Forecast for lots of rain today, luckily our AIRBNB has lots of umbrellas, plus we have the 2 free umbrellas that we have on loan from the train station. Who knew it rains here 70% of the time, not us when we picked here to visit lol.

We were to meet Heather this morning at 21 Century Museum of Contemporary Art, about 18 minute walk from our place. We left a bit early for pictures and just looking around. After about 20 minutes we were still 18 minutes from the museum, oops we started off in the wrong direction, so unlike us lol. One of the pictures we had seen a lot of was the Swimming Pool Exhibit, unfortunately sold out for the day, and this was at 10AM. It was quite busy in the museum, I think lots of people looking for something indoors to do with the forecast, but so far not much rain. We spent about an hour in the museum, you need to buy separate tickets for different exhibits and one was enough, even though the old man over 65 did not need to pay anything to enter again.

Next off we head to Kenroku-en garden, one of the top 3 gardens in Japan. We have a tea ceremony booked here for 2 this afternoon so we have a couple of hours to explore and find a little something to eat. This garden is absolutely beautiful. I think maybe the best we have seen so far. It was not very busy, and the largest we have been in so far. A few of the peach trees were in bloom and a couple of cherry trees, but it is further behind here than Hiroshima as it is quite further North and everything will bloom a little later. Most impressive was how the large trees are being supported by poles, very interesting. We have seen this before in our travels, but never this many. We find a little shop that has yaki-dango and they have one especially for spring time so I get that one, Andre gets tuna. I have had these twice now, twice is enough for me.

We spend more time just wandering the grounds and then off to our tea ceremony. It was led by a girl from France, and a girl from Japan. They made us matcha tea and then we each made ourselves a cup. Lots of rituals, how to hold the cup, how many times you can sip from it, how to slurp on the last sip, how to wash everything before and after. We also had some very pretty pastries to go with it, they are quite sweet and you eat them before the tea to balance out the tea taste.

After tea we split up and head back to our apartment for a break. On the way home it pours buckets, umbrellas and rain jackets helped but we still got pretty wet. My boots may not be dry by the time we leave in 2 days.

Decide to go visit the Higashi Chaya District - one of the geisha districts in Kanazawa. Not too much going on while we were there, we were hoping to find somewhere to eat. We will need to go back in the daylight to explore this area too.

Looked at a few places and couldn't find something interesting to eat so just picked up some things at the grocery store and headed home. An early night after another full day.

Steps 23,235 / 14.75 kms