Ishikawa

The family that ruled here held the largest income in the country after the shoguns themselves, and a domain that wealthy with a large army would have invited exactly the kind of attention it wanted to avoid. So it spent conspicuously on culture instead — patronising dyeing, lacquer, porcelain, gold beating and the tea ceremony on a scale that turned them into industries.

That is why the city today is not a place with a craft museum but a place where the crafts are still trades. Workshops take visitors, several of the techniques can be tried in an afternoon, and the material shows up in ordinary shops rather than only in galleries. The city also escaped bombing in the war, so the teahouse quarters and the samurai streets are continuous fabric rather than reconstruction. Budget at least one half-day for making something rather than looking at it; that is the distinctive thing on offer.

Three days: two for Kanazawa and one for Noto or Kaga. Kanazawa is two and a half hours from Tokyo on the shinkansen and is genuinely a two-day city — a great garden, a samurai district, two preserved teahouse quarters, a serious craft tradition and a fish market — and rushing it into one is the standard mistake.

The peninsula is the other half. Noto stretches a hundred kilometres north of the city and needs a car; Wajima's morning market is around two hours' drive, and the coastal road beyond it is the point rather than the destination. Kaga, south of Kanazawa, is hot-spring country about forty minutes down the line and works as a night rather than a day.

Five days does the city, the peninsula and a Kaga onsen properly, and that is the trip this prefecture is shaped for.

The Hokuriku Shinkansen reaches Kanazawa in about two and a half hours from Tokyo, and since the 2024 extension it continues to Tsuruga; from Osaka or Kyoto you take the Thunderbird and change. Komatsu Airport is about 40 minutes from the city by bus. Kanazawa itself is compact enough to walk, with a loop bus covering the castle, Kenrokuen and the teahouse districts. Noto is the problem: the peninsula railway was cut back years ago, buses are sparse, and the earthquake damaged roads that are still being restored. Treat a car as necessary for Noto and verify road status before you set out.

Kanazawa is a year-round city, but the winter is grey and wet on this coast — the local saying is that you should not forget your umbrella even if you forget your lunch — and the garden under snow, with its rope supports on the pines, is a specific attraction rather than a consolation.

The weeks to avoid are the peak of autumn colour and the cherry season in the garden, when the city's hotel prices roughly double and the main sights queue. On the peninsula the constraint is different: winter storms off the Sea of Japan make the coastal road unpleasant and some services stop, so Noto is a spring-to-autumn proposition for most visitors.

North of the city a long peninsula reaches into the sea, and it is the counterweight to the polished castle town — salt pans worked by hand, terraced fields running to a cliff edge, lacquer workshops, small fishing harbours. It was struck hard by the earthquake at the start of 2024 and sections of it remain under repair.

That does not mean writing it off; it means planning it from current sources. Confirm road conditions, which services are running and where accommodation has reopened before committing a day to it, rather than relying on a route someone published earlier. Go with a car, allow far more time than the distances suggest because detours are likely, and spend money locally while you are there. If the peninsula turns out not to be workable on your dates, the hot-spring district south of the city is the straightforward substitute.

Kanazawa's Omicho market has traded fish since the Edo period and the kaisen-don bowls there are the standard lunch; snow crab and sweet shrimp run from November to March. Jibuni is the local stew — duck dusted in flour, simmered with wheat gluten until the broth thickens — and it appears on almost every kaiseki menu. Gold leaf is a Kanazawa industry and turns up on soft-serve, which is more a demonstration than a flavour. Wajima on the Noto coast makes the lacquerware and, in normal times, runs a morning market.

Winter here is grey and wet rather than reliably white, though the mountains get real snow — Kenrokuen's pine trees are roped into snow-support cones from November, which is one of the sights in itself. January highs sit around 7°C and the rain is persistent, so locals carry umbrellas as a habit. Crab season runs from November to March. Spring and autumn are the comfortable months for the gardens and the craft workshops, and the Hyakumangoku festival fills Kanazawa in early June. Summer is hot and humid in the low 30s°C. The Noto coast is best from May to October.

Kanazawa needs nothing — it is compact, it has a loop bus built for visitors, and the shinkansen puts it within easy reach of Tokyo. Kaga's onsen towns are on the local line south with a short bus at the end.

Noto is a car, unambiguously. The peninsula's bus services are built for residents, the distances between the coast, the market town and the shrine at the tip are substantial, and the coastal road with its rice terraces above the sea is a driving route in the literal sense. Note that the peninsula was hit by a major earthquake at the start of 2024 and recovery is ongoing in places, so check current road and business conditions rather than assuming a route is as it was.

A first visit is Kanazawa, and it should be slower than planned. The city escaped wartime bombing, which is why the teahouse districts and the samurai quarter are actual streets rather than reconstructions, and why the gold-leaf and lacquer trades still operate rather than being commemorated. Two days: the garden at opening, the market for lunch, a craft workshop, and an evening in one of the teahouse quarters.

The second visit is Noto, with a car and no fixed plan. Rice terraces dropping to the sea, a coast road with almost no traffic on it, lacquer workshops in Wajima, salt made by hand from seawater, and a shrine at the very tip of the peninsula. It is the emptiest, most rewarding driving in central Japan, and it is ninety minutes from a shinkansen station.