In Kanazawa

 In this shop everything was covered with gold. I kind of liked the owls even though they were gaudy.

 We bought castella here, which we brought back to give to people as souvenirs. Castella is the Japanese version of the cake that the Portuguese trades used to eat when they first entered Japan. It is extremely good.

 We left the area and, after driving across town, put the car in a different parking lot. We then walked across the street and up a hill.

We could see the castle off to our ritht.

At the top of the hill a little building turned out to be a ticket office for entering Kenraukuen, a huge garden constructed by the local rule who is said to have been the richest man in Japan at the time.

After we passed though the entrance, we entered the garden itself.

In the middle of the garden there is a fairly large pond. This must have a pretty serious construction project because it is on the top of the hill, in every direction the land falls off to lower elevations.

This is one of the more famous views in the garden. It was difficult to find a place to stand while taking the picture. There was a large crowd of people all trying to get into the best positions.

This is the small building that you can see in the distance on the right in the last picture. It is a tea house, but it was closed for the winter.