We woke up early and headed out for a walk as the morning sunshine lit up Yokichi.
Of course, the manhole covers in the village display its unique heritage.
We headed across the bridge and caught the local bus to the scenic viewpoint overlooking the village. One can walk from the village in about 40 minutes.
The scenic lookout is the perfect spot for the picture postcard view of the village.
We returned by the bus to the village, picked up our luggage and caught the bus to Kanazawa, which takes about 90 minutes to reach Kanazawa station.
At the wonderful public space that is the Kanazawa train station, we had a bit of a chore finding free luggage lockers as there were plenty of tourists about to enjoy the full blown sakura that welcomed the Easter holidays. Finally we managed to snag free lockers and decided to grab lunch at a branch of Capricciosa before heading out. We got onto the helpful Kanazawa Loop Bus from the bus station located just outside the train station. The loop bus does a circuit around all the major tourist sites in Kanazawa.
Our first stop was the historic Higashichaya district. This is one of the best preserved streets with tea houses and geisha quarters outside of Kyoto. We meandered around the river edge before heading towards the district.
The beautifully maintained old structures are now quaint shops, cafes and bars. One of these is the famous gold craft shop. Kanazawa is rich in craft tradition, especially jewellery making, and the store boasts an entire wall covered with gold leaf. You can buy little packets of gold shavings to be used to garnish food.
We happened upon a wedding procession with the bride in the traditional white kimono.
We headed back to the Loop Bus and our next stop is the star attraction in Kanazawa - the Kenroko-en gardens, rated among the three best gardens in Japan. The sakura lined avenues leading up to the gardens were ablaze with colour, and the entry fee for the gardens was waived for the sakura festival.
Kenroko-en is a labour of love that lasted over 150 years and boasts monuments, shrines, ponds, lakes, rock pools, traditionally laid out foliage and tea houses. Its quite large, and on this bright summer day was absolutely overflowing with people, which to my mind, kind of detracted from its beauty. I would love to see it the way it should be, with enough time and hardly enough people to hamper one from savouring all its lovely vistas.
We walked around for over two hours before seeking respite from the heat and crowds in this beautiful tea house with the restful views of the gardens.
After our visit to the gardens, we crossed the road and headed to the Modern Art Museum. This is a very nice public space, circular in shape, to emphasize the fact that there should ideally be no one entrance or exit from a museum - every visitor should be free to make their own path. The art was interesting, an eclectic collection, including this work -The Pool, which can be called participative art, where as visitors enter the tank from the museum below, they themselves become the object of the work for the spectators looking down from above.
We had spent much longer than we had anticipated at the sights thus far, which meant we had to abandon two other stops we would have liked to make. The first is the historic Samurai district which has some wonderfully preserved samurai houses. And the second was a ninja quarters which one views only by appointment, and is filled with trap doors, secret passages and all sorts of other fun stuff.
We headed back by bus towards the station, which itself is a remarkable structure, an amalgamation of traditional and modern architecture.
One of the things that we came upon purely by chance was this water fountain clock. Depending on the time, the correct fountains come on to display the numbers in the form of water jets. Ingenious, and so Japanese !
We boarded the shinkansen for the long ride to Tokyo station, with a snacky dinner on board, from where we transferred to the subway to Shinjuku Gyoemmae, and after a wonderful two weeks in the heartland, rechecked into the Citadines Shinjuku. Our bags were waiting for us, our room was comfortably familiar and sleep came easy that night.
