The Omi-cho Ichiba market is busy in the morning, a place where the people of Kanazawa come to buy good food.

(1)

Sweet shrimp with the roe still inside. It tastes best in winter.

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Kinjiso, a local leaf vegetable.

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Zuwai-gani crab piled high at a market stall.

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“This is the best time of the year for zuwai-gani crab,” says Takemura Masatsugu, the president of a marine products company called Daimatsu Suisan. His company's main selling point is its fresh seafood for seasonal cuisine.

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The Asano River flows through northern Kanazawa. Here, it passes under an old wooden bridge called Ume no Hashi. The Higashi Chaya-gai district is to the left (east) of the bridge, near the foot of Mount Utatsu.

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Koshizawa Keita (left, rear) is the deputy manager of Suginoi, a first-rate traditional restaurant. Members of his family, also pictured here, help make the restaurant a going concern.

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A stone walkway leads to the front door of Suginoi Restaurant.

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Three kinds of delicacies all nicely arranged on a plate. They are made from the innards, ovaries and other parts of a marine creature from the Noto Peninsula called sea cucumber.

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A sample of Kaga cuisine beautifully set off with refined tableware, most of it Kutani ware porcelain. Clockwise from bottom: steamed hasu-mushi featuring tilefish, yurine lily bulb and ginkgo nuts topped with grated lotus root; grilled zuwai-gani crab; sushi selection of
salt-pickled turnip and yellowtail preserved in malted rice; nodoguro
fish pickled in miso, dried mullet roe, and chestnut still enclosed inside its tart soft inner skin, simmered in syrup.