Around Town

I got a gorgeous wall hanging from a friend for the Secret Santa swap at work (which tells you how far back some of our blog ideas come from) and I love it.  We were hoping to get two more in a similar style and hang them above the couch or somewhere else prominent and visited the geisha district to find some.  We got invited to lunch with a bunch of the KIT teachers downtown, so decided to visit the geisha district after lunch, and as it was a nice and sunny day, brought the camera.  Here are some of the sights around downtown Kanazawa:

Helpful maps in both Japanese and English, with some major points of interest listed specifically along with their distance and direction.  These can be very helpful if you're not sure if you turn at this intersection or the next one.  That situation comes up often because there are no street names.

Tall buildings and cars.  Both tend to be narrower than American ones.

An odd statue.  It's above a "subway" area, and here that doesn't mean a train that runs underground.  It means an underground crosswalk so you can get around that busy interchange without waiting for the lights to turn.  Some intersections have interesting crosswalks, stopping the traffic and allowing pedestrians to cross from any corner to any corner, even diagonally, and others have the underground crosswalks that connect all four corners.  Some have both.  Very pedestrian friendly streets.

This is a rather adorable map across the street from the odd statue.  It's Kanazawa with a "you are here" marker.  I love it!

I think all of our pictures were taken at the same intersection.  This shrine is right in front of the relief of Kanazawa and right next to the tourist map.  These landmarks are all right in front of a major department store, Daiwa, where you can find nearly anything if you're willing to pay for it.  They have a Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany's, and probably some other big names I don't recognize, along with imported alcoholic beverages, candy, and other foods, like anise and actual almond extract.  Last time I bought almond extract at a local grocery store, it turned out to actually be coconut.  I was disappointed.

Finally, we made it to the geisha district, which is probably a ten minute walk from the center of downtown.  It has many old houses, with some museums, some traditional tea or craft shops, restaurants, and many little souvenir shops.  It is profoundly lacking in actual geisha.  Sadly, we found that the amazing wall hanging we have is the only they sell that appeals to us, so while we got to walk around a pretty area of Kanazawa, we did not find what we were looking for.

We still have more places we haven't seen, like the samurai district, art museum, castle, and the major temples, but this gets things started.