Kanazawa

Chubu, Japan · City

Kenroku-en, one of Japan's three great gardens, opens free at dawn through two side gates, before the ticket office starts charging: it is the only way to see it empty. The city also keeps three working teahouse districts — Higashi Chaya is the one with the cobbled streets — and its geiko give public performances of dance and shamisen. Add a Sea of Japan fish market, gold leaf and lacquer.

The essentials

Getting there

Train — Direct Shinkansen from Tokyo

What it is genuinely strong in

🏺 Traditional crafts🏛️ Architecture

Frequently asked questions about Kanazawa

What to do in Kanazawa: 85 activities

• Kenroku-en free at dawn 1 h must-see

  The garden opens free of charge before official hours: 4:00-6:45 from April to August, 5:00-6:45 in March and from September to 15 October, and 6:00-7:45 from 16 October through February. Only the Renchi and Zuishinzaka gates are open, and once paid hours begin you must leave and re-enter with a 320-yen ticket. It is the only way to see it without crowds.

• Kenroku-en Garden 2 h must-see

  One of Japan's three most beautiful gardens, offering a different look with each season.

• Seisonkaku Villa 1 h must-see

  The thirteenth Maeda lord, Nariyasu, built it in 1863 so his mother could live looking onto Kenroku-en, and it is one of Japan's best-preserved late-Edo lordly residences: the Gunjo room painted with imported ultramarine, and the sliding doors with birds in the Netsuke-no-ma. 700 yen, 9:00-17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed Wednesdays.

• Higashi Chaya Geisha District 2 h must-see

  Cobblestone streets lined with well-preserved traditional teahouses.

• Winter crab: kano-gani and kobako-gani 1.5 h only 6 Nov - 20 Mar

  The season opens on 6 November. The male, known here as kano-gani, carries a blue tag if it was landed in Ishikawa and sells until 20 March at tens of thousands of yen apiece. The female, kobako-gani, is small, cheap and far more interesting for its roe, but is only fished until 29 December: seven weeks a year and that is it.

• Yukitsuri: Kenroku-en's rope umbrellas 1.5 h only 1 Nov - 15 Mar

  Every 1 November the gardeners start with the Karasaki pine, hanging the rope cones that hold branches up under Hokuriku snow; they finish in mid-December and take everything down in mid-March. During that stretch the garden opens 8:00-17:00 rather than 7:00-18:00. Real snow is not guaranteed; the ropes are.

• 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art 2 h

  Circular museum by SANAA with no front or back: the outer ring, the courtyards and several of the outdoor works are genuinely free, but the exhibition zone is ticketed and that is where Leandro Erlich's Swimming Pool is seen from below. Access to the underwater room needs a same-day numbered reservation taken on site or by phone, stays are capped at five minutes, and the museum closes on Mondays.

• A noh evening at the Ishikawa Noh Theatre 2 h booking only Saturdays in July and August

  On Saturdays in July and August the prefectural theatre runs the Kannō no Yūbe series: one noh play and one kyogen, doors at 16:00, performance 17:00-19:00, for 1,500 yen and free for school-age visitors. Tickets go on sale in early June at the theatre itself, the Noh Museum and Korinbo Daiwa, and are not sold online.

• Breakfast kaisendon at Omicho 1 h

  The classic is Iki-Iki Tei, a tiny counter open 7:30-14:30 and closed Thursdays, where the rice bowl topped with the day's fish should be ordered before nine unless you want to queue for an hour. Many stalls close on Wednesdays and almost all shut by mid-afternoon: Omicho is a morning market, not a dinner district.

• Crossing the city on Machi-nori bikes 3 h

  Around seven hundred electric bikes spread over some hundred docking ports: 165 yen for the first half hour, 110 for each additional half hour and 1,650 for a day pass. It runs through an app and you must register first. Central Kanazawa is flat and compact, and a bike covers in one morning what the loop bus turns into two hours of stops.

• D.T. Suzuki Museum 1.5 h

  A Yoshio Taniguchi building devoted to the philosopher who explained Zen to the West, built around a mirror pond designed for sitting in silence: the museum is itself a meditation practice.

• Eating standing up among the Omicho stalls 1 h

  No table needed: oysters and scallops grilled at the fishmongers' counters, croquettes straight from the fryer, tuna skewers, fruit juice at Sakano and Futaroku's gold-leaf soft serve. It becomes impassable after two in the afternoon; around eleven you can still move. Eating while walking is frowned on: each stall has its own corner to stand in.

• Geiko dance at the Kanazawa Kaburenjo 1.5 h booking

  Kanazawa keeps three working chaya districts and its geiko give periodic public performances of dance and shamisen, far more accessible than a private ozashiki evening. Check the calendar, because open performances are few each year.

• Gyokusen'inmaru Garden and the castle light-up 1 h

  A terraced Maeda garden lost in the Meiji era and rebuilt in 2015 from plans and excavation, inside the castle grounds. It is free, and on Saturdays and in peak seasons it is lit from dusk until 21:00, with the walls and gates staying lit until 22:00, also at no charge.

• Hokuriku conveyor-belt sushi 1 h

  Kaiten here is not the cheap chain kind: places like Mori Mori Sushi or Maimon Sushi work fish from Kanazawa port with daily boards of what came in, and plates run from about 200 to over 1,000 yen. You take a number from a machine at the door; at weekend lunchtime the wait passes an hour. It is the way to try nodoguro or gasu-ebi without booking a counter.

• Inside the Hishi turret and the fifty-bay storehouse 1 h

  The castle park is free, but going inside the diamond-shaped Hishi turret, the Gojikken Nagaya storehouse and the Hashizume gate tower costs 320 yen (500 combined with Kenroku-en) and is open only 9:00-16:30, last entry 16:00. They were rebuilt in 2001 with traditional joinery and you can see the bare beam structure, with no steel nails.

• Ishikawa Prefectural Library 1.5 h

  It opened in July 2022 with a four-storey circular reading hall, like a theatre whose stage is thirty thousand books on open shelves, designed by Mitsuru Senda. There are some five hundred chairs in a hundred different models so everyone can find their own, plus a children's wing. Free entry, 9:00-19:00 on weekdays and until 18:00 at weekends, closed Mondays.

• Kaga cuisine in a garden ryotei 2.5 h booking

  Kaga cooking is not only jibuni: it is a full menu served on five-colour Kutani porcelain and lacquer bowls, with Sea of Japan fish and Kaga vegetables, at houses such as Tsubajin, open since 1752. Lunches start around 8,000 yen and dinners run to double that or more; book several days ahead, and note that many houses close one fixed day a week.

• Kaikaro teahouse 1 h

  A two-hundred-year-old ochaya still in business: by day you can visit for 750 yen (10:00-17:00, last entry 16:30, usually closed Wednesdays) and at night only if you have booked an evening. Inside there is a vermilion-lacquered staircase and a room with tatami woven from gold thread and gold-leaf paper cranes set into the floor.

• Kanazawa sushi 1.5 h booking

  A sushi counter with fish from the Sea of Japan, especially good in winter; the city competes on equal terms with the great sushi capitals.

• Kenroku-en at night, free during the light-ups 1.5 h

  Four times a year, once per season, the garden and the castle are illuminated from 18:00 to 20:45 and admission is waived: a few days in spring for the cherry blossom, some in summer, autumn evenings with the maples and winter ones with the yukitsuri ropes. In 2026 the autumn run fell on 19-22 September plus seven weekend dates in November. Dates shift every year and are published at short notice.

• Myoryu-ji Temple (Ninja Temple) 1.5 h booking

  A Buddhist temple with secret passageways, trapdoors, and hidden staircases, built to keep watch over the approaches to the castle; visits are by advance reservation only.

• Nomura samurai residence 1 h

  The only house in Nagamachi you can go inside: 550 yen, open 8:30-17:30 (until 16:30 from October to March), closed 26-27 December and 1-2 January. What makes it special is the tiny garden wrapping two sides of the house, with a stream that runs under the floor of the main room; upstairs there is a small tea room serving matcha.

• Ochaya Shima, a teahouse museum 0.75 h

  Built in 1820 along with the rest of the district and designated an Important Cultural Property, it costs 500 yen and opens every day of the year (9:30-17:30, until 17:00 from December to February). The detail that explains everything: the upstairs rooms have no cupboards, because the whole space existed purely to receive guests. Tea and a sweet in the courtyard cost extra.

• Omicho Market 1.5 h

  A market for fresh seafood from the Sea of Japan, with stalls where you can eat on the spot.

• Six two-tonne lanterns through village alleys until three in the morning 6 h Ishizaki, Nanao (ISHIKAWA) · 70 min only the first Saturday of August

  On the first Saturday of August, at the Hachiman shrine in Ishizaki, a fishing quarter of Nanao, six hoto come out: giant lanterns that the rest of the Noto peninsula calls kiriko. On the size it is worth being exact, because the figure in circulation is the minimum and not the measurement: the prefecture's tourism body says they are over ten metres, and the four sources that give a specific number range from twelve to fifteen; the three that publish a weight say about two tonnes, and neither the town hall nor the prefecture publishes one at all. Each is carried by around a hundred men, and the quarter has seven teams but only six go out on the main day: the seventh takes its own out on the eve, the Friday. And there is something to know before planning the trip. The Noto peninsula earthquake of 1 January 2024 hit this village, and two separate sources, one of them the region's festival museum, say the same thing: that year the festival was held at reduced scale rather than cancelled, and in 2025 it returned to normal. One of them adds that some three hundred homes in the quarter were left half-collapsed or worse. None of this appears on the town hall's pages, which announce the festival as entirely normal. What a first-hand account publishes is the timing, two in the afternoon to three in the morning, while the two official sources say only that it carries on late into the night. That is where the real problem lies, and it comes from setting the programme against the JR timetable: the Noto Kagaribi express takes between fifty-eight and sixty-two minutes from Kanazawa to Wakura Onsen station, there are six direct services a day, and the last leaves Kanazawa at 15:28, before the good part begins. You cannot see it and get back: either you sleep in the area or you do not go. The origin is told as coming from a fire in 1889, after which an old kiriko was brought from the north of the peninsula to appease fire, though the two sources that tell it disagree on the cause. One source places it within the set of Noto kiriko festivals that the state selected in 1997 and that received the Japan Heritage seal in 2015, always as part of the set and never on its own. The station is Wakura Onsen and the sources disagree on whether it is right there or ten minutes on foot. These are two tonnes passing through narrow alleys at night: it is not a place to go hunting for a front-row gap. The town hall asks people not to fly drones. None of the sources consulted publishes a price, attendance figures, what happens if it rains, or how to sign up to carry. The 2026 edition has already been held.

• Teramachi temple district 2 h

  The Maeda concentrated some seventy temples southwest of the Sai river as a defensive belt for the city: black tiles, earthen walls and bell towers one after another. Myoryu-ji is here, but the real pleasure is the back lanes, where the small temples are still working parish temples. This is a residential area: walk quietly, and note that many precincts close at five.

• The castle gates: Ishikawa-mon, Kahoku-mon and Nezumita-mon 1.5 h

  The castle burned so often that almost everything is reconstruction: the Ishikawa gate, from 1788, is one of the very few originals and is roofed in white lead tiles that, legend says, could be melted down for bullets. Kahoku-mon was rebuilt in 2010 and Nezumita-mon with its bridge in 2020; both can be walked through free, 9:00-16:30. Look for the four different styles of stone walling.

• The lookout at Hosen-ji temple 1 h

  Ten minutes uphill from Higashi Chaya sits this temple on the Utatsuyama slope, designated by the city as an official viewpoint: from its terrace you see the teahouse rooftops, the Asano river and the castle all at once, and on a clear day the Hakusan range. It is a working temple with fire rituals, not a municipal viewing platform: treat the precinct accordingly.

• The public baths of Yamashiro Onsen 3 h Kaga · 55 min

  The town is arranged around two bathhouses on the same square: the Ko-soyu, an exact replica of the Meiji-era building with stained glass and Kutani tiles, for 500 yen, and the modern Soyu for 460. Both open 6:00-22:00 and close on the morning of the fourth Wednesday of each month. It is in Kaga, about 55 minutes from Kanazawa (shinkansen to Kaga Onsen plus fifteen minutes by bus).

• Yamanaka Onsen: Kikunoyu, Yamanaka-za and lacquer 4 h Kaga · 70 min

  Waters that Basho rated above all others on his journey north. The Kikunoyu public bath costs 500 yen and opens 6:45-22:00, closed the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month, and in the same complex is the Yamanaka-za, where the yamanaka-bushi folk songs are sung at weekends. The town also lives on the finest turned lacquerware in Japan.

• 19th floor of the Ishikawa prefectural office 1 h

  The prefectural government building opens its 19th floor to the public free of charge: 10:00-20:00 from April to December and until 19:00 on weekdays from January to March, closed 29-31 December. You get the whole city, the Sea of Japan on one side and Hakusan on the other, and at night it is the best urban panorama in Kanazawa. It is west of the centre, so you need a bus.

• An evening with geiko at a tea house 2 h booking

  A booked session of dance, music and games with geiko at a tea house in Higashi or Kazuemachi; there are programmes open to foreigners with an interpreter.

• Craft Hirosaka showcase 1 h

  A municipal shop selling pieces from the city's ten traditional crafts, with an explanation of each technique; the best place to grasp at a glance why Kanazawa is the country's craft capital.

• Earthen walls in their straw overcoats 1 h only 1 Dec - 15 Mar

  In December residents hang rice-straw mats along the mud walls of Nagamachi so that ice and snow do not dissolve them, and take them down in mid-March. It is maintenance work, not decoration for tourists, and it changes the texture of the neighbourhood completely: the lanes turn golden instead of ochre.

• Gold Leaf Workshop 1.5 h booking

  Kanazawa produces nearly all of Japan's gold leaf; a hands-on workshop on applying it.

• Hakuza's golden storehouse 0.5 h

  In Higashi Chaya, behind a gold-leaf shop, stands a kura lined inside with 24-karat gold and clad outside in platinum leaf; entry is free and photos are allowed. Open daily 9:30-18:00 (17:30 in winter). It is a contemporary showpiece rather than a historic building, but it shows the scale at which this city uses metal leaf.

• Ishiura Shrine 0.5 h

  Kanazawa's oldest shrine stands directly opposite the 21st Century Museum, and hardly anyone crosses the road: it has a tightly packed tunnel of red torii climbing the slope and colourful ball-shaped charms. Free and open at any hour; it is the neighbourhood's Shinto parish, and at New Year it fills with residents rather than tourists.

• Kaburazushi, fermented turnip with yellowtail 0.5 h only 15 Nov - 31 Jan

  A salted turnip is split open like a book, a slice of cured yellowtail is tucked inside and the whole thing ferments for one or two weeks in rice koji. It is made from November to January and eaten cold, with no soy sauce or wasabi: sour, sweet and with the fish almost at the stage of cheese. In December several Omicho stalls sell it side by side, so you can compare.

• Kaga-yuzen silk dyeing 1.5 h

  Unlike Kyoto yuzen, the Kaga style paints realistic flowers, even with leaves eaten by insects; you can watch the masters work and try it yourself.

• Kanazawa Castle Park 1.5 h

  The grounds of the former castle of the Maeda lords, rebuilt using traditional techniques and located across from Kenroku-en Garden.

• Kanazawa oden and black curry 1.5 h

  Here oden is eaten all year round, with sea snail and wheat gluten, and the local curry is black, thick and served on a metal tray with shredded cabbage.

• Kanazawa Yuwaku Edo Mura 1.5 h Kanazawa (Yuwaku) · 40 min

  An open-air museum next to Yuwaku hot spring with farmhouses, merchant machiya and samurai residences brought from across the prefecture and rebuilt, split into two zones. 310 yen, 9:00-17:30 (last entry 17:00), closed Tuesdays. Once a month there are craft demonstrations; the bus from the station takes about forty minutes.

• Katamachi and Kazuemachi at night 2.5 h

  The largest nightlife district in Hokuriku, and a step away the lantern-lit walk along the Asano river, in the city's third geisha quarter.

• Kazuemachi and the slopes of Light and Dark 1 h

  The third teahouse district, wedged between the Asano river and the embankment, is almost empty by day: two stepped alleys drop from the upper street, the Akari-zaka (slope of light) and the Kuragari-zaka (slope of darkness), named by two local writers thinking of clients climbing up discreetly. The houses are still lived in: do not step into the doorways.

• Kutani porcelain painting 1.5 h booking

  A workshop for painting a piece of Kutani-yaki, the five-colour porcelain of the Kaga region, at a working kiln.

• Matcha at the Gyokusen-an teahouse 0.75 h

  A small rest house overlooking Gyokusen'inmaru Garden inside the castle park, serving matcha with a seasonal sweet for 1,000 yen. Open 9:00-12:00 and 13:00-16:30, closed 29 December to 3 January; far quieter than the teahouses inside Kenroku-en.

• Museum of the ashigaru, the foot-soldier samurai 0.75 h

  Two genuine infantrymen's houses moved and reassembled in Nagamachi, with the kitchen, the privy and the tatami room of those at the bottom of the ladder. It is free and open 9:30-17:00 with no closing days. Seen after the Nomura residence, it gives the exact measure of what separated one samurai from another.

• Nagamachi Samurai District 1.5 h

  Streets lined with earthen walls where mid-ranking samurai once lived, including one residence open to the public.

• Nagamachi Yuzen-kan 1.5 h booking

  The Kaga-yuzen guild's workshop-museum in the heart of the samurai district, in a house with an earthen storehouse, where you can watch freehand drawing with rice paste and try dyeing a handkerchief or wearing a yuzen kimono. It is a trade association rather than a city museum: the workshop needs booking and it is worth calling ahead, since hours depend on the artisans.

• National Crafts Museum 2 h

  The national home of kogei moved here from Tokyo in 2020, into two restored Meiji-era military buildings next to Kenroku-en.

• Nodoguro and jibuni 1.5 h

  Grilled blackthroat seaperch, the most sought-after fish in Hokuriku, and jibuni, a thick duck stew that was the lordly dish of Kaga cuisine.

• Oyama Shrine 1 h

  Dedicated to Maeda Toshiie, the lord who founded the city; its Meiji-era gate carries coloured stained glass of Dutch influence, something unheard of at a shrine.

• Phonograph Museum 1 h

  More than six hundred gramophones and forty thousand records, all still playable, assembled by the owner of a local record shop. Three times a day a technician runs several machines in a row so you can hear how the same piece sounded decade by decade, and there is a 1927 Ampico self-playing piano. 310 yen, 10:00-17:30, closed Tuesdays.

• Pressing rakugan at Morihachi 1 h booking

  Kanazawa regularly ranks among the three Japanese cities whose households spend most on traditional sweets, and Morihachi has been making them since 1625. At the main shop you press rakugan in antique wooden moulds: 1,870 yen including matcha, a box to take them home and entry to the mould museum. Forty minutes, at 10:00 or 15:00, booked two days ahead.

• Saigawa Ohashi bridge and the W slope 1.5 h

  The city keeps an official list of its viewpoints, and two of the best are free and sit on the Sai river: from the Saigawa Ohashi bridge, floodlit at night, you can see the Hakusan range and the Sea of Japan at the same time, and beside it climbs the zigzag stone stairway locals call the W slope. Both banks are walkable and line up with cherry trees in April.

• Sake brewery from 1625 1.5 h

  A guided tasting at the city's oldest brewery, still producing in the same neighbourhood since the 17th century.

• Shinise Kinenkan, the Edo pharmacy 0.75 h

  The old Nakaya apothecary, moved to the edge of Nagamachi and kept with its counter and its medicine drawers; upstairs are the trades and toys of the city's long-established shops. Admission 100 yen, open 9:30-17:00 with last entry at 16:30, closed Mondays and 29 December to 3 January.

• Shirayama Hime Shrine and Natadera Temple 4 h

  The head shrine of the cult of Mount Hakusan, one of Japan's three sacred mountains, and a temple from the year 717 carved into rock caves.

• Soft serve under a sheet of gold leaf 0.25 h

  Hakuichi invented the vanilla soft serve topped with a whole sheet of gold leaf in 2015, applied in front of you with bamboo tweezers; it runs around 900 yen. Sold at their Higashiyama, Korinbo, Kenroku-en and Hakukokan shops. It tastes of nothing: edible gold is flavourless, and what you pay for is the photo.

• The hot spring towns of Kaga 5 h

  Since the shinkansen was extended in 2024, Kaga Onsen station is about 25 minutes from Kanazawa, but none of the three towns is at the station: Yamashiro is fifteen minutes away by bus and Yamanaka thirty (430 yen), with one or two departures an hour. Each has a contemporary public bathhouse and a long ryokan tradition, and Yamanaka is also a lacquerware town.

• The original Kutani kiln at Yamashiro 1.5 h Kaga · 60 min

  The hot-spring town of Yamashiro preserves the oldest surviving climbing kiln of Kutani porcelain, from the 1820s revival that ended a century and a half of silence, along with the nineteenth-century throwing shed and painting rooms. It is an hour from Kanazawa (shinkansen to Kaga Onsen plus a bus) and pairs with the town's baths, whose Ko-soyu is tiled in Kutani ware.

• Utatsuyama craft workshop and residency 1.5 h

  A public centre where craftspeople on fellowships work in full view of visitors; entry is free and you can talk to them.

• Utatsuyama temples and slopes 2 h

  The third temple district climbs the hillside right behind Higashi Chaya: some fifty congregations among stairways, terraced cemeteries and paths that end at the hilltop park. The climb is short but steep, about twenty minutes up from the Asano river; in October and November it is the most colourful corner of the city.

• Wajima and Yamanaka lacquer in Kanazawa's shops 1.5 h

  Wajima lacquer, with its hundred-plus steps and its diatomaceous-earth undercoat, is made on the Noto peninsula, devastated by the earthquake of 1 January 2024: workshops are still rebuilding and Wajima's morning market burned down. A day trip up there still makes little sense, but shops in central Kanazawa sell pieces by those same masters, and buying them is the most direct help.

• Yasue Gold Leaf Museum 1 h

  A municipal museum donated by a gold beater, with the tools of the trade and demonstrations of how an ingot becomes a sheet one ten-thousandth of a millimetre thick. It closed from December 2025 to 5 March 2026 for building work and has reopened refurbished; admission 310 yen. It sits in Higashiyama, ten minutes' walk from the teahouse district.

• Yuwaku Onsen 3 h

  A hot spring resort with 1,300 years of history within Kanazawa's own municipal boundaries, in a valley 40 minutes from the centre.

• Futamata handmade washi paper 2 h booking Kanazawa (Futamata-machi) · 30 min

  In the Futamata valley, still within Kanazawa city limits but half an hour by car, a handful of handmade-paper workshops survive: beating paper was for centuries the invisible partner of gold leaf. At the Shiraito gallery you can make a washi lampshade for 2,500 yen in 90 to 120 minutes, by reservation. Without a car it is hard to reach.

• Hyakumangoku Matsuri 3 h only early June

  A festival held in early June commemorating feudal lord Maeda Toshiie's entry into Kanazawa, featuring a grand samurai parade through the city.

• Ishikawa Noh Museum and theatre 1.5 h

  Kanazawa is the capital of the Kaga-hosho school of noh theatre: masks, costumes and, on specific dates, actual performances in the adjoining theatre.

• Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art 1.5 h

  It holds Ninsei's pheasant-shaped incense burner, a National Treasure, and has a high-end patisserie inside the museum itself.

• Kaga-zogan damascening 1 h

  Gold and silver inlay on iron, inherited directly from the decoration of samurai armour and helmets.

• Kakusenkei gorge 2 h

  A riverside walk of little more than a kilometre among rocks and maples, with a wooden bridge shaped like a grasshopper, in the hot spring town of Yamanaka.

• Kanazawa's three writers 2 h

  The city has a museum for each of its three great modern novelists: Izumi Kyoka by the Asano river, Tokuda Shusei across the bridge and Muro Saisei in Teramachi. All three were born here in the late nineteenth century and all three wrote about these same neighbourhoods. Each costs around 310 yen and closes on Tuesdays; for non-Japanese readers the interest lies mainly in the houses.

• Maeda Tosanokami family museum 0.75 h

  The collection of one of the eight councillor houses of the Kaga domain: armour, documents and household objects that show how a million-koku fief was actually administered. 310 yen, 9:30-17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed Mondays. It sits beside Nagamachi and is almost always empty.

• Mizuhiki paper cords 1 h booking

  A workshop for braiding the ceremonial paper cords tied to gifts and envelopes in Japan, using the technique specific to Kaga.

• Morning Zazen at Teramachi Shoseien 1.5 h booking

  A zazen session with the temple's head monk, followed by rice porridge, tea, and sweets, in a private setting within the Teramachi temple district — book at least 3 days in advance.

• Nishi Chaya Geisha District 1.5 h

  A historic teahouse district, smaller and quieter than Higashi Chaya, with craft workshops and old geisha houses.

• Ohi ceramics and its museum 1.5 h

  Tea ware created in 1666 expressly for the Maeda lords, still in the hands of the same family, in a contemporary building with a tea room.

• The irrigation canals of the old centre 1.5 h

  Kanazawa is stitched together by more than fifty Edo-period channels still running in the open: the Onosho-yosui crosses Nagamachi between the earthen walls, and the Tatsumi-yosui, cut in 1632, brings Sai river water to Kenroku-en and lifts it into the castle through an inverted siphon, with no pumps. Following one on foot explains how the city was laid out; the water runs fast and there are no railings.

• Traditional Kaga vegetables 1 h

  15 vegetable varieties grown only here that give the local cooking a flavour of its own; you see them in the market and order them at seasonal restaurants.

• Tsuzumi Gate and the station dome 0.5 h

  A giant wooden drum and a glass and steel dome turned the station into the city's modern symbol; it is lit at night.

• Umimirai Library 1 h

  A reading hall pierced by 6,000 openings for light, one of the most photographed contemporary buildings in Japan.

• Yuwaku lantern festival 2 h only one Saturday in October

  A curious case of a festival invented by an anime and genuinely adopted by the town: the lantern festival that appeared in 'Hanasaku Iroha' is now held every October.

• Zweigen football and the Kanazawa marathon 3 h booking

  The city's team plays at a new stadium right in the centre, and the Kanazawa marathon is run in October.

What only happens on specific dates

• Winter crab: kano-gani and kobako-gani 6 Nov - 20 Mar
• Yukitsuri: Kenroku-en's rope umbrellas 1 Nov - 15 Mar
• Earthen walls in their straw overcoats 1 Dec - 15 Mar
• Kaburazushi, fermented turnip with yellowtail 15 Nov - 31 Jan
• Hyakumangoku Matsuri early June
• A noh evening at the Ishikawa Noh Theatre Saturdays in July and August
• Six two-tonne lanterns through village alleys until three in the morning the first Saturday of August
• Yuwaku lantern festival one Saturday in October

Ready-made routes through Kanazawa

Chains well with

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