Kanazawa shinise kinenkan is a museum that displays merchant’s cultural stuff used around 100 years ago. The building was built in 1878 and was a pharmacy.
Shinise means a family of pedigree doing same business for long years and kinenkan means museum.
The entrance fee is only 100yen. This is very in expensive as a Japanese museum – normally you have to pay 500yen or more. Still the exhibition is really nice and worth visiting.
Things to see
You can see how to sell medicine during federal samurai period (Edo period). The shop assistant were sitting on the tatami floor. There are lots of drawer that keeps medicine.
They have a tea room, they don’t have a tea ceremony though. However, you can stroll the tea garden.
They also display engagement gifts. In Kanazawa in old days, bridegroom’s parents gave many gifts to bride’s parents. Some of them are weird. That includes kelp and squid. Kelp was considered to be a symbol of giving a birth and squid was considered to be a symbol of happy-girl.
Nowadays, very few people give such kinds of gift, still some of bridegroom’s parents give bride’s parents money. Sometimes, it is half a million yen. In exchange, bride’s parents buy furnitures for new house.
Their collection about merchant stuff would be interesting, too.
The most amazing is handcraft sweets. When it comes to sweets, you will imagine something small, however sweats hear is fairly big. It is like bonsai tree and more than 1m wide and 1m tall.
