Kanazawa: What to Do, Where to Stay and How to Get There

There is a saying in Kanazawa that you can forget your lunch but never your umbrella. It rains or snows here more than almost anywhere else in Japan, the sky changes four times in an afternoon, and the city is far better for it: the gardens stay green, the seafood is superb, and the crowds are a fraction of Kyoto's.

Kanazawa is a castle town of 460,000 people on the Sea of Japan coast, two and a half hours from Tokyo by shinkansen. It has the best landscape garden in the country, two intact geisha districts, a surviving samurai quarter, one of Japan's great food markets, and it makes 99 percent of the nation's gold leaf. Two days covers it properly.

Why Kanazawa is worth visiting

The short version: it looks like what people imagine Kyoto looks like, without the crowd standing in the photograph.

Kanazawa was the seat of the Maeda clan, who controlled a domain assessed at a million koku of rice, the largest in Japan after the shogunate's own holdings. Barred from military ambition, the Maeda spent that money on crafts, tea, theater and gardens for nearly three centuries. The city has been doing gold leaf, lacquer, silk dyeing and Noh drama at a serious level since the 1600s.

Then it was not bombed in the war, so the old districts are original buildings rather than reconstructions. That is rarer in Japan than most visitors realize.

Kasumigaike Pond

How to get to Kanazawa

From Tokyo: the Hokuriku Shinkansen runs from Tokyo Station to Kanazawa in about 2 hours 30 minutes on a Kagayaki service, or closer to 3 hours on the all-stops Hakutaka. It is covered by the Japan Rail Pass. Kanazawa Station itself is worth two minutes: the Tsuzumi-mon gate outside the east exit is modeled on a hand drum, under a glass dome that keeps the rain off.

From Kyoto or Osaka: this changed in March 2024, when the shinkansen was extended to Tsuruga. You now take the Thunderbird limited express to Tsuruga and change to the Hokuriku Shinkansen. Kyoto to Kanazawa runs about two hours with the transfer, Osaka about 2 hours 20. It used to be a single direct train, so older advice on this route is out of date.

From Nagoya or the Alps: the Shirasagi limited express also connects via Tsuruga. Takayama is three hours by highway bus and is a common pairing.

Getting around: the sites form a rough loop and the Kanazawa Loop Bus runs it in both directions from the station. A city one-day pass is ¥800 for adults and ¥400 for children, and covers the loop, the flat bus and most central routes. Kanazawa is also small enough to cycle, and flat enough that an e-bike is unnecessary but pleasant.

Kenrokuen Garden

Kenrokuen Garden is the reason most people come, and it deserves the reputation. The name means Garden of the Six Sublimities, the six qualities an ideal garden was supposed to combine and which were thought impossible to hold together: spaciousness and seclusion, artifice and antiquity, water and wide views.

The Maeda started it in the 1620s as an outer garden for the castle and worked on it across six generations. It opened to the public in 1874 and covers about 11.4 hectares.

Admission and hours: ¥320 for adults, ¥100 for ages 6 to 17, free for visitors 65 and over with proof of age. Open 7:00 to 18:00 from March 1 to October 15, and 8:00 to 17:00 from October 16 through February.

The trick nobody uses: the garden opens for free early admission before those hours, as early as 4:00 in midsummer and 6:00 in winter. You have to leave before paid hours begin, but you get the place almost to yourself.

Flying Geese Bridge and Flower Viewing Bridge

What to look for inside

Kasumigaike Pond is the center of the garden, fed by a channel that carries water more than 10 km from the Sai River and arrives under enough natural pressure to run the fountain beside it, one of the oldest in Japan, without a pump.

The Kotoji stone lantern on the pond's edge, with two legs of different lengths, is the single most photographed object in Kanazawa.

Karasaki Pine was grown from a seed brought from Lake Biwa in the 1800s and is the tree the gardeners rope every winter.

Pine Trees

Neagari-no-matsu, the raised-root pine, stands with about 40 exposed roots lifting it more than two meters off the ground.

Gankobashi, the Flying Geese Bridge, is eleven red stone slabs set in a stagger that reads as a flock in flight. Nearby, Korokan-bashi, the Flower Viewing Bridge, faces the cherry trees along the water.

Yugao-tei, built in 1774, is the oldest building in the garden, and the Seisonkaku villa just outside the south gate was built by a Maeda lord for his mother in 1863 and is one of the finest surviving samurai-era residences in Japan.

Kenrokuen by season

The Beauty of Cherry Blossoms and Cherry Trees

Spring: about 400 cherry trees bloom in early to mid April, and the garden waives admission entirely for roughly a week during peak bloom. This is the busiest it gets and still manageable.

Summer: irises in June along the winding Kyokusui stream, and deep green everywhere else. Rainy season runs through June and the garden looks better wet.

Fall: maples turn from early to late November, overlapping with the start of the yukitsuri.

Winter: the reason to come. From November 1 the gardeners rig yukitsuri, conical arrays of rope strung from poles to hold branches up under wet Hokuriku snow. They are a working solution to a real problem and they are also the most beautiful thing in the garden. They come down in mid March. Our guide to Japan's cherry blossom gardens covers the spring side if that is the trip you are planning.

More background on the garden's design and history is collected on the Kenroku-en entry if you want to read before you go.

Kanazawa Castle Park

The castle sits across a bridge from the garden and the two were once a single estate. The grounds are free and open the same hours as Kenrokuen.

Most of the castle burned repeatedly, and what stands now is a careful reconstruction using traditional joinery, no nails, completed from 2001 onward. The Hishi Yagura turret and the Gojukken Nagaya storehouse can be entered for ¥320, and the exposed timber frame inside is the point.

Two things survive from the original: the Ishikawa-mon gate from 1788, with its lead-tiled roof, and the stonework. Kanazawa Castle is a textbook of Japanese wall-building, with a dozen different styles of masonry from different eras visible around the grounds. The Gyokusen'inmaru garden on the east side is small, reconstructed from excavation records, and lit at night on weekends.

Higashi Chaya District

Higashi Chaya

Higashi Chaya is the largest of Kanazawa's three surviving teahouse districts, laid out in 1820 and preserved as a national heritage area. The buildings are two stories with fine wooden lattice fronts, which is unusual, since townhouses were generally restricted to one.

Geisha still work here, roughly 40 of them across the three districts, and performances are mostly private. What you can visit:

• Shima, a teahouse preserved exactly as it operated, with the guest rooms and instruments in place. Around ¥500

• Kaikaro, still an operating teahouse, with a gold-leaf tatami room and a red lacquer staircase. Around ¥800

• Hakuza, a shop with a storehouse entirely covered in gold leaf, inside and out, which is free to walk into

Come before 10:00 if you want the lanes empty. By midday it is the busiest place in the city.

Kazue-machi, the second district, is along the Asano River a few minutes away and is quieter and arguably prettier. Nishi Chaya, across the Sai River, is smaller again and barely visited.

Nagamachi samurai district

Nagamachi is where the middle-ranking retainers lived, below the castle, and the earthen walls that enclosed their plots are still standing. In winter the walls are wrapped in straw mats to stop the frost splitting the clay, which looks like an art installation and is not.

The Nomura family residence is open and has a garden built into a space the size of a small courtyard, with a stream running under the veranda. It is the best short demonstration of how Japanese domestic architecture handles small sites.

Walk the lanes rather than going straight to the house. The whole quarter takes twenty minutes and almost nobody is in it.

Omicho Market

Omicho market is one of the popular attraction in Kanazawa

Omicho has been Kanazawa's fish market since the 1720s, and unlike most markets it is still primarily where the city shops rather than a tourist stop with a fish counter.

Around 180 stalls sell snow crab from November to March, sweet shrimp, buri yellowtail, oysters and Kaga vegetables. Upstairs and in the side lanes are restaurants that will build you a kaisendon, a bowl of rice under whatever came in that morning, for ¥2,000 to ¥4,000.

Go before 11:00 for the market and after 11:30 for the food. It is closed on Wednesdays in some months and quiet on Sundays.

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art

A low glass circle in the middle of town, with no front or back and entrances on all sides. The design deliberately refuses the idea that a museum is a box you enter.

The permanent piece everyone knows is Leandro Erlich's Swimming Pool, where people stand fully clothed at the bottom of what looks like water. Seeing it from below requires a ticket into the paid zone. Adults ¥450, university students ¥310, free under 18, with special exhibitions charged separately. Closed Mondays.

The free public zone, open 9:00 to 22:00, holds several outdoor works and is a legitimate visit on its own.

Other things to do in Kanazawa

D.T. Suzuki Museum is dedicated to the philosopher who introduced Zen to the English-speaking world, and it is really a building rather than a museum: three pavilions, a mirrored water court, and almost nothing to read. ¥310, and worth an hour.

Myoryuji, the Ninja Temple, has no ninja connection. It was built in 1643 as a disguised outpost with hidden staircases, trick doors, a well shaft rumored to lead to the castle and 23 rooms on four levels behind a facade that looks two stories tall. Visits are by guided tour in Japanese and must be reserved by phone in advance.

Kanazawa Tour

Oyama Shrine has a three-story gate from 1875 designed by a Dutch architect, with stained glass in the top level, which was meant to work as a lighthouse for boats on the Sea of Japan.

Gold leaf workshops let you apply leaf to a box, chopsticks or a small plate in an hour. Kanazawa produces almost all of Japan's gold leaf, the humidity and water here being right for beating it to a ten-thousandth of a millimeter.

Kutani ware and Kaga yuzen are the other two crafts. Kutani porcelain is painted in five heavy colors; Kaga yuzen is hand-painted silk in a muted palette with the leaves deliberately shown eaten by insects.

What to eat

Kanazawa is a serious food city and cheaper than Tokyo for the same quality.

Jibuni is the local dish: duck dusted in flour and simmered with wheat gluten and seasonal vegetables in a thickened broth, eaten with wasabi. It is on almost every Kaga-cuisine menu.

Snow crab season runs from early November to March, and the local variety, kano-gani, carries a tag on the claw showing which boat landed it.

Gold-leaf ice cream is a soft-serve wrapped in a whole sheet of leaf. It tastes of nothing, it is entirely for the photograph, and you should probably have one anyway.

Kaga vegetables are 15 heritage varieties grown only around the city, including a fat sweet potato and a thick-skinned cucumber. Look for them on set menus in fall.

Wagashi here are among the best in Japan, a byproduct of the tea culture. Morihachi has been making them since 1625.

Kanazawa Tour

Where to stay and how long

Two days and one night is the practical minimum: garden, castle and the teahouse districts on day one, market, museum and Nagamachi on day two. Three nights lets you add Shirakawa-go or the Noto coast.

Near Kanazawa Station is the easy choice, with the widest range of hotels, luggage storage and the bus terminal at the door. It is a 15-minute bus ride from the sights.

Korinbo and Katamachi put you in the middle of everything, walking distance to the garden and the nightlife district. Prices are higher and the hotels are smaller.

Higashi Chaya and the Asano River have a handful of machiya conversions and small ryokan, which is the most atmospheric option and the most limited.

Book well ahead for cherry blossom week and the crab season weekends.

Day trips from Kanazawa

Shirakawa-go is the gassho-zukuri farmhouse village and a UNESCO site, 75 minutes by highway bus. Buses require a reservation and sell out; book online before you arrive.

Takayama pairs with Shirakawa-go on a long day, or works better as an overnight.

The Noto Peninsula runs north from the city along a dramatic coast. The January 2024 earthquake struck the peninsula hard; Kanazawa itself came through with little damage and operates normally, but parts of Noto are still rebuilding and some roads, inns and attractions remain closed. Check current conditions before planning that leg, and consider going, since tourism is part of the recovery.

The Kurobe Alpine Route crosses the mountains to Nagano through a corridor of snow walls up to 20 meters high, open from mid April to late November.

A week-long route through Kanazawa that runs Tokyo to Osaka shows how the city fits between the two, which is the way most people should see it: not as a destination in itself, but as the two days in the middle that end up being the best part.