Today, we started the day at Higashide Coffee. We arrived around 9:15am, but there was already quite a few people waiting outside. In a way, we were fortunate, as the staff spoke little English. Because people were already waiting outside, we knew to follow suit. We eventually got a seat at the bar, and ordered our coffee, a toast and a piece of cake. The toast and cake were both recommended in the reviews we had read, and didn't disappoint
After the our coffee, we made our way to Kenroku-en garden. The garden was beautiful, and well taken care of. As we were there pretty early in the day, the garden was not yet packed with all the tour buses of people. This allowed us to better enjoy the garden. While the cherry blossom season was over, many of the tree's still had plenty of cherry blossoms in bloom.
After Kenroku-en, we found place nearby to have lunch. We popped into this small shop that many locals appeared to be going into. In addition to what we ended up ordering, we also attempted to order a bowl of udon. The staff however, told us the 2 dishes we ordered was already more than sufficient 😅. Wincy oredered the Fish of the Day, while I had the tempura. Staff were right! don't think we would've been able to have an additional bowl of noodles.
After lunch, we started heading towards the Gyokusenin Maru Garden. On the way however, we passed by this Dog Shrine, and had to check it out
And then the Kanzawa Art Museum (on a Closed day lol), but they still had some free exhibits we were able to see. Such as this bunny lying on the ground, in an Air Conditioned room. The story behind this exhibit is written on the paper hung on the wall. Needless to say, I watched the bunny for probably 30 mins to see if it would flinch. Even though I was certain there wasn't an actual person in the costume, there was a slight element of doubt 😊
After the art museum, we finally made it to Gyokusenin Maru Garden. Even though this garden is much smaller than Kenroku-en, its scenery was still marvelous.
We had some time before our dinner reservation, so we checked out the ninja & samurai districts. In the samurai district, we came across a preserved samurai house with a beautiful garden/pond in the back. Unfortunately the ninja district was closing by the time we arrived.
For dinner tonight, we had a reservation at an Izakaya called Appare. Staff spoke minimal english, but Google Translate helped a lot. We ordered a variety of items, including a sashimi boat. Maybe it was because we were non-japanese, but the staff came by to check if their presentation style was okay with us. We had observed other sashimi boats being served earlier, which included loud music and lots of yelling in Japanese. Even though we told them it was okay, seems we got a more subtle version.
