Day: April 25, 2025

I believe the sign is honest. There is a guy in the rabbit costume. Made me so sad. Grubb does not believe. He thinks it’s a hoax. What say you?

From the old samurai residence to Kanazawa’s Museum of Contemporary Art was a twenty minute walk.  The museum is a low round building of shaded glass.   Inside, individual artworks are given dimly lit spaces the size of a banquet hall, so there’s plenty of time to circle the pieces you admire as you peer through the…

Yesterday’s roaming took us first to the Nagamchi area, aka the Samurai district where warriors chilled when they weren’t out battling. Our first stop was the restored Nakaya Chinese Pharmacy, established 1579. The pharmacy occupied the first floor of Shinese Memorial Hall. The second floor used to be a residence for the shop owners but…

Grubb talked about the preserved residence of wealthy samurai Nomura in his “Not built for Belushi” post.  Rounding a corner leading to Nomura’s garden, an attendant wrangled us. Reading from his hand held translator he said “ come here to listen to the sound feature”. I was to place a bamboo tube to my ear…

When the Meiji Restoration broke up the last feudal land holdings in Japan, most of the old samurai houses were destroyed.  However, the Nomura house in Kanazawa was bought by an industrialist and preserved.  There are rooms built out of cypress wood with sliding thick paper doors.  It’s a house that has the fragrant smell of the…

Yesterday, Grubb mentioned in his kind way 🤣 that I might be having a “breath issue” 😩. My reaction? “No way, that’s your breath!” And then I snuck into the bathroom to re-floss and re-brush. Okay so maybe my dental hygiene while traveling isn’t stellar. Maybe I needed some extra strength mouthwash. This afternoon after…

We were in a museum which was a reconstructed apothecary shop from the early Meiji era  and I saw on display a special wheat confection called “fu” that was dissolving in hot water and it occurred to me that was what I sank my teeth into last night.  It wasn’t soap, and it wasn’t dessert, but it…

The mystery of geishas only heightened for me yesterday when we roamed one of the old geisha districts, Higashi Chaya-gai, in Kanazawa.  More accurately, this is known as a Teahouse district. Historic buildings with wood lattice fronts…so you could get a hint of the elegance inside? Streets lined with colorful lanterns. What was it like on…