Kanazawa Shinise Kinenkan

This guide to Kanazawa Shinise Kinenkan follows a building put up in 1878 for a single night's use: lodging for the Meiji Emperor during a tour of the Hokuriku region, built by the Nakaya family, Kanazawa's most respected apothecaries. It traces the family's real business back to 1579, when a merchant named Hikobei first opened for trade, and to the trust the fifth Maeda lord later placed in them to prepare medicine for his own household. Inside, the ground floor recreates the mise-no-ma, the open shop counter where clerks once weighed out roots and powders by hand, and upstairs sit more than a thousand pharmacy tools registered as protected folk-culture property. You'll find the reception room, tea room and garden tucked just past the old shop counter.