tomorrow.

Bus home.

The Great Kanazawa Toilet Blockage of April 2019

The toilet was blocked. I won’t go into the details of how or why. I just want you to know, and this is very important, it was not me. But it is left to me to clear it. Fuck this is a shitty job. First I used the brush to try and clear it. Nope. Try the plunger. Hmm, they have a plunger here. And a sign up saying don’t block the toilet. I’m starting to suspect this may have happened before. I splashed lovely toilet water all over the floor. I plunge for 10 minutes until with a whoosh and a sucking noise, not sure if that was the toilet or me, the blockage clears. 10 minutes to clean up mess before washing a load of clothes including jeans and socks splashed with dunny water. The washing machine seems to have a drier cycle but it just spins for about an hour and then not even fast enough to leave the clothes anything but cold and damp. I’m not sure what everybody else was doing while I was puffing and panting and swearing under my breath but I know they weren’t unblocking toilets. Bed.

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Check out Episode 4 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.

Many of the pictures on this page are by Michelle. Essentially the good ones. Michelle retains full copyright and they can not be reproduced without permission. For licensing and using the photos contact Michelle at Michelle Newnan Photography