Kanazawa

The garden lets you in free in the early morning, before the ticket desk opens, and at that hour it is mostly photographers. From 1 November the pines are roped into snow cones. Some people come only to watch that work.

A circular glass building with no front, entered from any direction. Seeing Leandro's pool from underneath needs a ticket to the paid zone; looking down into it from above is free.

A street of latticed wooden teahouses, all but empty before ten in the morning. Only two or three open their interiors. The gold-leaf shops mixed in among them are where the leafed ice cream is sold.

Over 170 stalls under one arcade, and a fair number shut on Sundays. Get upstairs to the restaurants before eleven to miss the queue. In crab season live and boiled carry visibly different prices.

The rebuilt turrets are left open inside so you can see timber joined without nails. The park is free and one bridge links it to Kenrokuen, which is why the two are usually walked together.

The earthen-walled lanes are too narrow for cars, and people still live behind them. From December to March the walls are wrapped in straw mats against snow and salt air. The dates barely move from year to year.

Booking by phone is compulsory and you move through in a guided group. There is no photography inside and no preschool children are admitted. With 23 rooms and 29 staircases you are climbing the whole way round.

A teahouse row along the Asano river, quieter than the Higashi district. Two narrow stone stairways climb from the water into the lanes. After dark the latticed windows light up on the river.

The sparseness is the design. A courtyard of water and one empty room is nearly all of it. Every three minutes or so ripples are set off across the surface. Sitting to watch them is what you do here.

Two timber columns shaped like drums stand before the station under a dome of thousands of glass panels. It keeps the rain off, so you wait for the bus under it. The columns light up at night.

The shrine to Maeda Toshiie, founder of the Kaga domain. Its gate, built in 1875 with a Dutchman's hand in the design, carries stained-glass windows on the top storey. After dark the windows are lit and the coloured glass shows from outside.

Kanazawa beats out over 99% of the gold leaf made in Japan. This museum shows the tools and steps that thin gold down to 1/10000mm. Workshops near Higashi Chaya let you lay leaf onto chopsticks or a plate yourself.

The smallest of Kanazawa's three teahouse quarters, just below the Teramachi temple district. Red-latticed houses line a short lane, far emptier than Higashi Chaya. Some evenings you can hear a geisha's shamisen from inside.

A mountain temple in Komatsu with small halls clinging to a cliff of strangely shaped rock. Narrow stone steps climb between the boulders to a hall overlooking a pond and maples. Autumn colour brings the crowds, about an hour from Kanazawa by train and bus.

A gorge walk in the Kaga onsen village of Yamanaka, once visited by Basho. It runs from the cypress Korogi Bridge to Kurotani Bridge, with the red, S-curved Ayatori Bridge midway. At about 1.3km, it fits a stroll before the bath.