Day 11 - Kanazawa, Omicho market, Samurai district, Sushi train nightmare

We decided to travel to Kanazawa because it was a known hotspot for great seafood. That in itself booked it's place in our itinerary. It wasn't until I was planning on how many days to stay there that I realised that there was much more to Kanazawa than just seafood.

For example, this city is known for gold leaf, and you can buy several gold leaf products including gold leaf skin care products and all sorts of food items with bits of edible gold leaf thrown on top. The photo above is of a tofu/fruit pudding cup with bits of gold leaf.

We took the Limited Express Thunderbird from Shin-Osaka to Kanazawa, a trip of about 2 hours. As our usual policy, we went to find our hotel so we could dump our suitcases. We were staying at Kanazawa Central Hotel for $100 for 2 nights. A bargain. Reviews of this hotel generally included how hard it was to find the hotel entrance. They were not wrong. Firstly, there are no English signs, so brush up to katakana to remember the words "sentoru hoteru". The photo on the left is one provided by management of the hotel. You can see the katakana words there. Faced with this building, we took the logical option and went up the stairs. We were greeted at a rather strange feeling reception. It just didn't feel like a hotel reception, it felt more like a bar and felt quite cramped. Anyway, we were told the usual answer that we could not check in yet, but they would take our bags. We did hours of sightseeing and came back quite late to finally check in. We were told to take the lift down, walk through the carpark to the buildling behind. That felt more like a hotel reception, more airy. It seems that we were sent to the annexe hotel.

 We were used to Japanese rooms by then, and not expecting a big one, especially for the price that we paid. But this did feel slightly smaller than usual.


 It wasn't helped by the fact that they provided a foot massager in the room that took up valuable suitcase floor space. But boy, in the amount of walking that we did, that foot massager was in constant use from the moment we stepped into the hotel room.
  

Going back to when we dropped off the bags, the first place we headed to was Omicho market. The place to go to get fresh seafood and about a 15-20 min walk away from the station. There is an underground pathway to cross the busy intersection and when you enter the basement of the market, you are firstly hit with the scent of fresh green tea being ground. There is a tea stall right at the entrance and the smell was amazing. There is also a drug store on the ground floor.

We went up to the market proper and was surprised at how quiet it was. Since it was nearing lunchtime, we were expecting loads of people. It also struck us that most of the shops that we passed along the way to the market were closed too. We were here on a Wednesday and majority of the shops were closed. We weren't sure if it was just a normal mid week closure (because some stalls were trading) or if it was a public holiday of some sort. I will probably never know!

There were a few stalls trading and one selling fresh sashimi, uni (sea urchin) and oysters. I have to say, uni is AWESOME. it is so creamy. Pity they are so expensive.

 On a normal day, the place is in full swing with vendors shouting, smells everywhere, water everywhere...

Kanazawa is famous for crab

Other seafood goodies to get. As Kanazawa is situated on the north coast, it specialises in seafood found in the northern seas of Japan. Apparently they are quite different from seafood found on the Southern seas.

For those not that interested in seafood, other fried croquettes are available. Lots of cut fruit available too. Surrounding the whole market are a number of restaurants, all selling seafood. I don't think you can really go wrong with any of the places. There are advertising signboards with picture menus outside most of them.

After our lunch, we made our way down to the samurai district. Maybe it was too hot, but I felt a little underwhelmed. You can see the stone walls surrounding the samurai houses.

There are a few houses that you can enter for free

There is usually a lonely caretaker sitting in a small room watching baseball on a small TV or reading. They will greet you, ask you politely to remove your shoes and if they felt up to it, will chat with you for a while.



I like looking at kitchens ^_^



Then we paid 500 yen to enter the Nomura samurai house. Have to say, it was ok. Since Japanese homes are rather sparse, you just end up looking at tatami rooms, which does get a bit boring after while. There were paintings and the drawings on the screens were apparently supposed to be special. The highlight was definitely the garden. You can sit on the engawa to take in the small but peaceful garden. It was peaceful until a busload of Italian tourists turned up. There are signs saying that you can't enter the garden (in English and Japanese) but these tourists obviously couldn't understand either and they were walking around and talking really loudly!

There is a small upstairs area that overlooks the garden. Here for about 300 yen (I think) you can have some green tea. I'm not sure if they do a tea ceremony or not, but it is quite a small room. Anyway, after those tourists arrived, we decided it was time to leave.

 

This is what greets you at the entrance, a suit of armour.  You can look at it as you put your shoes back on :P

After this we walked around the katamachi area which is a shopping area of Kanazawa. Since it was a Wednesday though, everything was closed. So from the south of town, we headed north to the geisha district (Higashi chaya district) hoping for more things to be open. Alas, it was not the case. So by then we headed back to check into the hotel and relax for a bit.

 For dinner, there was only one place where we wanted to go. Omicho market. Again, being on a Wednesday, most places were closed. We finally decided on a kaiten sushi place (or sushi train) located within the market. This place is fabulous for tourists. You can pick plates off the belt, or use the computer in front of you to order sushi you wanted, in English. On the table are condiments including a green powder, we were unsure of what that was until we saw some locals putting spoonfuls of it into their cup. I knew it was either going to be wasabi or green tea, and I wasn't ready to drink mustard. The tap in front of you is for hot water, all so puzzling to us at first!

Tuna with egg :)

Minced crab and prawns.

Kanazawa crab. I don't think this was snow crab though. It wasn't the right season.

Some tuna fillers

Raw scallop. This was great!

All the above items were ordered, so we decided to take one off the belt. I blame the lighting for not seeing it properly, but this was what we picked:

Can you guess what it is? I had a sinking feeling the moment we took the cover off and had a closer look.

It's slimy and gooey...

Yes it NATTO!

Fermented soy beans so that it becomes slimy and oh-so-stinky. It's supposed to be good for you, but I fail to see how something that tastes like ten day old socks off a marathon runner is good for you. We had A LOT of tea following that, lots of pickled ginger and a few hastily ordered dishes to get rid of the taste and texture.

Found this outside a shop in the market. Tuna head, see that the cheeks have been carved out? Apparently a delicacy.

By then we were eagerly anticipating the foot massager waiting for us back at the hotel. The next day we were planning to visit Kenrokuen gardens and the Higashi Chaya geisha district again.