いいね 金沢

Sign hanging in front of the station: "If you're going to come to Kanazawa, spring, summer, autumn or winter is good, I think."

A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to spend a day in Kanazawa, temple hotspot and home to the famous Kenrokuen Gardens, one of the three great traditional gardens of Japan. (This sounds impressive, but Japan seems to have an entire industry of top-three lists of things. Go to any nothingness town and they are guaranteed to be the proud home of the third-most-famous rice cake or the second-best traditional leather breeches.)

Someone put some little toy cars and a toy supermarket on top of the postbox. Vroom.

Another person was apparently selling vintage radios out of their garage, or perhaps just showing them off. I'm not sure.

I'll show you a few sniblets:

There were a lot of swallows flitting about, who it turned out were building nests out of flim and flam and spit and whatnot. Apparently they're enough of an issue that some places now use shop-bought artificial swallow nests to try and guide the birds into settling into the most convenient places. They are gross but nice.

Kanazawa is a centre for the production of gold leaf. We somehow wandered into a gold- leaf souvenir shop and the shop assistant invited us to watch the leaf being made. We agreed, a little warily, but no-one pressured us into buying anything and the ojiisan who explained the process to us was lovely and informative. He had gold flecks on his chin and I wondered what it would be like to be around gold so much that you can be so blasé about getting some on your face. I watched one of the craftswomen pick up a 1-micron-thick sheet of gold with tweezers. When she breathed on it, it rippled just like water.

In spite of my cynicism in the face of Japan's incessant listmaking, the Kenrokuen Gardens are beautiful. One small section was closed off to the public. In the middle lay an eerily placed rock, like an unexploded mine.

In the Japanese style of saying much whilst saying nothing, I got a very clear and effective sign to keep away, just from the unnverving placement of this rock.

***


My favourite part might actually be Kanazawa station though, for its fantastic fountain clock. Instead of reading one of your boring old analogue clocks, or one of your yawnsome digital clocks, you can read the time at Kanazawa station through the medium of water:

"Welcome to Kanazawa"

"Kanazawa: isn't it nice?"