Train trip - part 3 - Kanazawa & Matsumoto

On New Years Day, we took a bus ride to a city called Kanazawa (in Ishikawa prefecture). We first visited the historic geisha district, which had nice old buildings and nice small restaurants and shops: In one of the sweet shops in the geisha district, I bought a boar shaped sweet that has sweet red bean paste inside (since 2007 is Year of the Boar):

Near the geisha district, we walked around an area that had about 50 temples in a very small area of town. At one point, I could see 6 temple entrances standing at one point:

Since there were so many temples in a small area, some of them had found different ways to attract people to them. The one below, had opened a preschool on the grounds to get some young followers (you can see the playground through the gate):

In this temple area, I saw many cats (as seen in this collage below):
Our favourite, friendly cat was the next one, who followed us for a good 5 minutes before deciding to give up:

There was also a nice collection of birds in Kanazawa from these gulls to herons and hawks:

We next visited Kenroku garden, which is one of the three most famous parks in Japan. It maybe wasn't one of the best times of year but it was still busy with visitors.Again, you can see the trees being supported by a tall pole and strings attacted to the branches which helps the trees during heavy snow falls. It was a common site throughout the city:
The last city on our tour was Matsumoto (in Nagano prefecture). The main thing to visit in Matsumoto is their castle, which we went to look at night:
And during the day. We also did a tour inside during the day:

We also visited the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum. Ukiyo-e is wood-block printing that was famous in Japan from 1760s to 1890s. Since I have a few posters of ukiyo-e art in my apartment, I was interested to see it. Here's an example: Overall, it was an enjoyable, relaxing trip...although glad to be back home to relax some more before works starts.