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!