Totally Tokyo

Oh Mama! Kanazawa!

Beautiful!

Samurai districts, Noh museum, artificial heart galleries, geisha stables, Ninja inspired temples (fully equipped with trap doors, hidden stairwells and get-away passages), kimono design processing, gold leave processing, fish market, contemporary art museum, castles, gardens... you name it, I saw it, did it and preformed a couple of kart-wheels around it.

This weekend was a 3 day weekend, and I think I did a good job of taking advantage of it. We left Thursday night, and traveled 7 hours on a painful over-night bus, to awake at 6 am Friday morning in Kanazawa. We found our hotel, and then started our day. I soon learned that anything you that you think about Japan, or that Japan makes, is in Kanazawa. Gold, kimonos, geishas, ninjas, parsails, silk... We spent 2 full days wandering around to certain special "reservation only" hidden spots that we would have never found on our own if TUJ did not plan this trip for us, or with out our great personal tour guide Koyama Sensee. We had special tour guides from the city of Kanazawa and we learned about every cool nick and cranny of that place. We say a Noh stage and precious Noh performance masks. A really cool modern museum that had a whole display of artificial body parts, very interesting. We made our own gold leaf chop sticks that we personally designed! We explored the gardens of Kanazawa castle, in addition to the annexes of the futual lord's wife. The Kanazawa castle was the most beautiful thing, with its acres and acres of beautiful gardens, needless to say I filled up my memory card with pictures that are priceless. We we showed the ins and outs of this amazing Temple that was designed with ninja style (imagine: 25 rooms, but has 29 stair cases!, Saw and went inside of Samurai houses. We were showed the Geisha district and their stables/stores. The famous pine trees of Kamazawa were prepared for winter with their string protection, which is something that is unique to Kanazawa. I went to a public bath. And when all this was done, Saturday night we jumped back on the over night bus and headed home. We were back in Tokyo by 6AM, and had a full day to tell everyone about our amazing weekend. I am soo glad I was able to be apart of this trip. And in the end, it was very relaxing and I discovered a little bit more about this interesting balance that Japan holds of being calming all while being extremely enrapturing.

From the future,

Stephanie

posted by Stephy-ru @ Wednesday, November 08, 2006