Kanazawa Tourism

The next Monday through Friday of our friends' visit, Ana and I had work, and so our friends ventured out into Kanazawa and beyond on their own.  In some cases, they remembered to take pictures in places where we forgot to, so I'll post some of their pictures and try to link to our descriptions of those places and activities rather than putting it all down here.  We also ate out with them at several different Japanese restaurants in a bid to sample a nice wide range of different Japanese foods.  Some of these may not have been blogged before, so I'll include those dinners as well.  As usual, more pictures can be found on Flickr.

 Lovely weather during pretty much the whole trip, very fortunate.

On Monday, our guests took a recovery day and stayed close to the apartment.  For dinner, we went to a rotating sushi bar.  At a rotating sushi bar, the chef(s) prepare the sushi and then put it on color-coded plates that go onto a conveyor belt that usually circles the entire restaurant.  The color of the plate tells you the cost, and if you like what you see, you simply snag the plate and enjoy.  If the chef isn't putting what you want on the belt, or someone up the line is eating it all, requests can be made more directly.  As with a lot of casual Japanese cuisine, it's relatively inexpensive and good fun for a group.

The conveyor belt conveys little plates of happiness, except when it doesn't.  I'm pretty sure that plate is sticky fermented soybean paste called natto.

 We ordered some trays to get more food quickly.  They made me eat the salmon with mayo and onions, ruling that anything with that much mayo couldn't be "real" Japanese food.  How wrong they are.  Wasn't bad though, the onions kept it from being unctuous.

 At the end you have a pile or piles of the color-coded plates.  At this restaurant they were also RFID tagged, so that they could just sort of wave a little handheld monitor over the stack and it tallied them automatically.

On Tuesday our friends went to see Kenrokuen (Links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and the 21st Century Art Museum, which Ana has been to but we've never blogged.  Apparently quality varies a lot with which exhibits are currently in-house, because they liked it a lot more than she did.

 

 View from the teahouse in Kenroku'en.

After work, Ana and I met them downtown to go to a good ramen shop that we know.  They do not (nor does any restaurant in Japan that I've been to except maybe that place on Fuji) serve anything like Top Ramen.   For about ten bucks, they'll give you a rich and flavorful bowl of ramen big enough to get lost kayaking in.  I ordered the spicy ramen and picked the fourth most spicy configuration out of five - it nearly melted my face off.  I had to cool my mouth by eating some of Ana's ramen before continuing.

 On Tuesday, they went to Omicho Market, Higashi Chaya (the tea district), and the Gold Leaf Museum / Store.  They actually remembered to take some pictures in the Golf Leaf Museum (we didn't), so we can show those now. 

 This gentleman has a book full of tiny, thin pieces of gold, and is using that machine hammer to pound them even thinner. This process is repeated several times - after they're pounded flat, they're recut into smaller squares and put through again.

 That process is I believe illustrated here.  She's trimming hammered squares into smaller ones, possibly to send through again.  The box on the right is scraps.

 Notice how the gold ripples as she blows on it gently. 

 The walls of this room are covered entirely in gold.

 Nice picture from the Tea District.

After work, we met them back at the apartment and went for okonomiyaki (which we've mentioned a number of times before but never documented well) but as it turned out the okonomiyaki place we like was closed for renovations, so we went for yakitori instead.  There was a new yakitori place close by and it had always smelled really good walking by, so we went there.  Yakitori translates very precisely to "roasted bird" but it really means "meat-on-a-stick bar".  This place had smoke billowing out from the kitchen but also an enormously powerful ventilation system, so everything smelled good without setting off any fire alarms.  I assume they were disabled inside the kitchen, or something.  Anyway, yakitori places sell mostly grilled chicken, beef, and pork on skewers with various sauces and preparations.  It's a hard cuisine not to like, at least for non-vegetarians which was all of us.  We ordered a mess of chicken and pork (we stuck mostly to things on the menu we had pretty clear ideas about to avoid being served grilled cartilage or chicken livers, which were undoubtedly also on there somewhere) and got some sake and beer to accompany it.  Good casual eats.

Definitely not a place going for interior decoration awards.

 Roasted garlic skewers

 This is the only correct way to eat a yakitori skewer.  I promise!

We took a picture through the window to the kitchen on the way out.  This grill is one source of the aromatic smoke that suffused the place, but there were several others as well.

On Thursday we bid them good luck and put them on a bus for the station.  They visited Osaka, went to a baseball game, went to some big famous electronics department stores, and probably some other things that I've forgotten.  They also got some pretty cool pictures from their fancy hotel room .

 View from the hotel of the baseball stadium

 Hotel room view of a highway going through what appears to be the fourth floor of a building.

 Wicked cool picture from the hotel room at night, looking out over Osaka.

Friday during the day they did some more tourism down in the Osaka area, then took the train back to Kanazawa where I greeted them with grilled jerk chicken (found habaneros at a farmer's market and so was able to make this dish - not usual) for dinner.  The next day, we had one final big adventure planned before they flew home.  That'll be up next time.