Category: JapanGuide

Kanazawa castle is located right next to Kenrokuen Garden in the center of the city of Kanazawa. It was built by the Maeda clan at the end of the “sengoku” era (around 1580) and is one of the largest castles in Japan by useful surface.

To see it covered in heavy snow, with barely nobody visiting it and just hearing the caws of a flock of crows was a fabulous experience.

At the beginning of this year I had the opportunity to visit Kanazawa for the first time. Kanazawa is a city located in the Sea of Japan coast and it is a quite popular tourist destination but considerably less visited than other places like Kyoto or Hiroshima because it can’t be reached by bullet train. From Tokyo it takes between 5 and 6 hours to arrive to Kanazawa, half of the distance in Shinkansen and the rest in a normal train. Even though it is far and it was much colder than Tokyo, it was totally worth it!

Before going to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art where we could go inside the fake pool, on the morning we visited Kenrokuen garden (兼六園). It is one of the “Three most important-beautiful-famous gardens in Japan” (日本三名園) according to the Japanese government, the other two being Koraku-en in Okayama and Kairaku-en in Mito.

The name of the garden “Kenrokuen (兼六園)” could be literally translated as “the garden of the 6 characteristics” and it refers to 6 aspects considered to be important when designing a garden: serenity/isolation, old atmosphere/respect to ancestors, beautiful views from almost every spot, refreshing (it should have water flows), attention to detail, and spacious.

These are my impressions regarding the six different aspects during my visit to the garden:

• Serenity/isolation: even though it is located in the center of the city, while strolling around the garden you feel like you are in a distant and calm place just after entering the garden. You can’t hear the traffic noise and you can only hear the murmur of the water.
• Old atmosphere/respect to ancestors: construction started in the 17th century and after several expansions it reached its present state at the end of the 18th century. It is connected to the Kanazawa castle, in the park you can find several tea houses and the oldest artificial fountain in Japan can be found still working in the garden.


Supposedly this is the oldest fountain in Japan.

• Beautiful views from almost every spot: you can get beautiful pictures from almost every place in Kenrokuen but there are popular spots to take the best photos. This one is considered the most beautiful view of the garden next to Kasumigaeki lake:


The tourou on the right is famous because it only has two legs. They normally have three.

• Refreshing (it should have water flows): it has two main lakes, several water streams that connect them both and a waterfall. I guess in Summer it will be refreshing 🙂



• Spacious: all walking paths within the park are wide and the areas with trees are very spacious. Moreover, as the two lakes are on a different level, you have the sensation that the park is bigger than it really is. When you have walked all over the park it seems like you have been to many different places, you have gotten lost and then you realize that you are back at the entrance of the park.
• Attention to detail: the girl that served us tea in one of the rest houses told us that all trees and bushes that we were seeing through the window had been carefully chosen according to their size, proportions, color of the flowers, etc in order to create a unique landscape depending on the season.

Each different season the garden stands out for something in particular. In winter what grabs your attention are the ropes and bamboo canes arrangements called Yukitsuri (雪つり) that are used when it snows to hold the tree branches and maintain the trees in the same shape.

Trees protected with Yukitsuri (雪つり)

You can see in this picture how the bamboo canes are used

Same for small trees.

If you visit the garden make sure to visit one of the tea houses (Shiguretei is the most beautiful) where you can have an excellent matcha for 500 yen.

Detailed map of Kanazawa castle and Kenroku-en and website of the Ishikawa government

Yuki Matsuri (雪祭り, snow festival) is celebrated every year at the beginning of February in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido. It is one of the most popular festivals in Japan during the winter season. The Odori park area, where the biggest ice sculptures are built, is visited by two million people every year. Ice sculptors from all over the world come to Sapporo and build more than 400 sculptures, some of them gigantic. An international contest is organized for foreign participants; the funny thing is that the Thailand team (a country without snow) has won several times during the last years.

We went there a couple of years ago, but I don’t know why but the pictures and videos that I took got lost somewhere within my hard drives. Luckily I’ve finally found them and can share them here with you.

This is a video summary of the trip:

We started the first day eating a huge bowl of crab soup ramen in the famous yokocho ramen alley, an alley where there is only ramen restaurants!

Photo by Ignacio using his fisheye

Photo by Ignacio

We spent the rest of the day walking around downtown Sapporo, mostly around Susukino and Odori areas where the festival activities are located. The festival atmosphere starts to heat up as the night falls, the ice sculptures are lit up, the food stalls start serving food and drinks and several music bands play next to the biggest ice sculptures.

Dragon Ball ice sculpture!

Of course Totoro had to be there

Kinnikuman!

This is the most famous tower in Hokkaido; it is located at the beginning of Odori Park. You can go up the tower to get a view of the city.

Another day we decided to explore the rest of the city, eat great food and we ended up climbing up a mountain west of the city until we arrived to a mysterious temple surrounded by a forest full of snow.

Arriving to the temple.

Mission accomplished!

A great discovery, which was no more than an anecdote, but made us feel in the middle of nowhere, in a forgotten place with a temple half-buried in the snow, where we had arrived after days and days of trudging through the mountains, avoiding yetis and terrible tribes of winter trolls, lacking in food and water, without sherpas and shivering with cold, with the aim of finding the golden buddha eyes and ask him about the secret to happiness. – Ignacio Izquierdo

This is the official English website of the snow festival. The flight from Tokyo to Sapporo takes approximatelly 90 minutes and costs between 100 and 200 euros (120 and 270 dollars).