Three days in Kanazawa: the castle town the war missed, on Japan's other coast

Two nights in one hotel: the market and the geisha lanes on arrival, the garden, the castle and the glass museum on the full day, and the samurai quarter before the train.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Kanazawa
Places
7 across 3 days
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Kanazawa was the seat of the Maeda lords, the richest family in Japan after the shoguns themselves, and they spent three hundred years turning their capital into a craft workshop. Gold leaf, lacquer, silk dyeing, Kutani porcelain and Noh theatre all took root here because the Maeda paid for them, and all of them are still going.

Then the twentieth century left it alone. No air raids reached Kanazawa, so the teahouse districts, the samurai streets and the temple quarters came through intact, in a way almost no other Japanese city of this size did.

It sits on the Japan Sea side, behind the mountains from the Tokyo to Kyoto corridor, which is why foreign visitors were slow to find it. The shinkansen from Tokyo since 2015 has fixed that, and the ride now takes less than three hours.

Three days is right for a city this compact. One afternoon for the market and the old teahouse lanes, one full day for the garden and the castle at the centre, and a last morning in the samurai quarter.

Highlights

  • Kenroku-en at opening, its pines roped into cones against the coming snow
  • Tea and a sweet in a two-hundred-year-old teahouse in Higashi-Chayagai
  • Standing at the bottom of a swimming pool with no water in it
  • The Ninja Temple, with its trapdoors, hidden stairs and suicide chamber

Where to stay

Kanazawa, two nights

One base throughout. The old districts sit at the four corners of a very walkable centre, with the castle park and the garden in the middle of them.

Two rivers, the Asano to the north and the Sai to the south, mark the edges of the old town, and each has a teahouse district on its bank.

Day by day

Day 1 in Kanazawa

Omicho market and the teahouse district on the Asano

Start with lunch or an early dinner in the covered market, which has fed the city since the Edo period and still does the shopping for half the restaurants in it. Then walk northeast, cross the Asano and go up into the Higashi teahouse district.

This is the part of Kanazawa that looks the way people expect Kyoto to look and mostly does not: two-storey wooden fronts with fine slatted screens, unbroken along both sides of the street. Come at dusk when the lanterns go on and the coach parties have left.

  1. 13:00

    Ōmichō market

    Eat

    A covered warren of about two hundred stalls, the city's main fresh market since the eighteenth century and still one locals shop in. Crab and oysters in winter, sweet shrimp and yellowtail the rest of the year. Upstairs and along the edges are small restaurants doing kaisen-don, a bowl of rice under whatever came in that morning. Most of it shuts by late afternoon.

  2. 15:00

    Higashi-Chayagai

    Other

    The largest of Kanazawa's three surviving teahouse districts, two streets of tall narrow buildings where geisha still work in the evenings. The Shima House is open as a museum and worth the few hundred yen to see how the rooms are arranged for performance. Several others are now teahouses in the ordinary sense, serving matcha and a wagashi sweet, and one or two sell gold leaf work made on the premises. Behind the main street the lanes wind up towards a temple quarter that almost nobody walks into.

  3. 17:15

    Kazuemachi

    Other

    The other teahouse row, on the near bank of the Asano and a five minute walk back across the bridge. It is one narrow lane of wooden fronts stepping down to the water, with no shops and no tour groups, and it is the better one at night.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner by the river

    Eat

    The small restaurants around the Asano bridges do Kaga cooking without the ceremony of a formal ryotei. Book if it is a Friday or Saturday.

With more time: The temple district climbing the hill behind Higashi-Chayagai has dozens of small temples and almost no visitors, and it is a twenty minute wander if the light lasts.

Day 2 in Kanazawa

Kenroku-en, the castle and the glass museum

The middle of Kanazawa is one continuous green block: the garden, the castle park it was built as an annexe to, and a circular glass art museum across the road from both. You can do all three on foot in a day without ever taking a bus.

Go into the garden first thing. It opens early, the coaches arrive at ten, and the difference between eight o'clock and eleven o'clock in Kenroku-en is the difference between a garden and a queue.

  1. 08:00

    Kenroku-en Garden

    Visit

    One of the three great gardens of Japan, laid out over two centuries by the Maeda lords as the pleasure ground outside their castle wall. Ponds, streams, teahouses and a famous two-legged stone lantern on the water's edge. The water arrives through a channel engineered kilometres upstream in the seventeenth century, which then went on to fill the castle moats. Free entry and evening opening during cherry blossom season, when it is lit until nine.

  2. 10:00

    Kanazawa Castle

    Historic

    Across the bridge from the garden, and open ground rather than a building: the castle burned repeatedly and only the Ishikawa gate and one storehouse are original. What has gone up since was rebuilt with Edo-period joinery and no nails, and you can walk through the long two-storey guardhouse and see the roof structure. The park itself is free and the lawns are where the city eats its lunch.

  3. 12:00

    Lunch by the park

    Eat

    Cafes cluster on the streets between the castle park and the museum. The museum has a good one of its own if the weather has turned.

  4. 13:30

    21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art

    Culture

    A low circular building of glass with no front and no back, designed so that you walk in from any direction, and a genuinely great small museum. Leandro Erlich's swimming pool is the piece everybody comes for: from above it looks like water, and from the room underneath you stand at the bottom of it looking up at the people looking down. Much of the building, including the courtyard works and the roof sculpture, is free to walk through.

With more time: The D.T. Suzuki Museum is ten minutes south, built for the philosopher who introduced Zen to English-speaking readers. It is three small rooms and a shallow black pool in a walled court, and it is one of the calmest buildings in Japan.

Day 3 in Kanazawa

The samurai streets and the Ninja Temple

Nagamachi, west of the centre, is where the middle-ranking retainers lived, and its lanes of ochre earthen walls and water channels take about an hour. Be honest about what it is: much of the walling is restoration rather than survival, and the houses behind most of it are modern. It is still one of the best surviving samurai districts in Japan and a lovely place to walk.

Then head south across the river to the temple that is not a ninja temple, which is the strangest building in Kanazawa and needs booking before you arrive.

  1. 09:00

    Nagamachi Samurai District

    Landmark

    Narrow lanes of mud-plaster wall, straw-matted against frost in winter, with a canal running along them. Two houses are open: the Nomura residence, which has a small, dense garden with a stream running under the veranda, and a pair of restored foot soldiers' cottages a few streets away that cost nothing to enter and are quieter.

  2. 11:00

    Ninja Temple

    Religious

    Officially Myoryu-ji, and there were never any ninja in it. What there is: twenty-three rooms and twenty-nine staircases stacked into a building that looks two storeys from outside, plus trapdoors, a hidden staircase under a well, false floors and a windowless room built for ritual suicide. It was a Maeda lookout post disguised as a temple. Visits are by guided tour only, in Japanese with an English folder, and you must reserve ahead.

With more time: Nishi-Chayagai, the smallest of the three teahouse districts, is five minutes from the temple: one short street, no coaches, and a free information house you can go inside. It fits neatly into the walk back towards the station.

Before you go

Where to stay

Between the station and the Korinbo shopping district is the easy choice, with the green middle of the city a fifteen minute walk east and the market halfway in between.

Staying by the station is convenient and characterless. Staying near the Asano River, on the Higashi teahouse side, is prettier, quieter and about twenty five minutes from the station on foot.

There are traditional inns in the old districts with a handful of rooms each, and they are the reason to stay two nights instead of stopping between trains.

Getting in and around

The Hokuriku Shinkansen runs from Tokyo in about two and a half hours on the fastest services. From Kyoto or Osaka it is a limited express along the coast. Komatsu airport is the nearest, forty minutes away by bus.

The tourist loop bus does a circuit of the main sights every fifteen minutes for a couple of hundred yen a ride, and a day pass costs about the same as three rides. It is the sensible way to move between the districts.

The centre is otherwise walkable and the city is flat enough to cycle. There is a shared bicycle scheme with docks all over the middle of town, and hotels often rent bicycles more cheaply than the shops do.

Rain, and what to do about it

Kanazawa is one of the wettest cities in Japan and the locals have a saying about never leaving home without an umbrella even if you forget your lunch. It is not a joke. Winter brings heavy grey rain and snow off the Japan Sea.

Plan for it rather than around it. The garden is at its best under snow, the museums are all indoors, and the old streets are covered in enough places to shelter.

In Kenroku-en, the winter treatment is part of the attraction: the pines are roped into conical frames every November to stop the snow breaking their branches, and the ropes stay up until March.

Eating and drinking

This is a seafood city. The cold water off the Noto peninsula produces snow crab in winter, sweet shrimp, yellowtail and oysters, and the sushi here is as good as anywhere in Japan for noticeably less money than Tokyo.

Kaga cuisine is the local formal style, and its signature dish is jibuni, duck or chicken dusted in flour and simmered with wasabi, served in a lacquer bowl. Most traditional restaurants have it.

Nearly all of Japan's gold leaf is beaten in Kanazawa, and the city puts it on things: ice cream, sake, castella cake. It tastes of nothing. Do it once.

Kanazawa is what a rich Japanese provincial capital looked like before the twentieth century flattened most of them, and it is small enough to see properly in two days.

Be at the garden gate when it opens, cross the river at dusk, and book the temple before you get on the train.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Kanazawa better than Kyoto?
It is not a substitute, but it does two things Kyoto cannot: intact teahouse and samurai districts you can walk without a crowd, and a living craft tradition you can watch being practised. Most people who go end up wishing they had given it another night.
How long do I need?
Two nights covers the city properly. One night gets the garden, the castle and one teahouse district and feels rushed. Three nights lets you add the Noto coast or Shirakawa-go by bus.
When should I go?
Late April for the garden without snow ropes and with cherry blossom, November for maples, and January or February if you want snow crab and a garden under snow. Summer is hot and humid, and it rains in every season.
Do I need to book anything?
Only the Ninja Temple, which takes reservations by phone or online and fills up at weekends. Everything else here takes cash at the door.
Can I change the order?
Copy the trip and rearrange it; only the second morning really wants its slot, because Kenroku-en is a different place before ten o'clock.