A day in Kanazawa

A garden to yourselves for an hour. You get one of Japan's great gardens almost to yourselves, because we get you there before the buses do. The rest of the day is gold leaf on ice cream, a museum with a fake swimming pool, and the knife Dev has been waiting all trip to buy.

Morning

Kenrokuen opens early and the buses arrive late morning, so the family is in and out in the gap. Wet stone paths, moss, old pines held up on their ropes, and a pond flat enough to hold the sky. In spring there may be blossom on the water. Keep the loop to about an hour and leave while everyone still likes it.

Kanazawa is here instead of Kyoto. It has the shrines, the samurai district, the kimono dress-up, and the crafts. What it lacks is Kyoto's Michelin scene, and with an 8 and a 10-year-old those reservations were never realistic anyway. The hotels cost a fraction of Kyoto's, so the money buys a bigger room.

Afternoon

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. Interactive, kid-friendly, and the Leandro Erlich swimming pool is a quick win: the boys stand under the water and wave up at the parents.

Gold-leaf soft serve on the way out, a whole sheet of it draped over the cone and a flake stuck to someone's lip. Kanazawa makes most of Japan's gold leaf, and the ice cream is the easiest way to get a kid to care.

This is also where Dev buys the knife. He wants a Japanese kitchen knife as his one souvenir, and on the Tokyo kitchen street he handled a Tojiro-tier gyuto and wrote down the model instead of buying it. A department store here often carries the same knife at a better price. That is the buy-later trick, and it is why day four in Tokyo was a look, not a purchase.

Kanazawa Castle is next door and we skip it. Same call as the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The 10-year-old does not enjoy castles, so we do not force one.

Evening

Soba at Aman. Handmade, served cold on a bamboo tray with a dipping broth you finish at the end with the hot soba water, and the place we send everyone who got hooked on cold dipping soba in Tokyo. Whatever the boys discover they like earlier in the trip, Kanazawa is where they get the better version. Aman is the soba shop we go back to. The bowl in the photo is ours.

Maya wanted the kimono dress-up. The boys will not, and she should not let that stop her. It is about thirty dollars for the day, they collect the clothes from the hotel, and the samurai district after dark is the place to wear it.

After dinner, the Nagamachi samurai district once the streets empty out.

Where you sleep

Four nights in Kanazawa, in a room that would cost twice as much in Kyoto. The savings here are the reason the trip can end with a points splurge in Tokyo.