No matter what my sister says, no matter how much she threatens me in email, I know that she’s all about the shopping. Sure she’ll go sightseeing, but only if it’s on the way to the store.

We went to Kanazawa today, which is only about 45 minutes from Toyama where we’re staying with the Kawasakis. Kanazawa (or a suburb) is where Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees is from, and also has the famous Kenrokuen Garden that is one of the three most beautiful gardens of Japan (they like making lists here). It was part of the castle there and has been open to the public since 1875. I didn’t take all that many pictures of the trees or plants. That’s my dad’s life, not mine. I’m more likely to take pictures of the little old ladies picking the leaves out of the garden to make the garden more picturesque.

I did take a couple of pictures of them preparing the trees for winter. It snows pretty heavily on this side of Japan and the tree limbs are tied to a central post to keep them from breaking under the weight.

They’re just tying up the trees now both at the garden and in Toyama.

The gardens were part of the castle but were outside of the gate. The gate and castle walls are all that remain, but they’re pretty impressive and are undergoing a renovation right now.

After an expensive tourist-trap lunch, we went to a Ninja Temple, which really had nothing to do with the Ninja but had lots of hiding spaces and trickery. We also went to a shopping street which wasn’t that great, but are rapidly disappearing in Japan. The smaller stores in the central parts of town are going out of business unless they relocate to the large shopping malls that are becoming the norm.

So we did do some shopping, so the day wasn’t a complete loss in my sister’s measure of things. I ended up in a couple of goofy shops looking at traditional Japanese candies and foods that I found a bit dull, but I’m sure it was better than dragging my mom and her friends to another electronics store.