Advertisement
Published: March 25th 2006
On Thursday Andy's mum came to visit us in Toyama and we hired a car and took a trip down to Kanazawa. Kanazawa is most famous for the Kenrouku Garden which is a traditional Japanese garden. It is meant to be one of the best in Japan.
It took a little over an hour to get there as surprise suprise we got a bit lost on the way. Japanese road maps are mainly written in Kunji so you basically have to know what signs you are looking for. Not Easy. Otherwise you can follow the numbers (sounds easy) but the road signs are a little wayward. You may see a sign with the number you want on it, but usually it leads you to a certain point and then you have to guess from then on.
Anyway, Kanazawa is definitly worth a trip if you get to Japan. The garden is beautiful. So peaceful. There are quite a few people walking around - even a few guijan (foreigners) like myself. All the trees in the garden are sculpted to make them grow in a more beautiful way. A lot of them have posts holding up limbs and branches, so
when it snows they don't get damaged from the weight of the snow.
The cherry blossoms are just starting to come out now, so hopefully by the time I get to Kyoto they will be in full bloom. I can't wait.
After the garden, we went to the 21st century art museum. Which is a funky building full of modern art. The building itself is round shape and its actually pretty easy to get lost in there as finding your way around is not so easy. But there were some interesting works on display. One was an outdoor public art piece that from above ground looks like a swimming pool. But you can go underground and enter inside the swimming pool from underneath. There is a sheet of glass with water over head that give the illusion of either looking into water or out of it.
Kanazawa is also full of of funky tourist shops - its way more cosmopolitain than Toyama - and is also famous for its lacquer ware. I have yet to discouver what make an expensive lacquer ware piece from a cheap one. I think I need to either see one being made
or have it explained to me. Some of the pieces we saw in the shops were really gorgeous - and expensive. Maybe when I'm rich and famous....
The next day we went to Notojima which is a little island north west of Toyama. Again we got lost on the way, but made it anyway. Notojima is a small island that is very beautiful. Kind of surreal as it looks like it is immaculatly kept for loads of tourists to come vist, but there was hardly anyone about. We made the trip to see the Notojima Art Glass museum - a very quirky affair! The building kind of tries a bit too hard to be modern and funky at the expense of actually having a decent space to have exhibtions in.
In other words - the building was really cool, but didn't actually leave much room to show glass in. Anyway, they had a pretty nice collection of tradional chinese cameo glass, but what caught my eye was the collection of Salvador Dali glass pieces that he made with Daum. Very cool. Mainly based on his paintings - but great to see the pieces in 3D.
Today we
have been madly packing as we are leaving Toyama for a short trip to Kanazu and Ezra glass studio. After that we will head to Osaka and hope to visit the contemporary art museum in Naoshima. Thanks to everyone who has been writing me messages - I really enjoy getting them. I hope I will get to write another blog soon when I get to Osaka. Until then - Happy Travels!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.307s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 46; dbt: 0.2443s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
gina
non-member comment
sounds amazing over there. keep sending blogs, am loving it.