Groundhog mornings and artisanal afternoons.

I woke up and got a Ginger Latte, exactly as I had expected.

 This one was clearly an attempt at a leaf, which I found charming, but also my barista had clearly not made many leaves, and so the art wound up a bit more . . .vulva and less leaf than I think she was hoping for, judging by her helpless giggling as she handed it to me with an embarrassed head shake.

Regardless, it was, again, delicious, and I was saddened that I would be leaving them behind when I depart Kanazawa tomorrow.

My companions came down and after briefly hemming and hawing about it, we realized that we were all of one mind: we wanted more sushi.

So we went back to Mori Mori, the same place we'd visited before, and had some more fish.

Ok, we had a lot more fish.

Here's the final plate stack in the background, with my dessert (a delicious sort of jelly cube dish that reminded me of a Japanese take on Turkish delight) in the foreground.
 

 Because my traveling companions are like me about numbers (which is to say we do hypothetical math and arithmetic comparisons compulsively for fun), we did some math, and realized that eating the same meal we were eating here back home in Atlanta would have cost us about $420.  $140 per person for fish that was almost (but not quite) as good.

Here, the total bill was 8,300 Yen.  Which works out to $75.  So. . . $25 per person for almost $150 worth of fish at Atlanta prices.

I regret nothing.  It was delicious and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

After breakfast we walked across the bridge from our neighborhood into the Higashi Chaya district, which is sort of an "Old Kanazawa" full of small art galleries, artisinal shops, and restored houses in the traditional style.  The buildings were beautiful, and when I get my pictures off the Pentax you'll see some of the gorgeous architecure.

For now here's a few little snapshots.

The river:

This is a wall of gold leaf.  It turns out that Kanazawa was known for goldsmithing and gold leave back in the day, and we found a small gold jewelry and leafwork shop that made beautiful things, and was built in a restoration of an old gold storehouse, and so included a gold storeroom and two of the walls facing the buildings inner courtyard were covered completely in gold leaf.

So I know what it's like to stand in a warm golden beam of sunlight now, which is cool.

The stuff they were selling was beautiful, too.

Although the gold leafed chocolate cake might have been a bit much.

One of my traveling companions found a noodle shop, and so we stopped for Udon.  They had their own special spin on Kitsune Udon, which included a bit of Yuzu zest to add a hint of tartness, and it was very tasty. 

On the way back to our hotel, I noticed a sign I hadn't seen before.

 So we changed course and found this aggressively artisinal little chocolatier making stuff so high end it was hard to understand how they stayed in business in a town Kanazawa's size.

I suppose it might be because suckers like me drop in for a cinnamon hot chocolate and pain au chocolat more often than I expect.

Everything they made was excellent.
 

After we made it back to the hotel, I did laundry and took a nap and then we headed out for dinner.

We had planned to return to Bambi, which, all things considered would have resulted in us getting absolutely besotted, I'm sure, considering how good their cocktails were.

Our livers were saved by the private party that they were hosting, so we scrambled a bit and found plentiful recommendations for a tiny, super traditional place called Manmarumaru.

Right down to the all-Japanese menu and sitting on woven mats on the floor at low tables.

My companions are carefully studying the menu because it was handwritten entirely in Japanese, mostly in a script that could be described as "beautiful but also somewhat irregular."  The lack of an English menu was a great joy to my companions, who have been coming to Japan annually for a decade, and have noticed more and more places, even super-cozy traditional ones, all have an English menu now.

But the result was we got a sort of Okonomoyaki Omelet?  Which was BANANAS.  I don't mean it contained bananas. That would be disgusting. I mean it was so good it was actively unsettling.  The Katsuobushi flakes on top curled and danced and the eggs were perfect.  I was delighted, since moments before it arrived I had mused openly about feeling I was in the mood for okonomiyaki, and so this hit the spot exactly.

Moments later, as we were ordering more things, we had the most delightful exchange.

This is our proprietor and head-chef, cracking up as she tries to answer a question about one of the menu items.  Because she realized that she couldn't read what was written on the menu either, and had no idea what the item we were asking about was.  It was adorable.

We wound up with a few other great things anyway though, including a really tasty bunch of fried squid.

Again, we finished our day off well fed and happy with our lot in life.

Tomorrow we would part ways, with my companions headed off to another Onsen and me headed back to the big city--a long Shinkansen ride directly to Tokyo.