Japan - Kanazawa

Ishikawa-mon Gate

Leaving Kyoto around sunset meant missing the train journey to Kanazawa. The only unfortunate aspect of travelling this time of year is that the days are so short. As we zoomed past the landscape one thing I could discern was spotty snow along the tracks. We had checked the weather continually not wanting to believe that Kanazawa would be rainy and cold as we enjoyed the Indian summer autumn of Kyoto.

Kenroku-en Garden

The thing I liked most about travelling in Japan in late autumn is the fact that in the region we selected there were very few Caucasian faces. With few foreign tourists we had the sense of being in the timelessness of feudal Japan blended with the quaintness yet precociousness in the 21st century.

Nagamachi-Samurai district



As in Kyoto, you never know where a temple might show up. Fortunately the ancient, rooted, icons of antiquity survived the overgrowth of the encroaching urban jungle.

Kanazawa is a castle town and renown for one of Japan's three most beautiful gardens, Kenroku-en.




Thank God Kanazawa was quite a bit smaller than Kyoto. We got a bit soggy as the weather moved across the bottom of the peninsula of Noto Hanto from the Sea of Japan towards the Japanese Alps. As a jumping off place, we were able to take a bus north to our splurge destination of Lamp No Yado, then back to Kanazawa before heading inland to Shirwakawa and Takayama.

(For more pictures of the trip you can go to Witness the Wonder )

Text and pictures © 2008 Mona E. Dunn