Well, Simon asked the question and this post will answer it. If I'm converting the times correctly I had indeed been to the gardens at the time he asked. And some of the cherry blossoms are out, though not all, in answer to Liz's question.
I got up early this morning and was at Kenroku-en more or less at the opening time of 7:00. I think it was worth getting there early as I got to experience the gardens with very few others around, I only saw maybe two people for the first hour. The gardens are incredibly beutiful though and I took an awful lot of photographs (several of a heron which appeared used to it).
I've also been to Seison-kaku, a mansion attached to Kenroku-en (I keep wanting to write "The Kenroku-en Gardens" but since the name means "Six Sublimites Garden" it's unnecessary), built in 1863 by the 13th lord of the Kaga clan as a home for his mother (He says while reading the leaflet). This is a very nice traditional japanese building, of which I have no photographs since it wasn't allowed.
I also visited one of the gold leaf stores here in Kanazawa and the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum for Traditional Products and Crafts (I'm only tying that once). Both of these had some incredible works in them, in one case involving massive quantities of gold leaf (The golden toilets are particularly strange). At the store I also got to see the process used for making the gold leaf and had a cup of tea with gold leaf in it (Does one get the impression they may have too much of this stuff?).
Anyway, those were the main things I did today, there was a lot of wondering around involved between these of course but not anything of special interest. I doubt I'll do anything much more this evening so that will most likely be it for the day.
Posted by Haifisch at April 1, 2003 08:35 AMWhy have you not sent me message back?
You not like me no more?
Posted by: Dimitri at April 1, 2003 11:09 AM