Kanazawa appears four times on the national list of Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings, which the Agency for Cultural Affairs published with 130 entries as of 1 September 2026. Two of those four are filed under the classification the list calls a teahouse town, and only one other district in the whole country carries that label on its own.
Two of the three districts filed as a teahouse town and nothing else stand in Kanazawa
The list gives every district a classification, a selection date and an area in hectares. Three rows out of 130 carry the classification teahouse town by itself, and two of them are in Kanazawa.
| District | Prefecture | Selected | Area (ha) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kanazawa, Higashiyama-Higashi | Ishikawa | 14 November 2001 | 1.8 |
| Kanazawa, Kazuemachi | Ishikawa | 9 June 2008 | 0.6 |
| Kyoto, Gion Shinbashi | Kyoto | 4 September 1976 | 1.4 |
One further district carries the words as half of a compound classification: Obama Nishigumi in Fukui, selected on 9 June 2008 at 19.1 hectares, is filed as merchant town and teahouse town. Counting that row, four of the 130 mention a teahouse town at all.
The version read here carries exactly four Kanazawa rows: Higashiyama-Higashi, Kazuemachi, Utatsusan-Sanroku and Teramachidai. No row anywhere in the 130 is named Nishi Chaya-gai, which is the third Kanazawa street that carries the chaya name. Walking all three chaya streets therefore means walking two nationally selected districts and one street that this list does not cover at all.
The same city holds both districts the list files as temple towns
The other two Kanazawa rows are classified as temple towns, and those two rows are the only ones in the 130 with that exact classification; a third, Tsuyama Josai in Okayama, is filed as temple town and merchant town. Utatsusan-Sanroku was selected on 29 November 2011 at 22.1 hectares, and Teramachidai on 28 December 2012 at 22.0 hectares. One sits on a slope and one on a plateau, and each is more than twelve times the area of Higashiyama-Higashi by my own division.
Two further things fall out of the same table. Ishikawa carries eight rows and Nagano carries eight rows, and by my own count of the 130 entries no prefecture carries more. And Kazuemachi, at 0.6 hectares, is the smallest area printed anywhere in the list; the largest is Nagiso’s Tsumago-juku in Nagano at 1,245.4 hectares. Both of those comparisons are mine, made by reading down the area column, not statements the Agency prints.
The 21st Century Museum building is free to walk into, and the exhibition zone is not
The museum splits itself into two zones and prices them separately. Its visitor page states that entry to the building, the zone it calls the public zone, costs nothing, and that entering the exhibition zone requires a paid exhibition ticket. That is why the answer to whether the museum is free is two answers. The building itself sits on one side of that line and the ticketed galleries sit on the other. The museum also posted a notice on 20 August 2026 that the work it calls the Swimming Pool would be closed from 19 October to 30 October 2026, so a named work can be shut while the building is open, and the museum states that viewing its underground part needs a ticket for either exhibition.
The two zones keep different hours and close on different days
The exhibition zone opens 10:00 to 18:00, and until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. The public zone opens 9:00 to 22:00, which is one hour earlier in the morning and four hours later at night. Same-day tickets are sold at the window from 9:30 and sales stop 30 minutes before the exhibition zone closes.
The closing days diverge as well. The exhibition zone closes on Mondays, moving to the next weekday when the Monday is a public holiday, and over the new-year period. The public zone closes only over the new-year period. For the year running from January 2026 to March 2027 the museum also publishes a dated list of every closed day, and that list carries five dated irregular entries: extra openings on Monday 26 October 2026 and on Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 January 2027, an extra closure on Tuesday 27 October 2026, and a complete shutdown of the whole building from 29 December 2026 to 1 January 2027.
Parking under the museum is open 08:30 to 23:00, and no vehicle can enter or leave between 23:00 and 08:30 the next morning. The first 30 minutes of the base charge cost nothing and the time charge is 150 yen for every 30 minutes after that, with a flat 1,000 yen for a car left across the overnight window. The free first 30 minutes carry a condition: on weekdays from 17:45, and on Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays and at the start of the new year, the base-charge discount has to be validated inside the building, at the general information desk or the basement entrance. A driver who does not validate pays a base charge of 350 yen per 30 minutes on top of the time charge.
The over-65 rate is the same number as the adult group rate on both exhibitions
Ticket prices are set per exhibition rather than per museum, so the page carries one row for each show on at the time of reading, with the full year set out in a separate price sheet. Figures in brackets are the rate for groups of 20 or more.
| Ticket | Collection exhibition | Special exhibition |
|---|---|---|
| Adult | 450 yen (360) | 1,200 yen (1,000) |
| University or vocational student | 310 yen (240) | 800 yen (600) |
| Primary, junior high and high school | Free, ticket still issued | 400 yen (300) |
| Aged 65 and over | 360 yen | 1,000 yen |
Read across the bottom row and the pattern is exact: 360 yen matches the adult group rate for the collection exhibition, and 1,000 yen matches the adult group rate for the special exhibition. Pre-school children are admitted at no charge. Holders of a physical disability, rehabilitation or mental health welfare certificate, and one carer, pay the group rate on presentation of the certificate when buying a same-day ticket, and the museum states that the Mirairo ID app is accepted for the same reduction. Kanazawa residents are admitted free to the collection exhibition on the seven dates the city calls art encouragement days, and to both the collection and special exhibitions on the day it calls the citizens’ art day, on production of identification showing an address.
The museum has published a closure that runs from May 2027 into 2028
On the same page the museum states that it plans to close for major repair work from 6 May 2027 until some point in March 2028, and that it will extend the validity of its Museum Link Pass by eleven months to compensate. That is a longer shutdown than any single line in the closed-day calendar, and the museum has carried it in its news column since 8 June 2026 as well as on the ticketing page.
Kanazawa’s rainfall normal is 2,401.5 mm a year
The Japan Meteorological Agency publishes thirty-year normals for Kanazawa covering 1991 to 2020. The annual precipitation normal is 2,401.5 mm. The wettest month is December at 301.1 mm, followed by January at 256.0 mm and November at 250.8 mm; the driest is May at 138.0 mm. Only two months of the twelve sit below 150 mm. The shape of the year is what the figures settle: the peak months are late autumn and winter rather than the summer rain front.
January is the colder month by mean temperature and February by mean daily minimum
The two coldest months are close enough that the answer depends on which column is read. January has a mean temperature of 4.0 degrees and February 4.2. But February has the lower mean daily minimum, 1.0 degrees against January’s 1.2, while January has the lower mean daily maximum, 7.1 against 7.8.
Snow is recorded in the same table. The annual normal for total snowfall depth is 157 cm, the deepest snow cover normal is 32 cm, and snow is observed on 73.9 days a year. January alone accounts for 67 cm of the 157. Three columns of the Kanazawa table — cloud cover, fog days and thunder days — carry the agency’s reference-value mark, which the page defines as meaning a figure that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normals, so those three are left out here, and the solar radiation column is blank with a stated sample of zero years.
Four buses a day run through from Takayama, and the Shirakawa-go leg costs 2,800 yen
The Shirakawa-go route timetable lists five operating companies across its columns: Nohi Bus, Hokutetsu, Kaetsunou Bus, Toyama Chitetsu and Iruka Kotsu. Only two of them run services that go all the way between Takayama and Kanazawa. Counting the columns that print a time at both ends, there are four such services in each direction, and every one of the eight takes two hours and fifteen minutes.
| Direction | Departures | Operators |
|---|---|---|
| Takayama to Kanazawa | 07:50, 11:20, 12:50, 16:30 | Nohi Bus and Hokutetsu, two each |
| Kanazawa to Takayama | 08:10, 11:10, 13:20, 16:00 | Hokutetsu and Nohi Bus, two each |
The one-way fare table on the same page prices Takayama to Kanazawa at 4,200 yen and Shirakawa-go to Kanazawa at 2,800 yen. Takayama to Shirakawa-go is also 2,800 yen, so the two halves of the through journey are priced identically and together come to 5,600 yen, which is 1,400 yen more than the through fare. That subtraction is mine. Reservation-only marking is applied service by service on that timetable rather than to a whole company, so it has to be read down the column that matches the departure time.
For the approach from the other side, the Hokuriku Shinkansen question of which trains carry non-reserved seats is covered separately in Kagayaki is reserved-only and Hakutaka is not.
Sources Checked
Agency for Cultural Affairs — list of Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings, stated as current on 1 September 2026
Confirmed that the list holds 130 entries; that Kanazawa’s four are Higashiyama-Higashi (teahouse town, 14 November 2001, 1.8 ha), Kazuemachi (teahouse town, 9 June 2008, 0.6 ha), Utatsusan-Sanroku (temple town, 29 November 2011, 22.1 ha) and Teramachidai (temple town, 28 December 2012, 22.0 ha); that Kyoto’s Gion Shinbashi (4 September 1976, 1.4 ha) is the only other row classified as a teahouse town on its own, while Obama Nishigumi in Fukui (9 June 2008, 19.1 ha) is classified as merchant town and teahouse town; that no other row carries the temple town classification on its own, while Tsuyama Josai in Okayama is classified as temple town and merchant town; that Ishikawa and Nagano carry eight rows each; and that the area column runs from Kazuemachi’s 0.6 ha to Tsumago-juku’s 1,245.4 ha.
https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/hozonchiku/judenken_ichiran.html
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa — visitor information, hours, closed days and ticket prices
Confirmed that entry to the building and public zone is free while the exhibition zone requires a paid ticket; the exhibition zone hours of 10:00 to 18:00 and to 20:00 on Friday and Saturday; the public zone hours of 9:00 to 22:00; window sales from 9:30 ending 30 minutes before closing; Monday and new-year closures for the exhibition zone and new-year only for the public zone; the extra openings on 26 October 2026 and on 2 and 3 January 2027, the extra closure on 27 October 2026 and the complete closure from 29 December 2026 to 1 January 2027; all ticket figures in the table above; the 20-or-more group threshold; free admission for pre-school children; the certificate and Mirairo ID reductions; the two separate Kanazawa resident free admission schemes, one running on seven art encouragement days and the other on a single citizens art day; the planned closure for major repairs from 6 May 2027 to March 2028 with an eleven-month extension of the Museum Link Pass; the car park hours of 08:30 to 23:00 with no entry or exit between 23:00 and 08:30; the free first 30 minutes, the 150 yen per 30 minutes time charge, the flat 1,000 yen overnight charge and the 350 yen per 30 minutes base charge that applies without validation on weekdays from 17:45 and at weekends, on public holidays and at new year.
https://www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.php?g=7&d=1
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa — notice page for the closure of the work the museum calls the Swimming Pool
Confirmed that the notice dated 20 August 2026 closes the Swimming Pool from 19 October to 30 October 2026, and that viewing the underground part of the work requires a ticket for either the special exhibition or the collection exhibition.
https://www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.php?g=151&d=48
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa — ticket price sheet for the 2026 financial year
Confirmed that the sheet is stated as current on 1 March 2026; that it carries three ticket price rows against four exhibition periods, two of them special exhibitions and two of them collection exhibition runs, Deja Vu from 31 January to 10 May 2026 and Walking, Staying from 23 May to 18 October 2026; and that it states there is no group rate for visitors aged 65 and over.
https://www.kanazawa21.jp/files/2026_ticket_year.pdf
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa — news list, first page
Confirmed that the first entry on the list is dated 8 June 2026 and announces the closure of the museum from 6 May 2027 until March 2028 as planned.
https://www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.php?g=61
Japan Meteorological Agency — thirty-year climate normals for Kanazawa, 1991 to 2020
Confirmed the annual precipitation normal of 2,401.5 mm; the monthly figures of 301.1 mm in December, 256.0 mm in January, 250.8 mm in November and 138.0 mm in May, with only April at 143.9 mm and May below 150 mm; mean temperatures of 4.0 degrees in January and 4.2 in February; mean daily minima of 1.2 and 1.0; mean daily maxima of 7.1 and 7.8; annual snowfall depth of 157 cm with 67 cm in January; deepest snow cover of 32 cm; 73.9 days of snow; that the cloud, fog and thunder columns carry the reference-value mark, which the page defines as marking a figure that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normals; and that the solar radiation column is blank with a stated sample of zero years.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/stats/etrn/view/nml_sfc_ym.php?prec_no=56&block_no=47605
Nohi Bus — Shirakawa-go route timetable and fare table
Confirmed the five operating companies named in the timetable; the four through services in each direction with the departure times listed above; the uniform two hours fifteen minutes end to end; the reservation-only marking applied per service; and the one-way fares of 4,200 yen between Takayama and Kanazawa, 2,800 yen between Shirakawa-go and Kanazawa and 2,800 yen between Takayama and Shirakawa-go.
https://www.nouhibus.co.jp/route_bus/shirakawago/
Last updated: October 2026
