The Kanazawa table

Crab, and the season that governs everything

The snow crab season on this coast opens in early November and runs to around March. Males — zuwai-gani — are the large ones; the smaller females, kobako-gani, have a much shorter season and are prized locally for the roe rather than the meat.

Each legally landed crab carries a coloured tag identifying its port. Ishikawa's are tagged, and locals read the tag before the price. Outside the season you will be offered frozen or imported crab, and an honest shop will tell you which.

The rest of the winter sea

Buri — yellowtail — is the other winter fish, at its fattest in the coldest months, and kan-buri from these waters is a national benchmark. Nodoguro, blackthroat seaperch, is the expensive one: oily, white, and best grilled with salt and nothing else.

The place to see all of it is Omicho Market, running since the Edo period and still the city's kitchen rather than a tourist installation. Kaisen-don — a bowl of sliced raw fish over rice — is what to order, and the counters inside the market do it better and cheaper than anywhere with a view.

Ono, ten minutes from the cruise berth, has been brewing soy sauce since the 1620s. It is one of Japan's five historic soy sauce towns and almost nobody visits it.

Ono, and the sweet soy sauce

The Ono district sits at the mouth of the river beside Kanazawa Port. Brewing began here in the 1620s, and the district still holds working breweries in wooden buildings along the water.

Kaga soy sauce is noticeably sweeter than Kanto soy sauce — a regional style built for the local fish and the local cooking. Buying a bottle at the brewery is the best-value souvenir in this port, and the district is quiet, wooden and entirely unvisited.

And the sweets

Kanazawa is one of Japan's three great wagashi cities, again because of Noh and tea ceremony patronage. Buy higashi — dry pressed sugar sweets in seasonal shapes — which keep for weeks and travel flat in a suitcase.