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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We miss you all!

Enjoy your turkey...and cranberry sauce...and pie...and have an extra helping for us, since we won't be getting any of that!

Snow!

We had a bit of snow here. Actually, we had some hail, some rain, and some snow, all while thundering and lightning(-ing?...). Apparently, it's quite common here to have snow and rain during a thunderstorm. Those of you from Buffalo probably remember the big "Thundersnow" storm a couple of years ago. That's supposedly normal here, though not fun to walk to work in. Though the snow doesn't tend to stick around for longer than 24 hours. Anyway, here's a couple of very blurry pictures of the neighboring plants covered in snow:




Also, while I may not have seen cucumber or other odd Pepsi products yet, I have seen watermelon and grape flavored Kit-Kat bars. I don't recommend the watermelon ones...

Real Squid Pizza

As Lee and I were somewhat mislead about the squid pizza last time, which is really more like a squid fritter, we decided to make a real squid pizza for dinner. The squid fritter was really good, in fact, much better than the squid pizza turned out. We bought something frozen that looked like it could be squid (or possibly sea cucumber, or something). Luckily, when it thawed it did turn out to be squid. Lee also wanted mushrooms so we got oyster mushrooms. They're creepy looking.


I made dough and sauce and we got what was considered pizza cheese at the store. I know there was Parmesan and I think mozzarella in there, but it really didn't taste like actual cheese. Mmmm, squid and mushroom pizza.


We made two pizzas, one squid and mushroom for Lee and one cheese with some squid bits for Ana. Squid is not a great pizza topping. The cheese product they have here is also not a great pizza topping. Another food tried in the name of science. Or something.

Misty, Dreary Day

Today was a day for cleaning. My ankle needs a rest from walking everywhere, and it's raining, so we're staying in. While cleaning (and knitting, and playing video games...), we noticed some pretty cool mists in the hills behind our apartment, and took some pictures to show off.


They don't really get much in the way of Fall color here. There are trees that change color, but not like back home. Much nicer there. The hills are mostly bamboo, so only that small stripe of colored trees change; all the rest stay green, or so I've been told. There's a couple other shots in Flickr (in the Apartment set), though I wish I had thought to do a panoramic of just the hills - that's exactly what I wanted, I just didn't think of it until tonight when the opportunity is no longer there. Oh well, nice pictures anyway. Here's another one of the fields behind our house:


The Japanese even have a word for Fall foliage, though I forget what it is. The red maples and Ginko trees are nice, but they don't stay pretty for very long. They tend to change and fall immediately, instead of hanging around for a bit and allowing me to enjoy the color. Oh well, Spring is supposed to be much nicer here than at home, so I have that to look forward to!

We Did It For Science...

We tried KFC, ordinarily forbidden by Lee. First, because we were looking for forms of chicken other than chicken breasts, and two, to see how it was different. You just can't get chicken with bones in it here, except for wings. We discovered that there are no biscuits at KFC here, but there are french fries. There's a seasoning packet to put on the fries (which come in a bag), and instructions to pour the seasoning into the bag and then shake it up. (We declined to do so) They don't give you very many fries either. This is the four piece meal, for about $10, which, in our opinion, was not worth it. The pieces of chicken seem smaller than at home, no guarantees. We probably won't be trying the Dominoes or Pizza Hut in the interest of science, as a $30 pizza is just not appealing in any way, and that's what they cost.

Long Time No Post

Not that we haven't been doing anything, just that we haven't been writing about it. So, here's some pictures from a walk we took about town almost two weeks ago. First, we went down a busy road and then realized the building we thought could be a department store was actually just apartments. Then, we turned down the river to go to the other end of town to see a craft store and a stationary store. There's a nice path down all of the little streams around here:


The ducks are different here. They have colored tips on their bills. From far away, they don't look that different, but they aren't quite the same (click to see it better):


In fact, all of the birds here are a bit different. The crows are much larger and louder. There's a couple of hawks that live in our neighborhood too, but they always fly away before I can photograph them. Very large birds.

On our walk, we also saw some interesting gardens, and photographed one nicely manicured tree. You can tell how much money a family has by the niceness of their garden. This family must have money.


When we got to the end of the river, we came out into a little park. There were benches and areas for kids to play, and nicely manicured bushes and things. There was also a statue:


We went to the stationary store to check it out, and then headed home. On the way, there were some pretty flowers:


Such pretty things everywhere. As long as you don't look at the power lines, which are all aboveground.