It must be the dream of every potato farmer to find gold while digging up the humble root. This was apparently what happened to a lucky farmer long ago, according to a Japanese legend. When the farmer washed some wild potatoes in a nearby spring, specks of gold also floated up together with the mud and grime. The lucky place was thus named Kanazawa, meaning “gold marsh”.

The City of Gold

Today, if you go to Kanazawa, you don’t need to dig for potatoes to find gold as it is everywhere. Obligatory gold leaves are stuck on souvenirs, kitchenware, cosmetics, textile and, hundred and one products that remind you that you are in gold country. Even food is not spared. By the time you leave Kanazawa, your stomach will be coated with gold from ingesting the gold flakes that are generously sprinkled onto ice creams, sponge cakes, sushi, bowls of rice, noodles and soup, cups of tea, coffee and whatever food and beverages that need some instant glamour to elevate its ordinariness.

However, we were attracted to Kanazawa not by the glitter of gold, but by its famous garden, Kenroku-en, which is said to be one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan. The other two are Koraku-en in Okayama and Kairaku-en in Mito. Apart from Kenroku-en, Kanazawa has a few other attractions worth lingering on for a few more days. In the two-and-a-half-day we were there, we only managed to visit Higashi Chaya District, Kenroku-en, the 21^st Century Museum and the Nomura Samurai House. If we had more time, we would also have gone to Ninjadera (temple with traps, secret rooms and escape routes),  D.T.Suzuki Museum (a homage to Buddhist scholar who spread Zen to the West), and Kanazawa Castle (we caught a glimpse of its vast grounds from Kenroku-en).

Kanazawa is near the Sea of Japan, about 500 km northwest from Tokyo by rail. In contrast to Tokyo, its population is a mere half a million, which will probably give us more elbow room to walk leisurely without being a hindrance to the harried lives of the locals. The bullet train took less than 3 hours to Kanazawa from Ueno Station in Tokyo. We passed through beautiful snow-draped mountain ranges near the second half of the journey—perhaps a hint of colder weather that will greet us at our destination.

Kanazawa Station

Kanazawa station is much easier to navigate than its bigger counterparts like Nagoya, Ikebukuro or Shibuya. We were lost quite often in those mega stations, like rats scurrying in and out of holes trying to find the right exit to escape. Kanazawa Station is just the right size—big but not overwhelming, with a large shopping area and many restaurants to while your time away if you are trapped by inclement weather.

If eating and shopping is not your thing, you can stroll around the station, which is marked by some interesting structures around its perimeter. There is the Motenashi Dome, an enormous canopy constructed from boxy metal trusses and glass which spreads out from the station to the bus bays, giving shelter as well as a sense of space. You will also not miss the giant Tsuzumi-mon gate, its design obviously inspired by Japan’s familiar iconic tori gate.  When you view it directly from afar, the space between the posts looks like a huge pot with lovely curved sides. The curvy illusion is created by the simple arrangement of a series of slanting posts. Sorry, no photograph here—mine didn’t turn out well enough to post. You have to use your imagination or find it on the Internet.

Hotpot in rain country

It was drizzling when we arrived at the station. The rain and the accompanying wind follow us most of the time in Kanazawa. We saw umbrellas here more often than in other places we visited. There were umbrella hooks next to each urinal in every toilet I visited, reminding us that the Rain God here is very active!  

After pushing our luggage to our hotel nearby, we went back to the station to deal with our hunger pangs. There was already a sizeable lunch crowd. We drifted with them until we wandered into an oden (a kind of hotpot) restaurant. At home, hotpot or steamboat is often associated with cold rainy weather, so this could be a perfect lunch.

Most of the patrons were sitting around a counter with boiling trays of what looked like fish cakes and tofu products. We were clueless on what and how to order, so I spent the next few minutes observing the customers. I noticed they just pointed to the items in the boiling trays to the server, who then scooped them up in a bowl for them. I was going to do the same when someone behind (probably the attentive proprietor) slipped an English menu to us. And, all the while, we thought we were indistinguishable from the local crowd! Or maybe it was our long hesitation.

The lunch was good. I particularly enjoyed the big lump of well-braised daikon, and I did not realise I ordered some frilly cow innards until it landed on the table. It was surprisingly good as well.

Higashi Chaya District

After lunch, we took a free bus using our JR Pass to Higashi Chaya District. This is a historic area, established in 1820, with rows of traditional houses where geishas used to entertain rich folks of the day. It seemed like a nice place to take an after-lunch stroll, and perhaps afternoon tea after soaking in the streetscape ambience of stone-laid paths and old timber houses, so I thought.

One-way mirror in wood

Apparently, the external timber wall of some of the houses there were ingeniously designed to allow its occupants to see outside but prevent passers-by from looking in. This was done through some clever lattice woodwork by Japanese craftsmen, predating modern-day one-way mirror which appeared only in the beginning of the 20^th Century. Unfortunately, I was not able to check this out because I did not know of this delightful morsel of information when I visited. I only learned of it while browsing some official tourist brochures as I was leaving Kanazawa—a lesson to all from a failed tourist!

Where are the famous teahouses?

While planning our trip, I searched briefly on the Internet to identify well-known places to visit in Higashi Chaya—the Ochaya Shima (teahouse), Kaikaro tea house and the Hakuza Gold leaf Store were mentioned often. I did not spend much time to locate them on the map as the area seemed small enough to explore house by house. However, it is one thing to browse the Internet in the comfort of my tropical home and another to look for these places while shivering from the bitterly cold wind and rain in the middle of Higashi Chaya.

We walked all the streets there, probably about four, which were parallel to each other. The main street had two-story wooden houses lining both sides and looked quite charming, even in the dreary weather. If you remove traces of modern-day paraphernalia such as telephone post wires and traffic signs, and get rid of passers-by not dressed in kimono garb, the scene could very well come straight out of 19th century Japan.

My earlier plan to walk house to house to locate our places of interest did not work at all. Most of the time, we had no clue where we were as there was hardly any non-Japanese signs to guide us. We could have blindly walked past them in our hurry to escape from the cold or even went in to walk around to warm up in a sheltered enclosure. Mostly, we were defeated by the cold wind. It was more enticing to relax with a cup of matcha or coffee in a warm teahouse (which we did) than storming the pavement in search of tourist spots.

How thin is a piece of gold leaf?

However, we did wander into the Yasue Gold Leaf Museum and unwittingly took a free ride in the middle of a guided tour for a group of western tourists. We were shown the process of pounding gold leaves and was told they were just 1/10000 mm, i.e. 0.1 micrometer thick. Visualize your hair (Asian variety) split 600 times! Of course, we don’t really know through our naked eyes if the leaves are really so thin, but seeing gold flakes sprinkled so liberally in food here, it must be so fine that a sprinkle cost the same as a drizzle of soy sauce.

For more than a stroll, get a tour guide

On reflection, we could have spent our time better in Higashi Chaya district if we have done a bit more homework before coming, e.g. finding the exact location of the tea houses we intend to visit so that we don’t get distracted by the constant need to escape from the cold. Though the place is picturesque, like walking in a movie set, it is difficult to delve deeper behind the timber façade due to lack of any explanatory signages, or perhaps we missed them, thanks to the numbing effect of the cold on our mental faculty. A local guide would be helpful here, but if you just want to work off your lunch, it is still worthwhile to take a stroll here, even with umbrella in hand.

We ended our first day in Kanazawa with grey clouds still hanging above us. Hope spring eternal that our visit to Kenrokuen Garden tomorrow will be blessed with warmer and sunnier weather.