Together We Explore

Today was the day to explore the city of Kanazawa. The Illinois College students were split up among the Kanazawa students and we went to visit places throughout the city. The people in my group were Julia, Kristen, and Sam. Mioko was supposed to come as well but she had felt ill and stayed in to get well. We started the day off at 10 am and had our usual breakfast at 8 am. The first place we went to was a little store where we went upstairs and saw that we were going to paint the Ishikawa mascot. I chose the one that was already painted yellow where we were given about an hour to design them however we wanted. I ended up just making lines that were red and black with white dots in them. Then, I filled in spaces that was a color brown. Turns out, I subconsciously used the medicine wheel colors that is basically pan-tribal within Native American cultures. It was neat to see that I added a taste of myself within the Japanese culture.

My group posing with the little mascot

After we painted, we walked towards a garden that had a restaurant inside that we ate in for lunch. I made lunch interesting because I was confusing the Kanazawa students when I said I wanted an egg roll. They didn’t know what an egg roll was and it took about five minutes to figure that out. When they did figure it out, I had to explain that I just wanted it as a side. It turns out that I couldn’t have it as a side and that I had to order a whole other meal in order to have the egg roll. So I just stuck with having noodles and rice. It was pretty good. When we were done, we walked around the beautiful garden for about a half hour. There was this little shrine where if you threw a coin and it got stuck, you were able to make a wish. We stood at that shrine for about 15 minutes trying to make a coin stick and only about a quarter of us managed to do this. I was one of them J. I got it stuck on a piece of moss that was growing on the shrine. Right next to the garden, there was a castle. We went and visited that and only took pictures on the front lawn. Apparently, it was rebuilt because the first one burnt down sometime ago. 

The pond in the garden

Julia and I in front of the castle

The next spot we went to was the Higash-chaya district. Here, we had Japanese sweets and green tea in the restaurant. It was very delicious. Then we walked through the district where we looked at some things we could eat that edible gold, or buy items that had gold in them. I bought ice cream that had edible gold and it really didn’t taste like anything. Just tasted like vanilla ice cream. Afterwards, we found the other group and went back to the hotel. Later, I got to go to dinner with Mioko and Professor Klein. We ate at a French restaurant in the mall next to the Kanazawa station. It was really good. I got pasta and unlimited bread and drinks. After that, I went back to the hotel room and fell asleep for the night. It was great.

The Japanese Sweet

A stroll through the Higash-chaya district 

My ice cream with real gold on it!