One Day Kanazawa

My brother and I hit the road to make the day trip to Kanazawa (a city in the west, Ishikawa Prefecture in the Hokuriku region along the Sea of Japan). It was a pretty much last minutes plan however we made it out by taking an overnight express bus and flew back to Tokyo at the end of the day.

Again there were worth visiting cherry blossoms along the main road between the Kanazawa Castle and the famous huge park Kenroku-en. We were very fortunate that rain stopped by the late morning. Tokyo had a terrible storm on the same day…




The main reason we decided to visit Kanazawa was that we wanted to check out the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum, one of the public museums dedicated to contemporary art.


The museum is round, glass-walled and has one story on the ground and another floor in the basement. Amazingly, we only find a few thin columns to support the structure. So the atmosphere is very airy and open. For me this is the second architecture designed by SANAA and I truly liked both the Kanazawa 21st and the New Museum in New York.




Me in front of Michael Lin’s installation.


They have a cool elevator, which doesn’t have any suspensions from the top as you see in these three photos. The box is pushed up by the cylinder from the bottom.




The most popular installation Leandro Erlich’s Leandoro’s Pool is located right in the first front yard next to the admission counters. See the people looking each other through the water in the pool. How come?
The second photo tells the trick.



My brother was happy with his souvenir T-shirt. It has a reproduction of Makoto Aida’s drawing of Harakiri (Disembowelment) School Girls. FYI, its original large painting was sold for $100,000 last December. He will surely show off when he goes to surf!


Actually we arrived first at Kanazawa’s fish market Ohmi Town Market around 6am. The people were busy preparing for the next wave of ordinary shoppers after the first crowds of their vendors such as restaurant owners..



These are not aliens but long legged crabs..


When we went back to the market for lunch, the market was quite busy and fun to hang around. We bought local fish and shrimps for our parents, expecting a feast of fruits de mer when we get back home.

Of course, we never forgot to indulge ourselves. Even the kaiten zushi place (conveyor belt sushi bar) serves really fresh fish… Yummy!