Today we toured around Kanazawa, which is a small city, but one replete with history. Our first stop was the Kenruoken Gardens, one of the most extensive, traditional gardens in Japan. It is near the old castle, up on a hill with panoramic views (which were somewhat obscured today by the haze due to extreme heat!). We walked around the gardens for a couple of hours enjoying the peace and the beauty. After that we went to a traditional Samurai house. There is a whole neighborhood here in Kanazawa in which descendants of the samurai still live, many in homes that are several hundred years old and still laid out in the traditional sumurai house style. During the Shogun era (1603-1868) the samurai were the middle class of their day and their houses were generally two story, wooden structures, with a garden surrounding them. The house we visited is called the old site of Mr. Kurando Terashima's house, which is now smaller than when it was first built in 1776, but still retains many of the original features. The person who showed us around the house is a descendant of Mr. Terashima, the samurai who originally owned the property. We then visited the current samurai neighborhood, where descendants of the samurais still live in homes quite similar to the one we visited. After that we went to lunch in the geisha district and then visited the Kaikaro geisha house.
Kanazawa and Kyoto still have geisha houses, with women who are actively employed as geishas. There was a time that geishas were sexual workers, but modern day geishas are most definitely not. Young women have to apply to become apprentice geishas and if they are accepted their training takes well over four years. They have to learn music, dance, art, and they study poetry, literature, history and other subjects so that they can be interesting company for their clients, who are generally wealthy men. When a man hires a geisha, he visits her in the geisha house, and usually two or three geishas entertain him, with drinks, (tea and sake) and they perform for him, on musical instruments, drums, flutes, or they do dance or dramatic performances. Some men hire geishas to accompany them to business social events. They are part entertainer, part "paid date/companion." We were hosted by a geisha in an active geisha house, which we toured after the presentation. In Kanazawa geishas can be married, but in Kyoto they cannot, so the decision to become a geisha there is also a decision to remain single. Our hostess told us that the oldest geisha in Kanazawa is 82 and still going strong! The geisha house was quite beautiful and the young woman who spoke with us, who was 23 years old, was very gracious and welcoming and clearly comfortable entertaining people! She gave us a demonstration of drumming, which is some of the entertainment that is part of a regular geisha performance.
After we left the geisha house, we stopped at a workshop where gold leaf artisans work and had a demonstration of how they work the 24 karat gold into microscopically thin sheets with which they then make beautiful gold leafed items like trays and cups and glasses and jewelry and all manner of beauty products. We all got to taste a piece of gold leaf candy! (Yep! Flakes of 24 karat gold in a hard candy!)
We then returned to our hotel and had some free time. I wandered over to an area where there is a Buddhist temple and enjoyed stopping in the many stores that are down this little side street where families purchase their home altars with which they set up their own personal shrine/altars for prayers. Believe me if those things weren't too big to fit in a suitcase I would have bought one! They are beautifully made out of lacquered wood with intricate carvings and gold leaf.
This evening, our guide took some of us on a walking tour up to the Kanazawa Castle which is lovely all lit up at night and then we went to the Gyokusen'inmaru Gardens at the Castle, which is a recent reconstruction of the gardens that existed at the castle in 1634 and that lasted for about 200 years. The old garden was recently excavated and this new one built to replicate it based upon the findings of the excavation. It is a beautiful garden with the wall of the castle as the backdrop to winding stone paths, ponds and stone bridges over the water, lovely trees all carefully landscaped as it would have looked in the 17th century. At night they light the trees and castle walls up and do a short light show, illuminating different parts of the garden at different times with music playing as they do the show. It's really gorgeous to watch and to listen to the traditional Japanese music. Given how brutally hot the weather has been, it was also nice to be walking around the garden in the dark, with the temperature in the low 80s instead of near 100! We're told that Japan is having "record breaking" heat at the moment so I guess we just got lucky! It really is oppressively hot, so as we go out and about during the day we have to continually stop into coffee shops or stores to get a few minutes in air conditioning before venturing back into the heat. We can only take it in small doses!
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