Kanazawa
Japan
A garden three hundred years in the making, gold leaf on everything, and a samurai district that survived the war
Photo by Robby McCullough on Unsplash
Photos by Benjamin Dillon, Roméo A., Bruna Santos and moreau tokyo on Unsplash
Best time to visit all of Japan
April to May, and October to November (winter is grey and wet, summer is humid)
Climate month by month
The next sixteen daysOpen-Meteo
Average high and low · °C
Rainfall · mm per month
Best months to visit This month · wettest 275mm in Dec
Where it is
36.56°N, 136.66°E Open in Google Maps
Things to do
A week easily- Be at Kenroku-en when it opens, which is before the coaches
- Walk Higashi Chaya in the early evening when the lanterns come on
- Eat breakfast at Omicho market
- See the samurai houses and the water channels at Nagamachi
- Try gold leaf, and then eat something better
Kanazawa travel tipsthe general rules
Currency budget Japan
Mid-rangeCash matters here more than in Tokyo — the tea houses, the craft shops and the market stalls are cash-only more often than not.
ATMs & cards
7-Eleven and Japan Post machines take foreign cards, as everywhere in Japan. There is a 7-Eleven inside the station, which is the easiest one to find.
Avoid these
- ordinary bank ATMs, which mostly refuse foreign cards
Use these instead
- 7-Eleven
- Japan Post Bank
There is a 7-Eleven inside the station, which is the easiest machine to find. The tea houses and craft shops are frequently cash-only.
Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.
Safety all of Japan
Very safeExtremely safe and easy to walk. The winter is the thing nobody warns you about: Kanazawa is one of the wettest cities in Japan and it rains or snows most days from November to March. The famous garden ropes go up for snow in November, which is a sight in itself.
Where to walk, and where to pay attention (5 areas)
Comfortable, including after dark
Worth more attention
- Katamachi on a Friday night — student drinking rather than any real trouble
Our own assessment, not a sourced index.
Entry & visa Japan visa rules
No visa neededup to 90 days
A pre-travel electronic authorisation (JESTA) is being introduced — check the official link for whether it applies to your dates.
Other passports
Visa required in advance
How to get it: Nothing to arrange for visa-free entry. Use the Visit Japan Web service to pre-file immigration and customs and skip the paper forms.
Entry rules change often and depend on your passport, not where you live — the official page above is the authority, and the airline checks before you board.
Before you fly: the arrival card
Visit Japan WebOptional
Any time before you fly. Register the account early; the trip details can wait.
Have these in front of you before you start:
- passport
- flight number
- the full address of your first night
Not compulsory, but immigration and customs both have a QR lane for it and the other queue is long.
Use the official link above. Sites that charge a "service fee" to submit one of these for you are not the government, and they want the same passport details the real form does.
Health & emergencies all of Japan
Good and affordableRequired to enter
No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.
Jabs worth having, and what happens if you need a doctor
Worth having
- Routine vaccinations up to date
- Japanese encephalitis only for long rural stays in summer
Getting treated
Superb, and ambulances are free. Treatment is not: visitors pay in full up front, and hospitals routinely refuse cards, so carry cash and real insurance. Finding English-speaking staff outside major cities is the harder problem — the JNTO medical directory is worth bookmarking before you go.
Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.
Food tip
OutstandingKaga cuisine, and seafood from the Sea of Japan that Tokyo chefs come here to buy. Nodoguro is the fish to order. Gold leaf on ice cream is a gimmick, and the city invented it, so have one anyway.
Getting around
Easy- UberWorks here
- GOWorks here
- DiDiWorks here
- S.RIDEWorks here
- BoltNot here
- GrabNot here
GO the big taxi-hailing app, and the one to install · Uber which dispatches ordinary taxis here · DiDi taxis again · S.RIDE Tokyo
- Against a taxi
- Identical — every app in Japan hails a licensed taxi on the meter.
Japan legalised a narrow form of ride-sharing in 2024, but in practice what arrives is still a taxi with a white-gloved driver.
Time zone and your working day
Asia/Tokyo — 13 hours ahead of you
0 hours of overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are — — your time, — theirs.
No overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are. Working from here means one of you keeps odd hours — their day starts at 20:00 on your clock.
office hours both at once night
Their 09:00–17:00 is 20:00–04:00 on yours.
The difference from the UK, Europe, the US and ten more
Worked out against America/New York, which is where this request looks like it came from.
Internet speedall of Japan
Why these are Japan's numbers and not Kanazawa's
Home broadband — Fast. Several people on calls at once, large uploads, 4K. Broadband here runs at 1.8× the global median of 130 Mbps.
Mobile data — Fair. Maps, calls and streaming; tethering a laptop works for an hour, not a day. Mobile runs at 61% of the global median of 109 Mbps.
Ookla publishes no separate figure for Kanazawa, so these are medians for all of Japan. Cities usually beat the national number and remote islands and national parks fall well below it — treat this as the country's shape, not as a measurement of the street you will be staying on.
A median is the middle of every connection tested there, old copper and new fibre together — so in a country part-way through laying fibre it sits well below what a fibre line actually delivers, and a rental on one can run several times this number. Half of the connections are slower; a fibre flat is rarely one of them. It says what a place can do, not what your rental does, so every listing on Holistay carries its own measured speed and the date it was tested.
Getting online: Airalo or Holafly — a data eSIM for Japan, installed before you fly and working the moment you land.
Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured June 2026
Must-see
Nearby day trips
Say a few words
Japanese
- Helloこんにちは — Konnichiwakon-nee-chee-WA
- Pleaseお願いします — Onegaishimasuo-neh-gai-shi-MAS
- Thank youありがとうございます — Arigatou gozaimasua-ri-ga-TOH go-zai-mas
- Yes / Noはい / いいえ — Hai / Iiehi / EE-eh
4 more phrases
- Excuse meすみません — Sumimasensoo-mi-ma-SEN
- How much is it?いくらですか — Ikura desu ka?ee-KOO-ra des ka
- The bill, pleaseお会計お願いします — Okaikei onegaishimasuo-KAI-kay
- Cheers!乾杯 — Kanpai!kan-PIE
Sumimasen does double duty as excuse me, sorry and to get a waiter’s attention. It is the single most useful word here.
Religion
Shinto and Buddhist, practised together
Most Japanese observe both without conflict — Shinto for birth and marriage, Buddhist for funerals. Few describe themselves as religious. Purify hands and mouth at the shrine basin before approaching.
Do's and don'ts
Do
- Take shoes off wherever you see a step up or shoes lined up
- Carry your rubbish until you find a bin — there are almost none in public
- Stand in the queue markings on platforms and let passengers off first
- Receive business cards and change with two hands
Don't
- Do not tip — it causes confusion and can be refused as insulting
- Do not talk on the phone on trains, and keep conversation quiet
- Do not stick chopsticks upright in rice or pass food chopstick to chopstick; both echo funeral rites
- Do not photograph geiko and maiko in Gion — some streets ban it outright and fine offenders
Where to stay in Kanazawa
No Holistay rentals in Kanazawa yet — the platform is just opening up. Every listing here will have a video tour and the option to negotiate the nightly price directly with the host.
In the meantime, here is Kanazawa on the sites that do have the inventory — each search is already filled in:
- Booking.com hotels, guesthouses and apartments — the widest coverage almost everywhere
- Airbnb whole homes and apartments, and the better option for a week or more
How to get there
Fly into Komatsu KMQ
40 minfrom the airport· 29 km as the crow flies
40 min by bus.
Also worth pricing: Tokyo Haneda HND — most arrive by shinkansen, 2h30 from Tokyo.
Google Flights · Rome2Rio for the trains, buses and ferries as well as the flights
