Apparently I feel like Golden Week needs to start in a gold town...specifically Kanazawa. This is the second year I’ve done so, at any rate. The funny thing is, when I went there last year, I wasn’t all that impressed, so I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to try it again - but I’m glad I did.
Just like last year, I started my day in the McDonald’s in Katamachi. I figured after a long bus trip this was the best place to refuel and figure out what the heck I was doing there again. I’m pretty sure when I booked the Willer Bus to go all the way to Kanazawa I was thinking that I needed to visit the art museums I ditched last year, which is funny because after I looked at Google maps I decided that was exactly what I wasn’t going to do. But I actually started on TripAdvisor, looking to see what kind of classes or workshops they had, and it turned out they had one where you could make your own gold-leaf dish. And when I looked to see where the place was, art museums got knocked off my to do list.
See, what I noticed about Google maps was that the district where the samurai lived was more or less on the other side of the street. There were a couple of museums and houses to visit en route to the gold leaf place, and it was a freaking chilly day, so I decided moving from one to the next, warming up a little before heading back into the breach, would be an excellent way to navigate the area.
And it was. I saw some cool stuff, including a museum that focused on old-style shops. I saw some samurai houses - or, in some cases, what remained of them. My favorite part of it, though, was the gardens each house had. They made me want it to be summer, want to be sitting lazily on the edge of the walkways fanning myself and enjoying the view. They were so fundamentally Japanese that it made me really sad to think about the fact that I’ll be leaving in two months, and I don’t have many more chances to see them.
I still wasn’t quite to the gold leaf shop, but I made a detour to see a couple of shrines - because this is me we’re talking about. Of COURSE I went to shrines. I can’t even use my photography course as an excuse because the last shot I had planned for that had to be at night. The thing that drew me to Oyama Jinja was its very unorthodox gate. It doesn’t even look like a shrine from the outside. I made my way down the street toward it, not really sure what I’d find inside, but when I passed through the gate, it was like almost any other shrine you’d find. It had a cool pond with an old brick bridge and some other nice water features. It had a sculpture of a lily pad, with frogs hanging off its stem and edges, and a nice bench that I availed myself of before heading onward. It was a really lovely place, but that gate made me curious about its story...just apparently not curious enough to look it up in the three days since I was there. But that’s life, eh?
There was another shrine nearby that I swung by before heading on to Tajima. Before I could make it I saw a restaurant advertising a “wild beef lunch,” which made me realize it was after 2 and food would probably be good. It was a bowl of rice with slices of roast beef on top. And it was...just not as good as the one from Red Rocks. Which I guess means one of these days I’m going to have to brave the line to visit the one in Harajuku.
Finally I got to Tajima. I wasn’t really sure how it was going to work out, because I was flying by the seat of my pants - hadn’t contacted them in advance or anything. But after a quick chat the employees were showing me the different projects I could make and getting me settled. Since I’d come to Toyama specifically to try and see the firefly squid, I decided my lacquer dish would feature them. Which just goes to show that I’m not psychic, after all. It was a relatively easy project, though, and only 1,000 yen to make, plus I got to enjoy all their beautiful art while I was working, so it was well worth it.
I still wasn’t quite to the gold leaf shop, but I made a detour to see a couple of shrines - because this is me we’re talking about. Of COURSE I went to shrines. I can’t even use my photography course as an excuse because the last shot I had planned for that had to be at night. The thing that drew me to Oyama Jinja was its very unorthodox gate. It doesn’t even look like a shrine from the outside. I made my way down the street toward it, not really sure what I’d find inside, but when I passed through the gate, it was like almost any other shrine you’d find. It had a cool pond with an old brick bridge and some other nice water features. It had a sculpture of a lily pad, with frogs hanging off its stem and edges, and a nice bench that I availed myself of before heading onward. It was a really lovely place, but that gate made me curious about its story...just apparently not curious enough to look it up in the three days since I was there. But that’s life, eh?
There was another shrine nearby that I swung by before heading on to Tajima. Before I could make it I saw a restaurant advertising a “wild beef lunch,” which made me realize it was after 2 and food would probably be good. It was a bowl of rice with slices of roast beef on top. And it was...just not as good as the one from Red Rocks. Which I guess means one of these days I’m going to have to brave the line to visit the one in Harajuku.
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