Kanazawa

General view of the castle.

Moat.

Stone-dropping window.

Construction techniques.

We all loved the atmosphere of this city on the east coast. After a late (for us) breakfast, we set off in the bus to Kenrokuen, a famously beautiful landscape garden, where we had plenty of free time to wander around on our own.

I was more interested in seeing Kanazawa Castle and spent a long time inside, looking at all the displays about construction techniques, mainly in wood. There was a video in Japanese, which showed how beams were fastened together with pegs of wood. This enabled high floors to be erected, but the material made it susceptible to fire ( which occurred a lot in Japanese castles!). I liked the holes in the floors of corner turrets, designed for rolling heavy stones onto enemies attempting to scale the walls.

Stone-dropping windows from outside.

Archaeological excavations going on outside.
The archaeologists were all at lunch and got back to work at 1.00 pm exactly.

Roof construction using timber and lead.

Scale model of the castle.