Kanazawa

The Maeda clan ran the Kaga domain from here, and Kaga was assessed at a million koku of rice, which made it the wealthiest domain in Japan after the shogunate itself. A family that rich and that far from Edo spent its money on culture partly as a political strategy: a lord absorbed in tea ceremony, noh theatre and craft is not a lord raising an army. Three hundred years of that produced the city you visit.

Kenrokuen is the headline, one of the three great gardens of Japan, and in winter the pines are strung with rope cones to hold snow off the branches. Go early; by eleven the paths are full. Beside it, Kanazawa Castle park has gatehouses and storehouses rebuilt with traditional joinery, and the reconstruction work is itself worth seeing.

The city escaped bombing in the war, so whole districts survived. Higashi Chaya is a street of two-storey teahouses with wooden lattice fronts, one of them open to visit; Nagamachi keeps the earthen walls of the samurai quarter. Gold leaf is a Kanazawa industry to the point that the city produces almost all of Japan's supply, and it turns up on lacquer, on sweets and on ice cream.

Then there is the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, a circular glass building by SANAA from 2004 that put the city on a different map. Leandro Erlich's swimming pool, where visitors appear to stand underwater, is permanent and needs a timed ticket.

Omicho market handles the eating: crab in winter, sea urchin, and sushi that costs less than the same quality in Tokyo. Two and a half hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen. Bring an umbrella, because locals say you can forget your lunch here but not your umbrella.