Takayama

Well what can we say about Takayama... Nothing great I'm afraid to say. The guide book had lead us to believe that we'd be arriving in a beautiful Alpine village full of old Japanese houses surrounded by picturesque mountains and forests. In truth it's just like anywhere else we've seen in in Japan, but a bit colder. Everywhere in Japan is developed or developing. There's precious little countryside left even in areas such as Takayama in what's known as 'the Japanese Alps'. From our train window you can see the true extent of urbanisation as the one city blurs into the next and houses and commercial properties sprawl right up to the foot of the surrounding mountains. The weather so far in Japan has been shocking, far from the stable Spring weather Japan usually enjoys at this time of year, it's been devilishly cold & rainy. We also saw snow for the first time here in Takayama which lightened our mood for a spell.



There's one quite funky little street that's been 'preserved' and provides you with a great image of how people used to live in Japan. Unfortunately the image is rather mired by the fact that a lot of these ancient homes have now become shops selling tourist tat and rice crackers. We were staying at Minshuku Kuwataniya but what we didn't realise is that when it said that it had a shared 'hot-spring bath' it meant that that was the only washing option. So every morning I had to drag myself off to the bathroom where I followed tradition and sat on a little plastic stool and showered in the company of other men. Fortunately, being an early riser, I managed to avoid embarrasment by getting in early and getting the stool all to myself. The bath itself was cold.
The guide book said that Takayama was a small town and that you can walk across it in 25 minutes. We quickly realised that this was code for 'you can do everything of any interest in 25 minutes' and it wasn't more than two days before we were planning our trip out. Unfortunately this is holiday season in Japan and pretty much everywhere is booked and/or highly expensive so we decided to sit tight for a few more days and head to Tokyo early.
We did however go to see a rather beautiful historic village just outside of town called 'Hida-No-Santo' which is an open air museum piece comprising of a couple of dozen of traditional dwellings that had been dismantled and moved here from their original locations throughout the region. It's a fascinating look at the old way of life here in Japan and the buildings themselves are mostly of the wonderfully beautiful 'Gassho-Zukuri' type. A style of architecture developed to combat the pressure of heavy snow-fall and is typified by the steeply slanted straw roof. The name derives from the Japanese word for praying as the roof is said to resemble hands clasped together in prayer. Inside the houses it's easy to imagine how cold they would have been, there's precious little furniture and, as in all traditional Japanese homes, they'd sleep on tatami mats on the floors. Another unusual feature is the absence of a chimney, the smoke from the fire was used to 'cure' the wooden eaves and hel prevent insect infection. Clever people these Japanese.



Food wise we were okay, Japanese food really is a delight. The Hida region is home to Hida beef, a meat that's beginning to rival the famous Kobe beef for it's excellence and taste. We tried the beef, (cooked on a magnolia leaf with miso paste), in a wonderfully peaceful restaurant run by two slightly mad old Japanese women. It really is delicious.
As the weather drew in and our interest-level waned we spent more and more time in our room playing 'Scrabble', trying not to spend any more money and bidding our time until we could head to Tokyo. To pick ourselves up out of the duldrums we'd decided to treat ourselves and booked two nights in the Park Hyatt Hotel, made famous of course by being the setting of the 2003 film 'Lost In Translation'.