Kanazawa

Last weekend I went to Kanazawa, a city on the west coast of Japan that is known as "Little Kyoto." Well I have been to Kyoto not once but twice bc I thought it was so amazing and it looks like I am going to have to do the same with Kanazawa for two reasons. First bc it lives up to its reputation as "Little Kyoto," but also bc it rained about 75% of the time I was there :-(. Even with the rain I got to take a lot of photos and visit such places as Kenrokuen (one of the most famous places in Japan, although every city seems to have "one of the most famous...."), the old samurai district, one of the old geisha districts (they have at least two), and took a bus trip about two hours north to a city called Wajima (a place where I could have spent the most of the weekend).



Anyway, Kenrokuen was in fact extremely beautiful and def my favorite place I got to see. Also the old samurai district was pretty cool. Wajima was nice but due to me not being able to drive in Japan and the bus schedule, I was only able to stay there for about 3 hours. While waiting for my bus in Wajima I went into a coffee shop and had a good conversation with the owner (about 75% of it was in English). Apparently I was only the 3rd foreigner to come to his place so he took my photo with his cell phone, printed it from his computer, had me sign it and then added it to his English Study book where he had photos of the previous foreigners. After that, he gave me some of his homemade origami. Little encounters like this are really not that uncommon while traveling in Japan...



It is kind of hard to see, but the thing that looks like a necklace is all made up of small cranes. Pretty amazing to me since just making a successful paper airplane is not so easy for me.

So anyway, I did all of that on Friday and I spent Saturday and Sunday dodging the rain. :-( So you can see why I feel the need to go back. On Sunday tho, I did get to go to a place called Ninjadera (Ninja Temple). Actually it has nothing to do with Ninjas but just got it's name bc of all the defensive precautions (like pitfalls and secret passages/rooms) of the temple.

On the other hand there are so many other places I wanna go, so I am not sure when or if I will be able to return...

More photos here.