25 Sept 2023

Up early. Walked to Kanazawa Castle past Mr Doughnut. Another beautiful blue-sky day. The castle had some great cross-sections and exploded models and scale models showing the construction of walls, and the wooden joins used. Special windows for dropping rocks out of. Lead roofs.

Kenrokuen gardens - huge. A few people wearing kimonos wandering through, including one couple who were clearly doing wedding photos. I love the wooden supports they use for tress here so they can grow their long horizontal arms, or just not fall over. So many beautiful little bridges and water, stone, sculptural features. There was a seriously grand house at one edge of the garden 'Seison-kaku' that the 13th lord of the Kaga clan built for his mother. It made the samurai house we visited yesterday look like a shack. There were beautiful kimonos and tortoise-shell hair pieces on display. I'd only ever seen tortoise shell look speckledy-black before but this looked like clear amber. It was very beautiful. Upstairs there were rooms painted with intense blue and red and purple, made from lapis and other precious paints from other countries. It also had nightingale floors, and oddly out-of-place (antique/contemporary) chandeliers from America. Also a creepy 'fire-proof' doll.

We had udon for lunch. I had the Kanazawa bukkake udon. Apparently it just means to splash or sprinkle...

Later we went to the ninja weapon museum where a super cute enthusiastic owner told us about the style of kitanas, armour, shuriken etc. Violet threw some darts but didn't get the bullseye. There were some great 'hidden' weapons - pipes, fans, canes etc.

We then walked up to the ninjap-temple which wasn't ever really associated wth ninjas it's just that it has lots of tricky little secret passages and traps. It was a maze of very old little stair cases and rooms with hidden viewing areas and double-sliding doors/screens.

Sushi for dinner. I think I had sea urchin... it was odd and sort of crunchy.

17,419 steps

11.71 klms