Winter Holiday 7: 金沢 (Kanazawa)

This is the final post regarding my winter holiday wanderings.
After returning to Fukui, I still had one or two more free days before work started, so a friend and I decided to venture a bit north to the Ishikawa prefecture and explore "Little Kyoto" (Kanazawa).
Kanazawa has several nice areas for walking around and/or shopping. This is an old geisha district. A couple friends once came here in the fall to try to find a geisha house, but they failed.
We, however, did not fail! The first excursion of the new year was a glaring success. We found everything we wanted to find - a stark departure from excursions of 2007.

There weren't any geishas inside the house, but we were allowed to wander around and admire the Edo period (17-19 century) style design.
Kanazawa features gardens deemed the 3rd most beautiful in Japan (they like making lists about such things here). Normally such places would be very crowded, but in early January most people seem to prefer staying indoors.
Other than the geisha district, there is also a samurai district with traditional Japanese architecture. Nice place to walk.

金沢: Kanazawa

Just a brief jaunt north of Fukui is a city nicknamed, "Little Kyoto". Kanazawa features some nice temples, some of the most beautiful gardens in Japan and a fairly decent Mexican restaurant.
Don't think I ever saw a Halloween decoration that grand in the States.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, a few friends and I made the brief train ride up for some sightseeing and shopping. The weather wasn't kind enough to allow us a nice view of the gardens, so we stayed indoors for the most part.
Kanazawa has some very scenic side streets. This particular non-descript alley leads into the secretive temple that has come to be nicknamed, "The Ninja Temple". It has no connection to Ninjutsu, the secret art of the ninja (or so they say), but it is an amazing piece of architectural trickery.

This isn't a very good photograph, but it does allow you to see how simple the building appears from the outside. Simple 2-3 story temple, right? Wrong! Inside it is has nearly 30 stairwells twisting and turning about a multi-layered den of traps and pitfalls constructed to befuddle government spies. Imagine a 6 or 7 story building trapped inside a 3 story building's body. Every turn, every door leading into a trap or some guard just waiting to spear, slice or stab unsuspecting trespassers.
And it also served as a religious center for the local nobility.