Kanazawa

A photo from the train, going cross-country to get to Kanazawa.





Kanazawa was cool - Nozomu and his family were great hosts.
Had some interesting and cool experiences such as went to a bath house - that was kind of different, watched "Torque" on DVD (in Japanese - with english subtitles - it had Martin Henderson in it - I would have been interested to see how he pulled off an American accent).
The following day we also went to the Kanazawa castle (Kanazawa-jo, jo being castle), and the famous garden there Kenroku-en it was beautiful under snow. That night I watched the Two Towers (LOTR) in Japanese (with english subtitles, again, interesting, shame I can't remember what "the precious" is in Japanese though...)

The day I left, we went to a ninja house - a temple or shrine that has all these little hideaways and secret tunnels. It was cool, although I'm not so comfortable about going to shrines etc. We also watched Titanic - this time in English. I must admit, it is a very good movie.

There was a lot of snow up in Kanazawa, which made it interesting. Nozomu's mother made us some excellent traditional Japanese meals - Odon noodle soup, rice cake in soup (I have the name written down somewhere) and my probable favourite was the Nabe - basically, you boil soup on the table, then add all sorts to it, After the main stuff is done, you add rice and egg to the soup.

Nozomu's house was cool too. Their house is part of the church (where his father is Pastor), and so it is a three-story apartment, attached to the back of the church.

I will add photos and possibly add to this entry later on. Keep checking for updates. You will notice I have tidied up past entries - made the writing and the photos correspond, and added photos.