We farewelled the boys just before they caught the 8:30am bus to the bus terminal, from where they'd catch another bus to the airport. Simon had booked to spend three days in Tokyo before flying back to Stockholm, but Alastair was flying from Kanazawa to Tokyo to San Francisco. He was planning to go straight to work after he arrived at 6:30am.
J&I felt a little adrift with the boys gone. We opted to head to the Museum of Traditional Arts and Crafts, hoping to get a good perspective on the crafts that are renowned in Kanazawa. In particular, putting gold film on anything, lacquered pottery and coloured string decorating paperwork are traditional to the area. We also got an insight into the craft of tying brilliantly coloured flies (for fishing), woodworking and fine weaving, however overall the museum was not as good as I'd anticipated. Feeling hungry we came across a Korean place for lunch and had a very enjoyable meal for the grand sum of about NZ$10 each.
One lovely thing is that many private individuals also have stunning little Japanese-style gardens, generally visible from the street. It's a pleasure coming across them.
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| A private garden open to the street |
At one point we went into one of the big department stores to see if we could buy a bento box lunch, but there wasn't much point. It was just as cheap to have a sit-down freshly made meal in a restaurant. That's something we'd read - that buying ingredients for a meal and making it yourself is likely to cost about what a meal out would, and we'd have to agree.
We didn't feel like tackling the Prefecture Museum as we'd planned, so walked back to the pleasure district to have another poke around the art shops again. We stumbled across some new interesting little alleys that we'd missed with the boys, and then came across a large and well stocked ceramics shop (called Shinbido), full of all sorts of delights. The owner, who we chatted with, is an avid collector of glass, and when he realised that we were too, he showed us his personal collection. It was stunning. We showed him photos of the glassware we'd bought in Prague. Needless to say, we picked out some gorgeous little bowls and some glasses to take back home.
On our way back we stopped off for a fresh craft beer from a local outfit - very pleasant,
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| Oriental Brewing Co. |
Getting cold and dark by 6pm, we hoped to find a cheap place to eat on the way home but everything seemed to be closed. A 24hr store near our place supplied some 2-minute-noodle-type meals and that was that.