Takayama

Another scenic journey takes us to the town of Takayama, where we curse the drizzle that’s seems to have been falling since we left Osaka.

Still we walk the old village streets admiring the traditional architecture, sampling things on sticks, and perusing the plentiful shops.

But we grow tired of the rain and dreary scenery (which surely would be lovely in the summer) and found a sake brewery which had been around for 170 years. “Sake” is actually a general term for alcohol in Japanese, the appropriate term for the rice alcohol is Nihonshu. Apparently warn out from cheap western tourist you had to pay for the sampling, however, the helpings were hearty and we were soon in a lighter mood.

After purchasing a bottle for later we scouted out all the bizarre wood cut outs displayed around the city. While I was a menacing dwarf wizard Jason was an enlightened albino Buddha. The Japanese do love their cut outs.

Takayama is known for their Hida beef, while the fancy stuff was a bit out of our budget, we did have an amazing beef curry at the Jakson Restaurant. Red faceless dolls called Sarubobo are also quite present throughout the city. Supposedly shaped like a young monkey they are given to children by their mothers for a happy marriage in the future.

Our last day we decided to check out the Hida Folk Village. The village is actually an open air museum displaying mountainous farm homes from the area. Deciding to skip the hour wait for the bus we started walking in hopes that the signs would lead us the way. Only a 30 minute walked turned into 2 hours as we passed the sign “Hida No Sato” and got wrong directions along the way but we eventually made it to the folk village.