Archive for May 20th, 2004:
Ninja-dera
It was a really rainy day today, but we all wanted to go see Kanazawa’s famous “Ninja-dera,” a temple in the Temple District of Kanazawa. There were tons of temples in this tiny area (thus the name), but Ninja-dera was especially well known for its complexity. It had 6 or 7 floors concealed in a building that only appeared 3 stories high (since that was the height limit by law when it was built), as well as dozens of secret passageways, a suicide room, trap doors, and all sorts of amazing technologies for a secret fortress. I think it was supposed to be a secret hiding base for Lord Maeda should the castle have fallen to invaders.
We had hell trying to find the place. It was raining and our umbrellas made it hard to see far, and the area was so crowded and packed with temples and dead-end alleys that we couldn’t tell where one temple ended and the next one began. It was all so gorgeous though!