Kanazawa-shi

This past weekend, Brian and I took our first trip around Japan, to a city called Kanazawa. It's in Ishikawa Prefecture, which is northwest of Nagano on the coast of the Sea of Japan. On the way there, we decided to save some money and take the local highways (the Interchange is their version of an interstate, and it's a toll road). It was absolutely beautiful (see picture above), but took about 12 hours (the I.C. back took 5- with 52 tunnels).

Kanazawa is known for having one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan, Kenrokuen Gardens. The temperature there is a little more moderate than Saku, so the leaves were still changing color when we visited and it was gorgeous. However, they get so much snow that they have to give the trees artificial supports to help hold up the weight. It's a really strange look- makes you wonder why the trees evolved in a way that they couldn't hold their own.

The city also has a (semi) famous but very cool temple- colloquially known as Ninja temple (Ninja-ji). It has 23 rooms, 29 staircases, 2 hidden floors, myriad trap doors, booby traps, and an escape hatch in a well. In the past, people actually thought it had been used by ninjas (thus, the name). Turns out, it was designed and built by the Maeda family (overlords in the Edo era), who were just incredibly paranoid. All of the hidden features were in place to help it be part of a successful escape route (through the tunnel in the well, which supposedly connects with Kanazawa castle) if the family was attacked. In addition, they intentionally built the city streets around their castle into a warren, so that attackers would have a harder time getting in.
Kanazawa isn't on the Sea of Japan, but we did do a fair amount of driving past it on the way there. It was really cool to go from the "Japanese Alps" to the sea in such a short time. It was also very cool to find out that my car does fine on the I.C. (I was a little worried that the rickety thing wouldn't like high speeds).

Photos and videos from the trip are up on facebook, but only on Brian's account (his camera is better than mine). Email (or contact in another way) if you can't see them and I'll try to figure out how to give you a link.