Kanazawa 金沢
Museums and other attractions
Kanazawa has a startling wealth of museums for its size. Just south of the Kenroku-en is a cluster of four museums. The most famous is the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in October 2004.
Let's start with the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum for Traditional Arts and Crafts (admission ￥250), next to Seison-kaku Villa in Kenroku-en Garden, which has an interesting collection of lacquerware, pottery, Yuzen silk and musical instruments.
The similar Ishikawa Prefetural Art Museum (admission ￥350), south of the garden, features Kutani ceramics, dyed silk clothes, calligraphy, lacquerware, woodblock paintings and other traditional arts.
Just a flight of step above it is the Nakamura Memorial Museum (admission ￥300), which has a good collection of tea ceremony related objects, as well as other traditional craft and a free cup of green tea. Nakamura Eishun was a rich local sake maker.
A short walk from there is the Honda Museum (admission ￥500), exhibiting armours, household utensils and various art objects from the Honda family, retainers to the Maeda lords.
Not far east is the Ishikawa Prefectural Noh Theatre, still holding performances regularily.
If you are into pottery and tea ceremony, the Ohi Pottery Museum, has amber-glazed ceramic by Nagazaemon. It is located north of Kenroku-en, toward the Higashi geisha district.
A 45-minute bus ride (bus no 12) from Kanazawa is Edo-mura Village (旧江戸村), an open-air reconstruction of 20 Edo era buildings from Kanazawa. Mind the entrance fee though (￥1,200).
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