Nomura-ke Samurai Heritage Residence

This guide to the Nomura-ke Samurai Heritage Residence in Kanazawa opens with a puzzle: the house you're standing in was never actually home to the Nomura family, who served Kanazawa's ruling Maeda clan as samurai retainers for eleven generations until the class was abolished in 1871 and their mansion was torn down. You'll hear how a shipping magnate named Kubo Hikobei later bought the ruined site and grafted rooms taken from an entirely different mansion onto what remained. Only the stream beneath the veranda, drawn from the old Onosho canal past a four-hundred-year-old bayberry tree, survived from the original. Sip matcha upstairs in the small tea room and look down over the patchwork of history below.