7 November 2024
In their darkened shrines
Kanazawa Katamachi district
Kanazawa is a city of 3 halves. The station, the market area where I am staying, and Katamachi by the old bridge. There is no train or tram between them, but it is not too far to walk, maybe a kilometre between each. There are a few new big modern stores in the main Katamachi area from when I was last here. Also there are tourists. Thousands of western tourists.
I saw basically no tourists in Nagoya but they come here in droves and a lot of them are German, especially in my hotel. They all wear the same big red jacket like they are here to rescue people buried in an avalanche. Some of them are old, old enough that I wonder if they are in Japan trying to get the old band back together for a third try. Am I cancelled yet?
Tomorrow is a hiking day, I have had to change my plan to go to a smaller hike tomorrow because the main one had a bear and cub sighting last weekend at the start of the trail! I will probably do that hike on Sunday when there will be more people around to scare the bears away.
My hiking schedule is not ideal because it means I will have to go to the garden that all the tourists come here for on Saturday, the busiest day. So you have Germans invading a Japanese garden to look forward to the day after tomorrow.
Before wandering the streets of Katamachi I decided to explore a shrine up a hill in the dark. It was pretty good too. Also it was cold, I probably should have had my jacket on, only 9 degrees celsius. I wish the world would settle on one measure of temperature so I don't have to be confused about celsius / centigrade and then type it so that people do not think I mean failheit.
Here is the actual shrine, Oyama shrine to be precise.
Behind the shrine is a nice bridge across to the castle ruins park. I will probably go there on Saturday.
Exiting the shrine area and it was time for one last shot of darkness.
From the darkness to light pollution.
The main area of Katamachi is much as I remembered it.
However here are a few new stores, I think they were building sites last time.
The bridge was celebrating it's 100th birthday.
I remembered the back alleyways, there are some more alleyway-ish than this, further exploration required.
I headed into big boss guitar store, which is normally not something I bother to photograph, but those 2 black headless guitars are Schecters, and I never saw a headless Schecter before, so now I need to investigate. Also the headless white strandberg on the ground front centre at accidental kicking height is about $4280, so don't kick it.
And for dinner, the unhealthiest dinner of all! Katsu curry. It came from a funky diner that gets a great score on google maps, and it was really nice, but deep fried chicken on top of curry on top of rice is probably 3 days of calories!
Hopefully no bears tomorrow.