There are elections going on at the moment.  The recent pipe bomb thrown at the prime minister had something to do with them.  In Kanazawa it's loudspeaker violence that assaults the public.  I passed this lady one morning on my way to class.  Of course I've no idea what her speaker is being loud about but the phrase meaning "thankyou very much" which I can pick out gets a lot of airtime.  If she doesn't get the votes will she take to the streets to shout insults for her wasted thanks?

In the old days wealth and martial skills got you power and Kanazawa was a samurai city with money, hence the beautiful castle and a number of well preserved historic neighbourhoods. Those were spared from WWII bombing and are now the haunt of tourists snapping away and eating gold leaf ice-cream.  

Kanazawa has been working gold leaf for centuries having had small gold deposits.  The kanji characters for its name,  金沢, literally mean gold swamp.  My teacher tells me that as a child he used to go gold panning in a stream near his home. It was a game more than anything.

I've wandered round those neighbourhoods and taken a few snaps.

Inside the Samurai house in Nagamachi Buke-Yashiki district

A corner of the garden

The samurai himself safely behind glass

Houses in Higashi Chaya district

Girls in their Sunday best in Higashi Chaya

The gold leaf ice-cream they've probably just enjoyed

Back in the centre of town in the castle grounds there is an absolutely delightful garden which was laid out in 1634, fell into disrepair around 1900 but has since been reconstructed starting in 2013 after five years excavation and study of ancient drawings and literature.  Just one picture to show you its glory.

Goykusen'inmaru garden

As I write this I'm listening to a French saxophonist that I'd never heard of until I had lunch one day in a bar called Jazz Bokunen where curry lunches and music are the menu du jour. You can have a dose of Lagavulin on the side as one of these pictures shows.

The music available

 

Fancy a dram with your jazz?

The record being played. The big B tells you which side.

 I went to Hiroshima at the weekend. It takes between four and five hours by train depending on how long you have to wait for a connection at Shin-Osaka.  Of the 50 busiest railway stations in the world 46 are in Japan and Shin-Osaka is one of those.  Not only is it busy but it's big.  Thanks to the app I had used to scope the journey I'd accepted in good faith its connection time of 9 minutes which given the reputation of Japanese trains for punctuality could have been OK, although if I'd understood what the ticket office chappie was saying I'd have realised that he was pointing out that it was a bit tight.  

It's one of the features of using a foreign language that having worked out and rehearsed in your head what you want to say understanding the response is not always very easy.  And believe me when the responder is wearing a face-mask it's orders of magnitude more difficult and 99% of the Japanese are wearing them.  That rises to 100% in shops, restaurants, railway ticket offices and so forth.

Anyway when my teacher sucked his breath in and winced I realised the error of my ways and practised my queuing skills to change the ticket.  The ticket in question was actually for a seat rather than a journey but that's something I may return to.

En route to and from Hiroshima I took a few pictures through the window.  Not the best situation in which to take pics and most are destined for the bin but I did capture a couple of interesting things.  This big statue for instance

My teacher is a Bhuddist so I thought he might be able to enlighten me although it's obviously not Bhudda himself.  Well he tells me that in the period known as the "bubble economy" round about the mid 80s people had money to burn and liked to show off by putting up statues and other follies.  He says it's a big problem now because no-one has either the money or the inclination to maintain them.

The other snap I took shows what seems to be a large Christian church, a cathedral even.  This interested me because historically Christians had a raw deal in Japan, like being tortured and put to death over a period of about 280 years.  A stone's throw from where I have my lessons there's a catholic church associated with a feudal lord who refused to renounce his Christian faith some time in the 17th century.  He's regarded as a martyr and was beatified 2017.  There's a lovely stained glass window featuring him which I must get around to photographing. 

Getting back to this building I saw from the train.

I asked Ishimura (teacher) about it.  He was intrigued and did a bit of googling.  It turns out to be a fake.  It's described as a Gothic Cathedral Theme Park and is a venue for weddings.  There's a bridal fair on there at the moment.   

I'll get round to talking about Hiroshima next time but I'm now ready for bed.