Jawaad Mahmood in Tokyo

Location: Kanazawa
Date: Aug. 31st – Sept 1st, 2005

Within the centermost part of Japan lies the last castle ever made in the Land of the Rising Sun. Restored in 2001 to the standards of ancient Japan, this Castle town gets rave reviews, but is generally ignored by the populace. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want to end up in Kanazawa for the rest of my life if excitement was what I sought.

This isn’t part of Kanazawa, but a picture I took during the 2 hour trip from Kyoto. I couldn’t resist.

Leaving the JR station, you are immediately faced with these hotels. If you are a foreigner on a budget, you probably will get lost a few times looking for the hotel – I know that me and Moe did. Be very careful and be sure you know how far the hotel is from the station – if it is too far, you are risking embarassing yourself. The hotel in the front (Toyoko Inn) seems to be the easiest to find, although I admit, it was probably the most expensive. (We didn’t stay in it once)

Unlike Jesse Ventura, pro wrestlers have a long history of getting into parliament in Japan. In this picture, you can see Hiroshi Hase’s posters. The posters say “Awake to some progress” or something like that. I believe he was running for Koizumi’s political party – although no one could tell me for sure. It seems like all of Japan doesn’t give a damn about the elections.

Kanazawa is also famous for its fish market. Everything you can’t find in North America you can find there – probably cheaper than you could imagine. Me and Moe didn’t buy anything (obviously), but I think my dad would have liked it. (He hates the idea of going to Japan since he automatically disagrees with anything I ever do in my life – but he loves fish.)

This was a small family owned restaurant right close to Kanazawa Castle itself. The matron of the house came to get our order, while her husband cooked in the back. There were all sorts of old Mangas lying on a book case for patrons to read too. It was charming, but I wasn’t particularly hungry. Moe ordered Noodles, but later told me he didn’t much like them. Still I can’t complain about the service.

You can see Kanazawa Castle from here. When entering you have the option of purchasing an entry for the Kanazawa Gardens as well. I went ahead and did it – and saved myself 200 yen. (2$). :-/

After crossing an overpass and entering through the gigantic gates, you can see the first part of the castle. You can actually go inside.

There is a moat surrounding parts of the inner keep.

These stones are carved with the symbols of the house which provided the funding for that part of the castle, if I am not mistaken.

The castle keep’s roof is kept white through the usage of lead.

After taking off your shoes, you can see most of the entire interior of this building. It is all a museum dedicated to the structure and how it was rebuilt.

For some reason it struck me that this is probably the same view a Japanese soldier had a few hundred years back when the original castle stood in this spot.

As mentioned before, the interior included construction material used to build the castle. One deviation included the usage of American lumber for parts of the roof.

I don’t know if I am diverting too much from the real story, but you can probably detect that I am not too enthusiastic about Kanazawa. This is most likely due to the fact that while walking down this stretch of shops outside the castle, I came to realize how bored and alone I was. I wasn’t able to make any local friends, and all I could do was drift aimlessly though the streets, trying to find some meaning in what I saw so that the trip wouldn’t be a total loss.

Thank God Moe came along – it would have been awful being in that city completely alone.

This was one thing I thought was very cool. In front of the exit from the JR station there are these two fountains which show information about the city. This text changes automatically – I actually have some video of it which I’ll share if anyone is particularly interested in seeing it.

Who can forget the giant gate in front of the train station? An awesome melding of the old with new construction techniques. This was the larges Tori (gate) I saw in Japan.

This is the famous Geisha district of Kanazawa. While walking here, I brushed my camera against a parking meter (not hard or anything) and it stopped working. Swearing to myself and spending 40 minutes trying to fix it, I finally gave up and headed back to the bus stop. On the way I tried doing the same thing again and the camera mysteriously started working again. Gotta love modern technology.

For a fee, you can actually go inside a Geisha house. This is one of the few, if any, buildings which are declared to have cultural value in Japan. (Japan could use more historic buildings, or at least external facades – the streets of its big cities are no different from American or other western cities)

Again, the geisha house. This place was apparently very popular with the Shogun, or so I remember. My memory is playing tricks on me I’m sure.

These houses all were tiny, and have no numbers on them. A postman walked by me while I was here and he wakled up to a lady and asked her where someone else lived. I remember thinking that such a system could never work in my native Brossard – most people don’t know their immediate neighbour, let alone the guy 3 doors down!

Another interesting part was that each one of these houses seemed to double as either a home office or some kind of store.

I showed this picture to a friend of mine and she was outraged. “How dare someone keep pets and treat them so shabbily! Look at those poor cats, they are starving!”. I don’t know why, but I felt pretty small at that moment.

The Kanazawa Gardens are beautiful, even in hot and humid August.

Religion in Japan is something weird. Although people claim to be Buddhist or Shintoist (in most cases), they really don’t take it particularly seriously. Maybe that explains the use of abortion as birth control for younger Japanese. (Japan has one of the highest rates of Abortion in the world – 350,000 done every year)

They actually have a museum inside the park that you can enter. I remember it vividly because there were two girls there at the entrance and they were shocked out of their mind when I started talking to them in Japanese. When I explained that I had learnt it at McGill Univeristy, they somehow got the idea I was some kind of elite. Yeah right

These are actually Kanazawan local arts – and I thought they were stunningly beautiful. The traditional Japanese arts of dress were light years ahead of the rest of the world.

This looks like a Tottorian Shabushabu.

If you go to Japan and order an Iced Tea or Iced Coffee, please don’t expect it to be anything other than tea with ice cubes in it. Trust me – I found out the hard way (yuck). Nice cup though.

LOL – Japan’s own “We Support the Troops” sign. At least it isn’t a hypocritical pink ribbon on an SUV – it actually says “We pray for the success, safety and quick return of Japan’s Self Defence Army from Japan”

Remember what I said about the Japanese train system? The buses are the same. Each bus has a tracking device which indicates where it is, and an estimated time of arrival. Oh, and unlike Brossard, you don’t have to wait 1 hours on the weekend for a bus.

Moe found a couple of nice spots when he went to the hotel staff and made some gestures with a soccer ball. Everyone was staring at us funny after that, but I didn’t notice until Moe told me the story

I thought this would be the ideal image to close with. I didn’t learn much in Kanazawa, and I don’t have particularly fond memories of it, but I can’t hide from the fact that many places there were very beautiful. It is just too bad I didn’t know anyone ;-(