Kanazawa Local Food & Tea Culture Tour with Licensed Guide

ning the six attributes of a perfect garden. As a strolling-style landscape garden,it incorporates fancy designs in every corner,achieving peerless scenery in each season.

Yet another, more hidden, garden sits within the hedged borders of the teahouse property. It can be viewed while enjoying a cup of macha tea and a traditional wagashi sweet or simply from a large tatami room that often welcomes large tour groups. After your refreshment, feel free to step out onto the polished veranda for a better look at the meticulously tended garden.

The Ohi Pottery Museum and Gallery is housed in their old family residence and provides an excellent introduction to this local ceramic tradition.

Today, it is a busy and colorful network of covered streets lined by about 200 shops and stalls. While most shops specialize in the excellent local seafood and produce, you can also find flowers, clothing, kitchen tools and more on sale. Although the market is most exciting during the morning hours, it also gets quite busy around noon, when tourists and locals arrive to have lunch at restaurants inside the market. It is not unusual for lines to build in front of the popular restaurants, many of which specialize in rice bowls topped with fresh Kanazawa seafood.

teahouse) is an exclusive type of restaurant where guests are entertained by geisha who perform song and dance. During the Edo Period, chaya were found in designated entertainment districts, usually just outside the city limits. Kanazawa has three, well preserved chaya districts, Higashi Chayagai (Eastern Chaya District), Nishi Chayagai (Western Chaya District) and Kazuemachi. Of the three districts, the Higashi Chaya District (東茶屋街, Higashi Chayagai) is the largest and by far the most interesting. Two chaya, the Shima Teahouse and Kaikaro Teahouse, are open to the public. Other buildings along the central street now house cafes and shops. One of the shops, Hakuza, sells gold leaf products, a specialty of Kanazawa, and displays a tea ceremony room which is completely covered in gold leaf.