Takayama and Shirakawa-go
高山 & 白川郷
My days in Japan were becoming numbered with my return from Kobe, but I still had one last area to explore before my return to Taiwan. The next morning about 7am, I was on my penultimate Shinkansen journey, this time a little further afield to the mountains town of Takayama in the Hida region of Japan.
The train journey, though about four hours, was surprisingly enjoyable. Though many travel guides had spoken highly of the town of Takayama, they had all neglected to mention the stunning scenery that the train passed through on the way to get there. As my train marched northwards, we passed through an increasingly picturesque setting with luscious green palm trees, crystal blue water and mist covered mountains. I ended up putting my book down and just staring at the window taking it all in.
A view from the window of my carriage.
Eventually I arrived at my destination. Takayama is a small mountain town which is known for being an incredibly well preserved example of 17th century architecture surrounded by alpine scenery.
The streets were narrow and largely devoid of cars, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the traditional wooden architecture. The shops were definitely geared toward tourists, but not in a gimmicky way. There was a wealth of sake breweries (on account of the mineral rich water in the river passing through the town) and a number of boutique shops selling crafted wooden goods, home made Japanese hand towels and printed post cards.
Takayama is also noted for its Hida Beef, notable for its incredible marbling and flavour, and there was an abundance of shops selling Hida beef buns and sticks of yakitori. The beef was a little on the expensive side, but much cheaper than its Wagyu counterparts and equally delicious.
A shop advertising its different forms of Hida beef.
And some Hida beef buns...
...which were as tasty as expected.
Takayama was small enough that it was very easy to explore it just by wandering the streets without fear of missing anything. This made it a very relaxing place to visit as you could easily cover the whole town without any planning.
I decided to go for a wander and see what museums and restaurants I stumbled upon as I went.
I found this little restaurant which sold a stick of glutinous rice, covered with miso paste and grilled. I accompanied it with a hefty glass of some local Sake and it went down a treat.
One of the main sake breweries, easily identifiable by the large sake barrels outside and the Sugidama, or cedar ball, which hung outside. These balls are hung outside when a new batch of sake is brewed and the colour of the leaves indicate the freshness and age of the sake. (Sake, unlike other western alcohols, is better served fresh than aged.)
Another sake brewery (unfortunately, these breweries indulged shoppers less with free samples than their Kobe counterparts).
While I wandered, I stumbled upon the Showa-Kan museum. This museum was dedicated to the Showa period of Japan which lasted from 1926 to 1989. The museum was full of 'artefacts' of daily life from the 1950's and 1960's which were displayed in a model town that had model electronic shops, restaurants, movie theatres, music shops, Japanese houses and so on...
The museum had a wealth of materials in its collection so that every available bit of space was cluttered with items from the Showa period, giving it a really great atmosphere and a unique insight into that period.
The familiar face of Doraemon in the toy shop.
A huge collection of records in the music shop.
A model living room.
The movie theatre.
Charlie Chaplin goes Japanese.
And of course, Doraemon again! (this time driving a car that is much too big for him)
The museum was a lot of fun to explore and full of loads of interesting trinkets. The way all of it's materials were displayed really gave an immersive experience.
After leaving the Showa-Kan, I followed the wooden signs toward Takayma's most famous museum, the Takayma Floats Festival Hall.
The entrance to the Sakurayama Hacimangu Shrine which is located right next to the hall.
Some cool artwork I passed on the way.
Takayma is home to one of Japan's most famous festivals (considered by the Japanese to be one of the three most beautiful festivals). The festival is held twice a year, consisting of the Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival. The festivals involve parades of people in traditional costume carrying ornately decorated and incredibly heavy floats dating back to the 17th century.
The floats museum has a number of these floats (there are ten in all) which are regularly rotated so you can see three or four at a time while the others are stored in a warehouse. The museum was very English friendly, with an extensive English audio guide that talked you through the individual floats and the symbolism of them as well as the history of the festival. The history of the floats themselves was also interested. There was one which the audio guide seemed to describe as if it had a life of its own. According to the audio guide, this float was notorious for being badly behaved, with its bearers often crashing it into other floats and causing mischief. Whether this is really down to the float itself is left for you to decide...
A replica of the float bearers.
As you can see, the boats were incredibly ornately decorated.
The float hall was also attached to a miniatures museum which had tiny reconstructions of many famous historical sites throughout Japan. I forgot to take any pictures but it was definitely worth checking out!
The mineral rich river which passes through the town to the delight of Sake brewers.
One destination which increasingly popped up during my research of Takayma was a place a little less keeping in tone with the traditional nature of the town. Center4 Burgers is heralded by many as having one of the best burgers in the entirety of Japan. The place was incredibly popular with tourists, but I'd fortunately managed to get an early dinnertime booking.
The restaurant was very low-key inside and had a very cosy atmosphere. It specialised in Hida beef burgers (quick to sell out) and Japanese craft beers.
I was fortunately able to get my hands on one of the Hida Beef burgers which was definitely at the same standard of the other incredible beef I'd had in Japan (they seriously do beef well in Japan...) The burger was the best burger I'd had in a long time and the beer and fries were also great.
As I left the restaurant, I noticed a sign saying the restaurant was booked for the night and that they'd run out of their daily supply of Hida beef (leaving only the regular beef burgers) so I was pretty pleased with my luck/planning.
The next morning was my penultimate in Japan, and I headed out to check one of the other main attractions of Takayama, its neighbouring town of Shirakawa-go. Shirakawa-go is a UNESCO heritage site (Japan is really not lacking in these) and is famous for its traditional wooden farm houses of which some date back to 250 years ago. For convenience sake, and with the deadline of catching my train back to Tokyo in mind, I decided to go on the bus tour offered by my hostel. It was actually a really good decision, both on account of its very reasonable price (travelling on my own would have been more expensive) and the great tour guide who gave us lots of interesting information on the bus journey to the town, along with some fun Japanese lessons.
Our first stop on the tour was one of the mountain viewpoints which offered great views of the town.
A very cheesy photo the tour guide took of me. He was happy with my embracing the Asian two finger sign for photos.
The sight offered some great views of the farm village and the cloud covered mountains around it.
We then went down to the village where we were given about an hour and a half to explore, which was plenty as the village itself was pretty small.
Although the village is famous for it's winter scenery (where the houses are covered in thick layers of heavy snow), it seemed equally beautiful in the summer, with the abundance of lush green grass and bright flowers.
Some scarecrows.
The houses are notable for their giant triangular thatched roofs which are replaced every thirty years in the summer and can cost millions to put on. The houses are also an achievement in architecture, having been designed to be built with no nails or screws.
Many of the houses are open for visitors to sleep in overnight, but unfortunately my budget couldn't really cover this and my Koya San stay. However, there were a few houses which were open to the public. My tour guide recommended one in particular on account of it offering a limitless supply of free tea which he was very excited by, so I decided to explore that one.
The house had very minimalist decoration inside (like much of Japanese and Chinese architecture) and had a small fire in the middle of the room where hot water was boiled for the tea.
The house had four stories which you could explore including directly underneath the roof. You could see a number of old farm tools as well as get an idea of how the houses were constructed without nails through various knots of rope.
The rope keeping the house together.
Underneath the roof.
One of the houses looked like its roof's thirty year period was coming to a close.
Some ducks wandering around the pond (just in case things weren't looking rural or picturesque enough).
The second recommendation was the Doburoku Festival Museum, his main reason again being the limitless supply of free drinks. This time however, the drink was not tea but Sake. The museum offered a unique kind of thick cloudy white sake that is made using an ancient technique dating to around 1300 years ago. The sake is unpasteurised, and therefore cannot be bought in any shops, so it was pretty special to be able to try it. It is used at the annual Doburoku Festival museum, when it is presented to a number of gods.
The sake had a very strange and strong flavour, but was pretty tasty in a warming kind of way. Whenever I tried to hand my empty bowl back, the lady asked me if I wanted more before refilling it, which led to me sampling enough to feel pretty light headed by the time I left.
A shrine located next to the festival museum.
A nice example of how readily Japan mixes traditional culture with modern. Many of the prayers left at the temple were covered with little anime pictures including a very futuristic looking robot.
Some Tanuki racoons (for anyone who hasn't seen Pom Poko, I sincerely recommend it!). These little wooden statues were dotted around all over Japan. They're known for their shape-shifting abilities as well as their mischievous behaviour which leads to them typically being located around drinking establishments.
After visiting the festival museum I headed back to Takayama where I had just enough time to have lunch before heading off. I went to a curry restaurant which was definitely the best Japanese curry I've ever had and changed my opinion of Japanese curry being vastly inferior to its Indian counterpart (for the record, I still prefer Indian curry, but this one was amazing!)
After eating my fill, I wandered back to the train station, passing Sarubobo, the cute, and very expensive mascot of Shirakawa-go on my way.
Sarubobo!
And with Sarubobo comes the end of my journey. I got on my last painfully long train journey and headed back to Tokyo, ready to say my last goodbyes to Japan.
