Kenroku-en

This is one of the three most famous gardens in Japan, and it is right here in Kanazawa. We actually went to Kenroku-en almost a month ago, but I like to take a LOT of pictures and hadn't organized them until today. We weren't as impressed with this garden as we were with Natadera, but we probably just came in an off-season. It wasn't summer anymore, so some things were dying, but fall colors weren't quite at their peak and they just put all these rope supports on some tree branches. The rope supports are there in case it snows; you don't want these awesome branches you've spent, in some cases, decades cultivating into just the right shape getting bent or broken during the winter due to heavy snows. There isn't much snow here, but when it does snow, we've been told, it's heavy and wet. Not good for delicate branches. We can't wait to go again when the plum and/or cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and may stop by again if there's a pretty snowstorm. One where the snow stays for long enough for us to get downtown and see the garden.


There were a lot of cool bridges and for some reason, one branch of a cherry tree was in bloom. It was all pretty nice. See Flickr for more pictures!


We walked, and it takes about an hour to get from our place to the garden. There's also a castle downtown and some temples, along with samuri and geisha districts, but we haven't visited those yet. We then got slightly lost going home - there's a little shopping street we decided to walk down, just to see what was there, and we thought it ran parallel to the main street. Apparently it does for a while, and then the main street takes a right and the parallel street keeps going straight, so we came out of it...somewhere. We kept walking until we found the river that pretty much separates our end of Kanazawa from the downtown, and walked along it until we found the correct bridge we cross over. They have such nice river walkways next to all the rivers here. You can follow the river all the way to the beach, though that takes awhile. We'll probably wait until we have bikes for such an adventure.