Best Japanese Meal I'll Ever Have

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Woke up today at 5:50am and knew I wasn't going to fall back asleep, so I got up, showered, and took care of some e-mail from the lobby internet station. Apparently shortly after 7am while I was in the lobby there was an aftershock, but I didn't feel a thing. Rick sure did though, while he was up on the 26th floor. I'm assuming I would have felt it had I been in my room on the 25th floor. We had a western style breakfast at the hotel and then headed off to meet the governor of the Ishikawa prefecture. I am still stunned at how polite and respectful the Japanese people are. As we came into the offices of the governor, his whole staff stood and bowed as we passed through. 3 of his staff members came out to greet us, exchanging business cards and glad to get a chance to use their English. We went in to meet the governor and he and Rick talked for about a half hour or so. Most of the talking was done by the governor, and Noriko then translated. They exchanged some gifts, and once again, we walked out of the building with a little bag of gifts, which has become the norm with each place we go. This was also the case at a gold leaf shop, where we left with the chopsticks we made but also with another pile of items. We saw the artists working with the gold, which was pretty good footage, and then Rick and Reed made chopsticks. We all ended up buying additional souvenirs at the shop before we walked into the Geisha district of Kanazawa, which is hundreds of years old. It was pretty quiet when we were there, but I can imagine on the weekends or in the evenings it is a bit more active with locals. Our next stop was a very exclusive restaurant called Zeniya, where we had a 6 course meal over 2 hours, cooked by the head chef and owner in a private room. The best part of the meal was absolutely the freshest clams possible (they were still alive moments before we grilled them ourselves). Tomorrow we're meeting up with the chef to go to the fish market to select his fish for the day. We headed off next to Kanazawa Castle and the Kenrokuen Gardens, where we took a nice walk and shot a bunch of b-roll. Unfortunately, the cherry blossoms were not blooming, but it was still a very nice and pretty park. The last main stop for the day was the Kutani Pottery Shop, which was full of ancient pottery from hundreds of years ago which had been exported out of Japan, but then reclaimed in recent years, and also newly made pottery including sake glasses, tea cups, and a ton of other items. We had a really nice cup of coffee in a back room at the pottery shop and talked baseball with the owner before heading back to the hotel to have dinner (a pretty good shrimp curry) and head to bed early because of our early day tomorrow.

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Photos

The Crew
This is Rick, Reed, and me at the Kenrokuen Gardens, also near the Kanazawa Castle

Comments

[mother-in-law]

WOW!
Joel, this is a wonderful time for you. I won't expect any responses as I know you are so busy.