Friday, May 26, 2006
Kanazawa
Today's day trip from Kyoto took us up to Kanazawa on the north coast on the excitingly named 'Thunderbird' express train. Highlight of the day here was the Myoryuji Temple, more commonly known (in the guide books anyway) as Ninja-Dera. Anything with the word 'Ninja' in the title is bound to make for a steady flow of tourists. We were lucky to turn up in time for a tour, these are only conducted in Japanese but they have a really handy homemade booklet for the English speakers to follow along with. There's no mention of actual Ninjas in the tour, but the temple was the home of an important lord who had numerous Samurai around to defend him against all the other lords who wanted to stick sharp swords into him (obviously we're summarising the story a bit here). It might not have had Ninjas but it did have many great features to help the main man stay alive. So it really does have secret doors, hidden floor compartments, trapdoors, and of course a small hidden room where if all else had failed the lord would be able to honourably commit suicide. Unfortunately, as is the case with almost all the temples and shrines that we've visited here, you can't actually take any photographs inside So you will just have to take our word for it that we aren't making it all up after one Sake too many.......
More Kanazawa photos here, here and here.
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