Things to do
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Higashi Chaya District
Walk the main street before nine in the morning or after the shops shut at about five, when the wooden lattice fronts are almost empty. In between it is crowded. Most of the teahouses are still private or working, and only a handful, the Shima teahouse among them, open their rooms to look around.
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Kanazawa Castle
The castle park is free to walk, and only the rebuilt turrets and long storehouse at its centre take a ticket. Look closely at the walls: the stonework changes style from one stretch to the next, and the roofs are covered in pale lead tiles. The Ishikawa Gate, facing Kenroku-en across the road, is the grandest way in.
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Kenroku-en
Come at dawn: the garden opens free from early morning until fifteen minutes before the paid hours begin, through the Renchimon and Zuishinzaka gates only. By mid-morning tour groups fill the paths around Kasumiga-ike pond and the two-legged Kotoji lantern. From November the pines are hung with cones of rope that hold the heavy snow off their branches.
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Nomura Samurai House
Nomura house is the best known of the Nagamachi samurai homes open inside, and a separate ticket covers it. Its rooms have coffered ceilings of Japanese cypress and sliding doors painted by the Maeda family's own artist, and the small garden has a winding stream and a bayberry tree more than four hundred years old.
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Oyama Shrine
After dark the tall gate at the top of the steps is lit and the stained glass in its upper storey glows. The gate mixes Japanese, Chinese and European styles. Behind it, the shrine to the first Maeda lord has a small pond garden crossed by a curved stone bridge, and the grounds are free to enter.
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21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art
Walk in from any side: the round glass building has no front, and its free zone stays open well into the evening. Its best-known work is a swimming pool that can be looked into from above and stood underneath, and the galleries close on Mondays. The museum shuts for renovation from 6 May 2027, with reopening planned for March 2028.
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D. T. Suzuki Museum
It is a place to sit rather than a museum of exhibits. The heart of the building is a quiet open room facing a shallow pool, built in memory of the Zen writer D. T. Suzuki, who was born in Kanazawa, and the few displays take only minutes. It closes on Mondays, and makes a good pause between busier sights.
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Gyokusen'inmaru Garden
A pond garden below the castle's western walls, free to enter and at its best on a Saturday night, when the castle park stays open and the garden is lit until nine. The castle's tiered stone walls behind the pond were built as part of the garden's view. A teahouse on the shore serves green tea and sweets looking over the water.
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Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art
The prefecture's main art collection is housed in the museum quarter on the edge of Kenroku-en, outside the paid garden. Its treasure is an incense burner shaped like a pheasant, made by the potter Nonomura Ninsei, which has a room of its own. The other displays change through the year, from Kutani porcelain to the Maeda family's lacquer and armour.
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Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Traditional Arts and Crafts
The museum stands on the edge of Kenroku-en, next to Seisonkaku and outside the paid grounds. Inside, the prefecture's crafts are shown side by side, from Kutani porcelain and Wajima lacquer to Kaga silk dyeing and gold leaf, with the tools that make them. Come here before shopping for any of them, to learn what a good piece looks like.
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Kanazawa Noh Museum
Across the road from the 21st Century Museum, this small museum shows the masks, robes and stage properties of Noh, the masked theatre the Maeda lords encouraged among ordinary townsfolk. Noh is still taught and performed in the city. An hour covers the displays, and the costumes are the part to linger over.
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Kanazawa Yasue Gold Leaf Museum
Almost all of Japan's gold leaf is made in Kanazawa, and this small city museum in the Higashiyama area shows how it is beaten to about a ten-thousandth of a millimetre. The tools and the special papers the leaf is beaten between are on show, alongside gilded screens and lacquer.
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Kazue-machi Chaya District
A short row of teahouses on the far bank of the Asano river from Higashi Chaya, reached in a few minutes over the bridge. It is smaller and quieter than the main teahouse street, and the riverside path is lit after dark. Climb Kuragari-zaka, the narrow stepped lane behind the houses, which leads up to a small shrine.
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Myōryū-ji
Book by telephone before coming: the temple is seen only on a guided tour, entry is paid in cash, and children under school age are not admitted. Behind a front that looks two storeys high it hides four floors of secret stairways, trap doors and a lookout, all built as defences. That is why it is called the Ninja Temple, though no ninja ever used it.
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Nagamachi Buke Yashiki
Earth walls, stone-paved lanes and the Onosho canal mark the old samurai quarter below Korinbo, and the lanes are free to wander at any hour. From December the walls are covered with straw mats to keep the snow off them. Go inside the Nomura house to see a samurai home and garden.
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National Crafts Museum
Japan's national crafts museum moved here from Tokyo in 2020, into two restored Meiji-era buildings near Kenroku-en. It holds about four thousand pieces, among them work by craftsmen named Living National Treasures, shown in changing displays. Allow an hour, and longer for anyone who came to Kanazawa for ceramics, lacquer or textiles.
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Nishi Chaya District
The third of the city's teahouse streets, just over the Sai river from Katamachi, and smaller and quieter than Higashi Chaya. A free museum in an old teahouse shows the red-walled rooms where guests were entertained upstairs. Half an hour covers the street, and the temples of Teramachi begin a few lanes to the south.
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Ōmichō Market
Mornings are the time to come, while the fishmongers are laying out the overnight catch and the counters start serving seafood rice bowls. Around a hundred and seventy shops line the narrow covered lanes, and by late afternoon many of them have shut. From early November the crab season opens, and the stalls are piled with it until spring.
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Seisonkaku
A two-storey villa that a Maeda lord built for his mother, beside Kenroku-en, and the best place in the city to see how the family lived. The brightly painted rooms upstairs and the small courtyard garden are the reason to come. It is outside the garden's paid grounds and sells its own ticket.
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Tsuzumi-mon Gate
Arriving by train, step out of the east exit of Kanazawa Station before heading into town: the huge wooden gate is shaped like the hand drums played in Noh. Behind it a glass and steel dome shelters the bus stops from the rain and snow, and the gate is the city's best-known modern landmark.
