I think that describing today as a complete and utter fiasco would be accurate enough. I got up at 7-ish, went downstairs, and hit the breakfast buffet as opposed to ordering from the menu they put in front of me, which included “breakfast salad.” There was some decent stuff, although I forewent the natto this morning, thanks, as well as the mountain potato. Then I headed out, buying the umbrella which, although it wasn’t raining when I left the hotel, looked like it might be necessary.
Found my way to the market just fine, thanks (I can always seem to find food), and looked over the early-morning crop of crabs and lobsters and octopus legs, as well as vegetables marinated in kasu, but realized that there was a hike ahead, so I left and headed towards Kanazawa’s giant park. It started to rain, and so I stopped at the shrine that I thought was one of the gates. It wasn’t, but the rain abated enough for me to forge forward and I twisted through some streets until I hit a real gate. There were these cute yellow whales (by cute, of course, I mean kawaii) advertising something, and as I got closer, a rock band started to play. They had a very pretty girl singer. I know this because although I never saw the band, she couldn’t sing. My goal was the reconstructed castle, or the part of the castle that’s been reconstructed, it having been huge (1000 tatamis). Nobody among the iridescent green-suited admissions folks spoke any English at all, but one told me the ticket they were selling was because “garden is green,” and I remembered the website saying something about a garden festival. Okay, I wasn’t interested, so I went back down the hill and continued circling the grounds. The castle eventually loomed above me, and I admired its defenses: I couldn’t figure out how to get into it. Finally, I saw a bridge high above the main street I was walking along, so I backtracked, crossed the street, and found the bridge. Sure enough, that led to the back gate, which was the entrance. (Or an entrance: turns out I could have gotten in at that first gate).
Kanazawa Castle
After a little confusion due to the fact that the tickets weren’t sold at the point where they were collected, I got in, and headed first to the watchtower I’d seen from the road. The guy who let me in actually spoke some English, and showed me how parts of the floor lifted up so that you could shoot arrows down on unwanted visitors. I asked him if the castle had ever been taken, and he said “No, this wasn’t a castle of war. This was the lord’s castle.” Sounds like an invitation to invasion to me, but hey, I let it pass. I then wandered towards the main building, shooting a couple of pix along the way. At the entrance, I had to line up with some other people until a guide came. She talked to me, and I admitted I knew no Japanese. No big deal to her, she ignored me. We were then admitted, and removed our shoes and put our umbrellas in plastic bags.
I have no idea what was said after that. At one point she played a tape from a machine which had a button marked “English,” but the main thrill was when we got to see a short video presentation (on DVD) about how the castle had been constructed. Apparently the thing had burned, although I’m not sure when (Kanazawa wasn’t bombed, for some reason), and archaeologists had found foundation stones. Using 19th century photographs and other documentation, they had craftsmen rebuild the thing with traditional techniques (except, I assume, for the nails in the flooring, there, no doubt, for safety reasons). The intricate shaping, nesting, and pegging of the various components puts Western cabinetry to shame. It was awesome watching the computer-generated pieces fly together. But I have no idea what the rest of the tour was about. Since the guide was reading from a script, I found myself wondering if it would be a terrible imposition to get someone at the nearby university to translate this script into several other languages, put them on a laminated card for the foreign tourist to read as the tour proceeds, and hand in at the end. But I don’t think Kanazawa really wants a non-Japanese tourist industry to develop. As we left, the guide shook my hand and said “Sank you veddy mosh,” as if I’d done anything. Fortunately there were bare-bones translations of the major points of interest on the rest of the grounds, and I wandered through the hill where the main castle had stood. At one point there was a godawful noise by my feet and I saw a huge cicada on the ground. I stepped threateningly towards him and he repeated the performance. The rain and wind was picking up, and my umbrella was getting tossed around. I had to use both hands to steady it a number of times.
The next place I wanted to go was the samurai quarter, where, after the Meiji Restoration abolished their trade, they lived in poverty. I could find it on the map, but it looked like it made more sense to go across the street to the gardens, where there was also a Meiji mansion and the museum of local arts and crafts. But what to do after that? How to get to this neighborhood? I sat in a dry area and stared at the book. Where on earth was the castle? Then it struck me: the book had been published in 1998, and one of the things I’d enjoyed was the smell of the place, which I remembered from childhood. That was the smell of new wood, Japanese cedar, is what it was. Chances are this had all gone up since anyone had revised the book. While I was figuring this out, a song was playing over the loudspeakers. It was a children’s chorus singing a simple short melody that was driving me crazy. It went like “Dada zaza nana ricky --Icky!/Dada zaza nana naaa...” and so on. After the ninth pass, I decided I’d leave anyway, even if I had no idea where I was going. Perhaps I’d throw myself into traffic from the bridge. Anything to get away from it. Well, I did know that if I left via the bridge I’d come in on there was an entrance to the pleasure garden, and in there was the arts and crafts museum, so I did that. I paid my admission and the woman asked where I was from. “I’m American, and I live in Germany.” “America?” she asked. “Yes, but I live in Germany.” Blank stare. Memo: don’t make it complicated.
The gardens are formal, and, thus, obey the six principles of formal gardens, explained in the brochure you’re given with the admissions fee. They were once attached to the castle, but because the dates are given as “the rule of the13th lord of...” and so on, instead of Christian dates, I can’t tell you much about it. There was a basin by a teahouse made out of the fossil of a cedar and its roots, Japan’s first fountain and first artificial waterfall, a famous stone lantern which sticks one foot in the water, many, many artfully deformed pines, and a lot more, but the typhoon was really kicking in at this point. Time to go inside. Unfortunately, the museum closes from 12-1 for lunch, so I hit the mansion. It wasn’t as spare and interesting as the houes I saw yesterday, although there was a lot to admire in the decoration of the rooms, which included stained-glass paintings of birds imported from Holland. I put my shoes back on and went next door to the museum. There was a desk at the entrance with a girl at a desk, some money, and the admissions fee posted so I tried to attract her attention, and when I got it, I handed over my money. She pushed it back, giggling, and waved me in. Hey, maybe it was free day. But inside, there was another desk with two girls, also giggling, and they took my dough. Behind them was what looked like a gift-shop, although the book says that none of this is for sale, for some reason, and there’s also a space where a craftsman works. Today’s was putting gold leaf on lacquer chopsticks. Upstairs the local crafts are explained in clear, simple English in such exemplary fashion that I wondered who’d done it and why they weren’t working on any other tourist attraction in Kanazawa. I stayed some time and developed a lust for Tsurugi steel knives and Wajima lacquerware. (I never did find the former, but I later saw what may have been a set of the latter, miso soup bowls including covers and matching trays, three to the set, for a mere ¥540,000. Just $4500! I always did have good taste). The other thing I saw was an education: fireworks from Nota. They had several cut in half so you could see how the various bombs were interconnected so that when the outer shell was blown off the timed explosions of the rest were effected. Always wondered about that.
Kanazawa: the park
So I went outside and inquired from the lady at the exit which way the samurais were. She pointed me back into the park, which I am not sure was correct. Whatever, I walked through and got a good picture of gardening ladies in traditional gear working by the teahouse pond. When I got out, I decided I needed lunch, so I stopped at one of the souvenir shops with upstairs restaurants which line the area.
It was at this point that I must have lost it, or my brain fried or something. It was very hard communicating with the waitress. I wanted cha-soba, green-tea soba, but she pointed me to a “soba set” of normal soba. Okay, so they didn’t have cha-soba, so I got normal. There was cold jibujibu soup (was it supposed to be cold?), miso soup, rice, pickles, and soba and dipping sauce. It was certainly okay. I mean, how can you ruin it? I called her over and mimed scribbling and she ran and got a pad. No. I pulled out my money, and she pointed downstairs. I really can’t explain what happened next. I almost left without paying, but the various salesgirls blocked the door and I turned around to find the proprietor smiling at me. Oops. It was ¥1400. Okay. I reached in my pocket and pulled out ¥140. Completely stupid. He said no, and then I realized my mistake and handed him ¥1040. What an idiot! One more time, and I got it right. I mean, I’ve been doing fine since I got here. The lady at the beer shop last night was boggled at my ability to pay with exact change!
Oh, but it got worse. I had determined that I could reach the samurais by walking down the road, turning right, and, after a while, turning left. The rain was awful, and I was noticing that I was getting soaked despite the umbrella, which was doing a good job of keeping my back dry. It was raining too hard to whip out the book and consult it, but I thought I had myself pretty well fixed: the castle park was to my right, and I should be headed back to the market, except I had to turn off before then. I walked along the castle park, watching an inch-long hummingbird sucking from the flowers planted by the side of the road. The road ended, though, before I came to the main road I was expecting, so I just kept walking. Before long I realized I was lost. The map had shown nice even parallel lines, so I wasn’t worried. There was a neon-filled commercial section with Cartier and Gucci boutiques, so I figured I wasn’t too far from the station and the expensive hotels. Then the commercial landscape degenerated into more of those small bars I’d seen in Takayama. Some were clearly brothels of some kind; one had a picture of a fat salaryman tied up with rope while a pixie-like girl tugged it tighter. Things blanded out again. The rain was awful. One thing I knew: the Sky Hotel, the Apa, the Miyako, all had their distinct skyline imprints, and would guide me to the station. The skyline may have been a bit blocked out by the rain, but those behemoths surely would be visible. I kept walking. I knew I was parallelling a river, which was good because that’s where the station was, but no dice. Finally, I came to an intersection and turned left. This took me up a big hill. My thought was to turn left again, since I had clearly made an error, and this would bring me back to the castle. It was useless asking anybody.
After two hours, I stumbled on a temple. In front of the temple, as with all temples in Kanazawa, there was a map. Why the mapmakers couldn’t manage to orient the maps north-south I cannot tell you (a very common problem throughout Japan, as it developed), but I assumed that’s what it was, and all I had to do was walk a few meters to a main street, turn left, and I’d be there. Which I did. Walking down the sidewalk through huge crowds of schoolgirls waiting for the bus, seeing convenience stores, funeral parlors, beauty salons, the usual city stuff. Finally I spotted a parallel street with a vista. I went over and stared. Nothing I recognized was there: no Sky Hotel, no APA, nothing. I went back onto the main road and reversed direction. It was now pouring, the wind whipping the umbrella, and I was miserable. All I wanted was to get back. Fuck the samurai. The Meiji Restoration had. Aha! Up ahead was another temple, down a small side-road. I went there and in drenching rain stared at the map. It was here that I finally noticed that the map’s orientation wasn’t north-south, so I turned my head upside down and eventually worked out that if I went back to the main street, and turned first right, I’d be headed towards the station. Hooray!
Premature. The road ended at the Kanazawa College of Art, the source of the horrid faux Rodins in part of the castle park. There was an area of dirt ahead, and a sheer drop off the mountain I seemed to be on. But as I drew closer, I saw that there was a brand-new modern stairway down the hill. I headed down it, glad to be out of the typhoon, and saw a main street running at a 90-degree angle just ahead. A road sign indicated that, as I’d thought, a left turn would take me to the station. I’d seen some tall buildings as I’d come out of the stairway, so I knew I was all right now. Right: turn a couple of corners and...
And I came out at the entrance to the gardens, right where I’d started three hours and some ago. But I knew how to get back from here, so I forged on, and, thinking I spied a short-cut, went down a street and...right into the back end of the market. Desperately thirsty and with the reverse of my Takayama dilemma -- I had only ¥40 in coins and some ¥10,000 bills -- I headed to a woman selling rice-crackers (had to replace the chili ones I’d bought in Tokyo and eaten the other night with my Takayama ale) and paid for a ¥280 pakcage with one sodden ten-grander. She made a face, and I pointed to the outside. She sort of grinned. I boogied, stopping only at a vending machine to whip out some of my change and buy a half-liter -- a half-liter! This town isn’t all bad! -- of Water Salad.
Back in the room, I tossed it down after taking off my clothes and spreading them around to dry (the air-conditioning does a good job with that, if yesterday’s jeans, doffed at about the same time, are any indication). I put on the yakuta that comes with most Japanese hotel rooms, and lazed until I had the energy to stand up and take a shower. A hot shower. A long shower. I had been walking for eight hours, for the better part of four of which I was lost.
Dinner downstairs in the seafood restaurant again, because I was damned if I was going to leave the hotel again, although I did go out for that Sapporo autumn beer, which wasn’t as good as Kirin’s.
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