Exploring Takayama - Day Two & Three

 Good morning Takayama!

Here's the fun part - exploring Takayama on foot and taking in the sights! We decided to kick start both days by stopping by the morning markets. Takayama hosts two markets each morning ("asaichi"), which run from about 6am (7am in winter) to noon; the Miyagawa market which is located along the banks of the Miyagawa river closer to Takayama's Sanmachi-suji (which we'll cover later) and the Jinya-mae market which is in front of  the Takayama Jinya (local government office now converted into a museum). 

 Takayama's main bridge over the Miyagawa river and morning at the Miyagawa market

Both markets offer visitors a chance to look at and if you feel inclined to, purchase local produce (vegetables, pickles, etc) as well as crafts / souvenirs - Takayama will greet you with a huge variety of "Sarubobo" charms which you will run into at every souvenir stop you pass. If you only have enough time for one of them, we would recommend the Miyagawa market which is the larger of the two. There are also shops along the river bank (permanent ones) opposite the Miyagawa market stalls which are open at the same time and sell a range of local snacks. If you haven't had your breakfast, we'd recommend holding off, making the journey to Miyagawa market, and grabbing something from one of these shops. Nothing beats walking through the market with breakfast in hand! **There's a shop that's pretty close to the start of the Miyagawa market that sells bottled milk (plain and coffee flavoured) from Hida cows - best fresh milk we've ever tasted! Also try the steamed Hida beef bun if time / appetite permits!**

Jinya-mae market and local edible ferns!

 

Sanmachi-suji is a part of Takayama that has been fantastically preserved with many of the buildings appearing to date back to centuries ago. Arguably Takayama's most popular attraction, walking down Sanmachi-suji will take you back into time. From the JR Takayama Station, you will be able to easily reach the area in about 15 minutes on foot. There are 3 different streets which make up Sanmachi-suji , all of which are worth wandering down. Each street comes fully equipped with an eclectic mix of old homes, souvenir shops, sake breweries and the odd food / snack stall.  To be expected though is the unavoidable fact that Sanmachi-suji attracts a large crowd, so be prepared (we were surprised at the amount of people around on a random weekday!). You may soon find yourself drowning in a sea of Korean / Taiwanese tourists!

Views of Sanmachi-suji; "Sugidama" (ball made out of cedar branches) hung outside to indicate a sake brewery

Sake's not really our thing and we're definitely no where close to being connoisseurs! We did decide to wander into a brewery for a look-see and were pleasantly surprised to find  a large pot of miso soup boiling in the middle with paper cups on the side for you to sample. You can also (of course) taste local sake at the breweries by paying a small fee, which we did as well having come this far! Cold, sweet and grainy with rice bits - we decided that Takayama's sake isn't really our thing either! Keep your eyes (or nose) peeled for skewered grilled Hida beef (satay), a snack which is quite common throughout the streets of Takayama. We cannot recommend trying this enough!! 

Legendary grilled Hida beef on a stick which we tried at this particular stall in the middle of Sannomachi; we went back again the next day!

Towards the end of our stroll down one of Sanmachi-suji's streets, it finally struck us that a large majority of the crowd comprised of throngs of highschool students on their respective school trips! Seemed as if visit to Takayama was part of the syllabus! All is not lost however - time your walk right and you'll find the streets of Sanmachi-suji quite, quite empty. We were lucky enough to experience walking down Sannomachi with just our camera, umbrellas and a few other people braving the cold rain. It was worth every bit of it!

Packed or not, don't forget to bring your camera along as Sanmachi-suji is a fantastic photographic opportunity that you will not want to miss. Allow 3 hours for a nice, leisurely stroll through this beautiful area (4 if you're stopping every 5 minutes to take a photo!). 

Takayama accomodation - Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka

There’s a wide variety of accommodation available when you travel in Japan, with a range of price tags that follow suit. Same with anywhere / anything else though, if you look hard enough and shop around a bit, you’re bound to find a good deal! We started off our trip by spending 3 nights in Takayama. Some hunting around online led us to stumble upon a review of Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka posted on a blog. The review was extremely positive with a great price tag to boot! In hoping not to steal Paul’s (hats off to you!) limelight – here is our mini review of Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka.

Up to writing this we are still not sure why Hanaoka has left the biggest impression on us after staying at a variety of places ranging from AUD$250 (p/person p/night) to AUD$60 throughout our trip. Maybe it’s because we spent our first few nights there and it set the standard? Maybe it was the best (and I mean BEST!) value ryokan we stayed at? Maybe it was the fantastic taste and spread of the meals we had there? I reckon it was definitely all of the above:

Accomodation name: Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka

Address: 2-36 Hanaoka-machi, Takayama-shi, Gifu-ken

Pricing: 6600 yen p/person a night, inclusive of dinner and breakfast

Website: http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~hanaoka2/

Bookings: We tried to secure our room at Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka initially by contacting the Takayama tourist information centre and requesting a booking for 3 nights. We were surprised to receive an email directly from Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka in English to double-check our booking and seeking confirmation.

Number of room: 1 (7.5 tatami mat room with w/private bathroom)
Number of persons: 2 (1 male, 1 female)
Arriving: 10 May 2010
Departing: 13 May 2010
Number of night: 3
Rate per person: 6,600yen including dinner, breakfast and tax (w/private bathroom).
4,500yen including tax (w/private bathroom).

Direct email for booking: hanaoka@vesta.ocn.ne.jp

Getting there: From the tourist information centre / train station, take a left (bearing north) and continue walking down the road. The Takayama Nohi Bus Centre is to the left of the train station and you will pass by it. Continue walking down the road – Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka is about 10 minutes walk from the station depending on how much luggage you have! You’ll pass by a Family Mart (7-11 type of shop) and a pachinko parlour on your way there. Other good landmarks are the Takayama City Hall (tall brownish grey building) and a police building (headquarters maybe?). You’ll find Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka just a wee bit further down the road once you’ve passed the police building.

Walking towards Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka from JR Takayama train station; Takayama City Hall on right and the pachinko parlour that you'll pass by on the way there

Once you’ve started looking for accommodation in Japan or have booked a couple of places, you’ll realise that 6600 yen (roughly AUD$85) p/person a night, inclusive of a multi-course “kaiseki” dinner plus a 7-course breakfast + 7.5 tatami mat room + private bathroom, is a BARGAIN. This by far was the best deal we managed to secure the whole trip, and definitely the one that made us feel at home straight away.

Dinner at Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka: Legendary Hida beef, fresh sashimi, assortment of local mountain vegetables and the sweetest strawberry we've ever had to date!

Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka is clean, convenient + easily accessed, comfortable, has great food, you name it. You even have space to stretch in the bathroom and shower (trust us; some of the bathrooms in Japan are really small)! We strongly recommend Hanaoka if you decide to spend a night(s) in Takayama – you will not regret it.

Breakfast at Ryori Ryokan Hanaoka: Hoba miso grilled on a magnolia leaf

Takayama - Day One!

Takayama is a town situated in the Gifu prefecture of Japan. The town seems to function as a port-of-call to many who are en-route to sample the Japanese alps and hot-spring villages further inland. Don't let this fool you into thinking that Takayama should be treated just as a quick stopover however. Takayama is a great place to visit on its own - a perfect travel destination almost, where 90% of  its attractions are reachable by foot. The beauty of Takayama lies in the effort that's been taken to preserve sections of the town, providing visitors a stepping-back-into-time experience! The town is well laid out and sign-posted, with signage in English highlighting popular attractions at regular intervals along the streets. A great tourist information office and an array of multi-lingual travel maps / brochures add to the ease of navigating Takayama on your own. Takayama has plenty to captivate you with and we'd recommend to allow at least 2 days to wonder around town and experience its history and culture-packed streets.

Takayama is easy enough to get to. We arrived in Japan via Kansai Airport, Osaka. From Osaka, train and bus options are available to get you there. For those of you who insist on being prepared before leaving on a trip (like us), check out http://www.hyperdia.com/en/, a great website that will let you do a train timetable and route search between destinations with pricing for the various options shown. Also see http://www.hida.jp/english/access/index.html for different options on how you can get to Takayama from various locations around Japan. Luggage-wise it's pretty easy to backpack or lug your suitcase onto a train in Japan. Almost all the trains we jumped on had racks up top where you could place your bags, save for the subway. The Shinkansen trains have a compartment set aside for luggage just as you enter a carriage (plus toilets and vending machines if you need them, not all trains do). We caught a combination of trains from Kansai Airport (Kansai - Shin-Osaka - Nagoya - Takayama), with the journey to Takayama costing 13,200 yen and a travel time of just over 4 hours. We were pretty buggered from the red-eye flight so most of the travel time was spent knocked out on the train! Just don't forget to get off at the station that you need to transfer trains at!

Purchasing the Japan Rail (JR) Pass may save you some hard earned $$ here if you will be doing more travelling on JR lines through the rest of Japan, but it's worth checking as it turned out to be cheaper for us to buy regular tickets - the JR Pass doesn't work for all trains. We managed to get the tickets for the full train combo over the counter at Kansai Airport. If you make your way out of the terminal building, there's plenty of signage pointing you in the right direction towards the JR lines / platforms. Note that if you're buying reserved seat tickets, you are given 1 main ticket which you feed into the turnstile machines when you depart and arrive at your destination, and a set of tickets showing you what your reserved seat numbers are. We also had to ask which platform (if you're changing trains, you might have to ask at all stations you need to swap at) the trains were departing from as it's not printed on the tickets for some reason! **There's a bento store at the JR Nagoya station on the platform that you catch the train to Takayama - great value and even better if you're stuck waiting 15 minutes between trains and are starving!**

Stack of tickets that got us to Takayama and chicken bento box lunch at Nagoya station!

The journey from Nagoya to Takayama on the Limited Express (Wide View) Hida is worth staying awake for though especially as you get closer to Takayama. Some fantastic mountain / river scenery accompanies you along the train ride with its great mix of colours - can only imagine how good it'll look in autumn!

 Views from the train en-route to Takayama

 

You'll know when you've arrived at Takayama as immediately, even the train station looks a little rustic. More wood, and less concrete. As you walk out of the JR Takayama station, the tourist information centre is directly straight ahead. Make this your first stop if you can and pick up all the maps / brochures that you'll need. Most of the staff speak good English, and will be able to point you in the right direction. You can also get them to assist you with booking some accomodation if you haven't done so already. **There's a laptop inside the tourist information centre that you can borrow for free if you need to use the internet. Just ask the staff and they'll let you in through a door on the side**

 JR Takayama Station; the brown building is the tourist information centre (directly across)

Welcome to Takayama!

Some pictures from home..

shall slot in a few pictures of random shots in the midst of our holidaying photos...

Japan Trip May 2010 - 12 days of honeymooning!

Following the natural order of things, a honeymoon was in order after getting married for the 3rd time! After much (not really) discussion and reconnaisance work, we decided on:

JAPAN!! The land of the rising sun. The land of raw fish, sushi and tempura, etc. The land of interestingly dressed youths. The land of reverse facing squatting toilets and bidets. The land of great natural beauty and wonder. It was time for us to find out firsthand!

I (Brian) came across a link in 2008 (http://www.news.com.au/travel/world/yen-for-zen-outside-tokyo/story-e6frfqb9-1111116294049) that got the wanderlust going. The article led on to more Googling and Wikipedia-ing by us. Before long, a curiousity to visit and explore Takayama / the old Japan seemed to spring out and capture us. After having to put off the trip for a couple of years due to commitments, we finally made it there!