We had the opportunity to pound rice into mochi, a sort of small Japanese cake, in Kanazawa.
One of the shops we visited only sold crazy metalworks like this Alien-themed chair.
A fox mask at the Noh museum, the coolest one. Noh is a type of wordless performance that relies on light catching the masks at certain angles and the subtlety of movement to perform.
We visited this castle and got to climb up to the top. I wish I remembered the name.
When we visited Shirakawa, in addition to making mochi we got to tour the grounds.
Japanese tea ceremony is super famous and in Kanazawa we were lucky enough to be served tea in a traditional fashion. The sweet on the left cancels the bitter taste of the tea on the right.
One of the places we went in Kanazawa was famous for its many streets of tea shops.
This is the view from the path we hiked up of the entire Shirakawago Heritage site.
For our big field trip this semester, IES Tokyo took us to Kanazawa. The trip was great. We got to do a couple of pretty cool activities, like help pound mochi and paint chopsticks gold. We also went to a Noh Museum, got served tea in a traditional Japanese tea house, visited one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a village, and ninja temple that actually wasn’t ninja in any way. It was great to spend so much time with the IES group as a whole since life in Japan is so fractured and we have classes on different campuses. Rather than talk more about it, the pictures are definitely cooler. Enjoy!