Kanazawa - Gates, Castles, Duck Soba, and Gardens.

 After coffee, we headed down to the Kanazawa castle.  For many generations, Kanazawa, since it was fairly remote, was a relatively unchallenged feudal state, with a strong center of government that resided in a gigantic, sprawling castle on top of a hill.  Sadly, the castle was burned down (possibly intentionally, politics in the Meiji and post-Meiji era got. . . weird, as power was centralized in Japan).  However, the gate and part of the wall/observation system have been rebuilt, and we spent several hours walking through it.

The architecture is beautiful, and striking, and I'll pull all the pictures off my real camera when I'm home hopefully and share those pictures.  For now here's the handful of snapshots I took with my phone.  At the top you see one of the main gates that has been completely rebuilt.

 

 In keeping with the Japanese fondness for sharing all the information: here's a very detailed diagram of all the different types of wood that were used in a building like the gate, above.

 The entrance to the castle itself.

What happens when you travel with companion who are geeks about buildings?  You get to hang out while one of them takes a video of the rendering of the assembly process.  I don't blame her--the video was super cool. . .

 ...Because it was an animation of all the joints that were made like this.  Turns out a lot of Japanese construction in that era was a sort of insanely complex game of pickup-sticks in reverse.

 The results speak for themselves.  Beautiful buildings that are pretty resilient to earthquakes, while still being regal and massive.

After the castle, we stopped for lunch at a place nearby, and I got a bowl of duck meat and buckwheat soba noodles.  My companions told me that soba noodles are something that Kanazawa is known for, so I decided on it as my lunch.  It was tasty, but at this point my bar for noodle soups has been risen to the point where you've really got to be amazing before I can rave about them.

After lunch we wandered over to the Kenroku-en gardens, and they are absolutely beautiful.  A really striking blend of beautiful paths, careful planning, and excellent gardening and . . . plant-husbandry (is that a thing?) skills.

Sadly, almost every picture of the gardens that I took is on the real camera, so you'll have to wait on those for the "the beauty of Japan" pictures get posted next week sometime.

For now, here's a radio tower.
 

Yes, really, this is apparently the way the Japanese were building radio towers in the 1940s.

Isn't it cool?