Kanazawa is the city people mean when they say they want somewhere in Japan that is not Kyoto – and it is one of my very favourite recommendations to make. It was the seat of the Maeda clan, the second-richest feudal family in the country after the shoguns themselves, and they spent three hundred years pouring that money into gardens, tea houses, lacquer, silk dyeing and gold leaf rather than into armies – partly because conspicuous culture was a rather elegant way of reassuring Edo that they were not a threat.

And then, crucially, it was not bombed. So the geisha districts, the samurai quarter and the garden are all still standing, original rather than rebuilt, with one of the three great gardens of Japan sitting right in the middle of the city.

Since the Shinkansen reached here in 2015 it has become far easier to get to and noticeably busier, but it is still a city of half a million people going about its own business rather than a place that exists for visitors. Two nights, and read this before you book them.