Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of History

This guide to the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of History in Kanazawa starts inside a former ammunition depot, three red-brick halls built between 1909 and 1914 for the Kanazawa Army, where shelves that once held rifle rounds now hold paper offerings of rice cakes. It follows the buildings from arsenal to art school to, by 1986, a museum of the prefecture's history and folklore, and turns to a household called the toya who spend a year secretly preparing a festival meal for a god. Look closely at the offering trays of mountain vegetables, sea bream and mugwort rice cakes laid out for shrines like Ketamajinja.