A visit to the “Nomura Family Samurai House”:http://www.nomurake.com/ was listed on our itinerary as an option whilst briefly staying at the fabulous “Hotel Nikko”:http://www.silvertraveladvisor.com/review/accommodation/163417 in Kanazawa.
We walked from the hotel, rather than taking the bus, and struggled to find the house at first in what was a maze of narrow streets in the old part of the city.
We paid the small entrance fee and took off our shoes. Not really knowing what to expect, we found a series of tatami-matted rooms with low door frames so Roy had to get into stooping mode again. It was fairly small with only a few fairly uninteresting exhibits of swords, coins, manuscripts and letters labelled in Japanese and English.
One letter, from Yoshikage Asakura, which caught my eye said:
‘We appreciate that you worked so hard to kill one high ranked soldier on 4th of last month at the Yokokitaguchi battle. We are very happy that you brought us his head’. It was dated 9 October 1566.
Having seen the size of some of the samurai swords on display, cutting off a head wouldn’t be a problem.
For me, the best part was the garden which although tiny managed to fit in a number of small trees, trickling stream and bridges, moss covered stones and lanters, and statues covered in ‘thatch’ to protect them from the snow.
Just as we were leaving a group of 15 Chinese tourists arrived and so we were pleased we’d been able to see the place in relative quietness.