"OWWW! A piece of hail hit me on the nose!" and other thoughts from KANAZAWA

Last weekend Elspeth and I got up super early, caught the subway to Nagoya Station, quickly bought tickets and had to run to catch our train to Kanazawa. We ended up buying posh green car tickets (the machine said reserved ones were sold out) and had a great time in our comfy seats and almost empty train car. It took almost three hours to get there and we passed through every type of weather (even a snow storm) on our way. When we emerged into the amazing Kanazawa train station it started to rain and it was FREEEEEEZING.


After photographing the architectually interesting station, listening to a marching band play ABBA songs (Steph, I had flashbacks of the last marching band I saw...can we say West Side Story?) and staring in awe at the cool water clock (little fountains of water spelled out the time, then switched to spell welcome to Kanazawa in English and Japanese) we found our hotel, dropped some stuff off and went to the bus station.



Our first stop was the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. I have wanted to go here since I stumbled upon their website last year. What was cool was that it was really busy and there was a great mix of young people, older people, really old people and kids - all there to check out the art. Here are some postcards I bought showing the architecture of the building.



First exhibit we saw was the Moving Christmas exhibit. It had clear orbs hanging from the ceiling and inside the orbs were these ornaments. Many of them had these amazing gold wings. It reminded me of Christmas decorations that would show up in Hogwarts or that the artist had taken objects from the computer game Riven and put then in these orbs.






One reason I was excited about visiting this museum was there was a special exhibit by Yoshitomo Nara. This artist draws pictures of kids that are terrifying to me but at the same time I am fascinated by them. I expected it to be an exhibit of drawings/paintings because that's all I've seen on the internet but it was actually this huge room with this massive house with a head. You could walk around the house and then go in, which was styled like the artist's drawing studio with music playing. Going inside made me claustrophobic but walking around the house was really cool. It was unexpected and interesting. I can't describe it (as your probably noticed)



One permanent exhibit that both Elspeth and I enjoyed was the Pool. In the centre of the building is this small swimming pool and when you look down into the water you can see people, fully clothed in the pool. You're first reaction is huh??? Get those freaks out of the pool! It throws you...until you realize the water is only a couple centimetres deep and that the people are walking around in a room below the water. HA! Briliant!




Other intertesting exhibits included a dog made out of electric plugs and my favourite, the room of pigeons with wheels for heads. Let me explain. Covering the floor of this rooms were fabric pigeon bodies and instead of heads they had little wheels attached (I know, the thought is terrifying!). Then you could stand in the middle of the 'flock' and roll this metal table-thing across the pigeon's heads. I really wanted to take a picture but I had already gotten in trouble for taking a picture of another exhibit (one where you look through a telescope to see a tiny scuba diver in a wine glass).




It was still pouring rain when we left but we decided to try to find the Kutani Kosen Pottery Studio. After a frustrating experience on the smallest, most pathetic tourist bus, where they decided they couldn't stop at the stop we wanted, we grabbed some McDonalds and then walked to the pottery studio (which involved getting lost and asking some jerky people for directions). We were the only people at the studio and the guy gave us a private tour. I didn't know there were so many steps required to get a tea cup (no wonder we couldn't afford anything in the store).

It had turned to night (ding! it's dark) and we were cold and hungry so we decided to go back to the station area. Unfortunately, TRAFFIC IS AWFUL IN KANAZAWA!!! In the direction of the station the cars weren't moving at all. We walked for about an hour but were only about 1/2 way to the station and we were soaking wet so we got on a bus and it crawled back. We stopped at our hotel to see our room and we ended up crashing for a while. We got dinner under the station (ramen), Elspeth figured out our return tickets (bless her) and we returned to our warm hotel room to drink green tea, eat koala cookies and watch the worst movie ever (that James Bond one with Denise Richards...SOOOO AWFUL).

[A terrifying dessert place...we would have eaten there but neither of us felt like dessert]
[Yummy...hot goodness]
[There are supposedly 150 different pictures on these koala cookies...so much fun]
The next morning we took the non-touristy bus to Kenrokuen, one of the three best gardens in Japan. I had been there with my family before but didn't really remember it (I do remember taking pictures of a mushroom). Of course it was rainy and freezing but seeing the garden inbetween seasons was really interesting. This garden is famous for putting ropes in the trees, creating a kind of cone, to protect the trees from the heavy snow that they get in the area (Elspeth and I started calling them bondage trees). This garden is also famous for a long-legged lantern and for having Japan's oldest fountain. Very cool.








The place was pretty empty. A few tours were zooming through, probably trying to get their tourists somewhere warm and dry as fast as they could. We stopped at one of the tea houses on the garden grounds and had matcha and a tea sweet. The tea house was so warm and beautiful that we stayed for a while, warming our toes and taking pictures of the secret garden you get to see from the tea room.






[Here's Elspeth freezing her butt off. Poor thing was already sick and this was only making it worse. Later in the week she lost her voice completely for a couple days]
[Look, here's Laura feeling like she'll never be warm again - reminded me of Edinburgh]
[I have no idea what these wire/strings are that are stretched across parts of the lawn - Anyone know? It felt very mission impossible-trip wire-catherine zeta-jones movie-ish]

From Kenrokuen, we walked through Kanazawa's castle's grounds, (at one point I hopped a locked gate...then we realized it was the wrong way...so much for breaking the law in Japan) to the Omicho Market. Famous for seafood, we should have known this would be where all of the Japanese tourists were. We were pushed and pulled by small, old Japanese women trying to get to the glorious crabs and fresh fish. We found a restaurant where we had a huge bowl of sashimi on rice. Feast your eyes on this loveliness! It was scrumptious!






[Real wasabi!]
[SO DELICIOUS!!]

After getting our seafood fix we got on a regular bus, picked up our stuff from the hotel and killed an hour in the department stores near the station. Our train ride home wasn't as glamorous as the one there and I ended up sleeping almost the whole way home. It was a pretty fantastic weekend trip, even though we were frozen for most of it!