japan: kanazawa

the second to last day i was in toyama, we took a sightseeing trip to the nearby city of kanazawa where the kaufmans had lived many years ago when they only had two kids instead of five.

first we went to the ninja-dera, which was a historical building that was a temple for lords to worship, but was more like a house. because important people came there, the house was built with all these traps and secret rooms, which was really quite cool. there were hidden staircases under floorboards that people could use to escape, rooms that you could see out of but not into, closets that revealed hidden rooms and staircases, doors that opened in two different ways to allow people to escape, stairs that you could watch people climb up from behind the staircase and then stab people's ankle's with spears through the staircase, rooms built with low ceilings on purpose so that people wouldn't be able to use spears or swords. also, according to law houses in the city should only have 2 or 3 stories (i forget which) but this house was built with 4 levels secretly. and there was a small tatami room, which once you go inside locks and you can't get out and was made with 4 tatami mats, since 4 can also sound like the word for death in japanese. rooms are never made with 4 tatami mats, but this one was on purpose because the reason for the room was for the lord to go in and kill himself if he found that he was surrounded by enemies and unable to escape. the people in our group had an argument about why the door locked so that once you were inside you couldn't get out--because either you were going to kill yourself or you weren't. i thought it made sense...once you got inside, you would have to kill yourself, there was no going back. maybe it was a way of perserving honor. and then later someone would be able to find you in there and know. others speculated that maybe the room was also used to keep prisoners, and then i guess the prisoners could kill themselves in there if they wanted to since they were trapped anyway. the tour guide told us that no one ever actually died in that room.

us in front of the ninja-dera (we weren't allowed to take pictures inside):

we also went to the kanazawa castle grounds.
there was a volunteer tour guide we met there who started telling us about the history of the castle and such. one interesting thing related to suicide as well was that people who didn't agree with the a new leader's way of doing things would jump into the moat of the castle. apparently there are different ways of killing yourself for different reasons in japan--there is a different way for refusing to follow a new leader's way of doing things because you disagree than for if you are defeated in battle, etc.

anyway, our tour turned into a very long and drawn out walk around the grounds and gardens
with detailed descriptions of different things, which we eventually nicely went on our way from.

next we went to a street where they have shops that make things with gold--apparently kanazawa is famous for this. there was bread with gold on top,
tea with gold in it,
and lots of other things made partially of gold. i never knew you could eat gold! and why would you want to?? i'm still not sure. we got a demonstration of a very thin sheet of gold being cut with *bamboo*.
she cut it into a square and blew very gently the extra pieces off, placed the sheet where she wanted it, and blew on it very gently to make it lie flat. then she gave us each little pieces of the extra pieces and told us we could eat them!! so strange.
i made mine stick to my fingernail
and ruthie made hers stick to her face.
i still don't get it though...why would you eat gold???

we also went to a fish market where the highlight for me was have shrimp koroke (like a friend potato patty that i really like).
the only sad thing is that it wasn't exactly hot. but also at the fish market we saw lots of octopus
and squid
and crab
and other interesting fishes.
crazy that some of these were SO expensive. the worst was a fish that cost more than 600 USD.
why??? why would it cost that much, why would you buy it, and how could you eat something that cost so much??

anyway, those are some interesting things from the day in kanazawa. =)