Tag Archives: Sakura

Last day in Takayama

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The futon… A 4cm thick matress typically used in ryokan… We even used two because we were concerned by it’s comfortableness.

Double futon bed

Well, I can’t recall a better sleep in the last few years. Amazing.

I just realised we didn’t post any picture of our room yesterday. Here they are in two configuration.

The room as we arrived

The room this morning.

Breakfast time! As we arrived yesterday we had to decide which kind of breakfast we wanted: Sara went for the traditional Japanese while I opted for the more cautious international.

Traditional and “International” breakfast

The international was quite simple: egg, ham, coffee, a toast and a kiwi. Light but enough (i still have two Dorayaki in the room eheh).

The traditional was more complex: miso soup, a lot of veggies, tofu, tea and a miso paste that was cooking on a magnolia leaf to then put it in the rice.

Cooking the Miso

Both breakfasts​ were a pleasant way to start our day. With our full bellies we went straight to the city to seize the day. 

All the guides and articles found on the web recommended to go to Kamisannomachi, the main street of the old town, early in the morning to enjoy the view without the crowd of tourists.

The water canal on the side of the street

It was indeed better than yesterday, and if you mentally remove all the wires hanging over your head and the asphalt below your feet you can somehow imagine what life was like during the Edo period.

The street is full of little shops that sell handmade goods, so we got our first (small) souvenirs.

Our first small souvenirs

When backpacking everything you buy weights on your shoulders, so we sadly couldn’t buy any of the local sake bottles. 
Instead we decided to try everything the food shops had to offer, starting from a local miso soup (very popular in the area). 

The difference between the people in Takayama and the ones we’ve met in Tokyo is astonishing. Not only they are more relaxed (reasonable since we are in a smaller city) they also are extremely kind and gentle. When taking pictures of the craft in the shop they would thank us repeatedly and try to explain in any way (mostly using signs) the items they were selling. They usually also ask where you come from and then they thank you for coming this far to visit their city.

As we went towards the next place in the list, a morning market, the tourists wave started to rise. We noticed that there were only few occidental tourists like us, while the majority were from China.

Tourists at the market

We finally reached the market, where we tried more foods like takoyaki (balls of batter with cooked octopus), taiyaki (fish shaped batter filled with different flavours of cream ranging from chocolate to beans) and then a skewer of small balls of rice pudding covered by soy sauce and grilled. Screw the diet!

The last takoyaki

Apart from the food, we had the opportunity to experience a breathtaking view of all the cherry trees blossoming by the river.

Sakura tree

Sakura tree on the main bridge

More Sakura trees on the canal

We also noticed that strollers are not very popular in Japan, except if used to carry dogs.

We also wondered why toy puddles are so popular here, since most of the dogs we have seen since we are here are of such breed.
After the market, we went to check a giant structure we could see from the river. The structure ended up being a very huge torii of the close Sakurayama Hashimangu shrine.

We took some pictures and went to check this shrine.

It is the first of a long list of shrine this city has to offer trough the Higashiyama walking course, and Sara was really enthusiastic about visiting them all and get some stamps from the monks!
Unfortunately all, believe me ALL, the shrines were closed. Well we could have expected it, it’s Sunday, and we are entering the golden week. That meant no stamps for us!
Even being closed to the public, most of the shrines had their outer gates open, allowing us to enjoy their gardens.

Tree with a demon trapped inside. Do not break the charm!

Toriis to a shrine

Inari guardian with a message

A 400 year old oak

We were almost at the end of the walkway when we heard thunders… coming from our stomachs. Apparently all the small snacks we had didn’t fill us up, so we decided to go back to the city to grab some meat filled buns.
We wandered around the streets randomly, and this was for sure one of the best parts of the day.
You get to see the everyday life of the people living there, whether they are energetically washing rusted nails in a bucket or working on their farms. Whatever they are doing, they always stop to greet you with a polite bow.
Randomly following the sakuras on our path, we ended up in another beautiful (closed for our joy) temple. The Hida Gokoku Jinja shrine was surrounded by sakura trees and we took plenty of pictures of it. 

Geisha posing in front of the torii

Panorama of the blossoming sakuras

Did I already mention our innerselves were rumbling? We went back to the crowded part of the city and bought the first edible thing we could find to calm down our hunger. We ate two buns, one with our loved red beans and black sesame and the other with pork and onion.

The bun seller with her buns

Buns!

Maybe it was because we were really hungry, but the buns were outstanding. We really like red azuki beans, but they often disguise ad chocolate because of their shape and color! We were more than once fooled by the brownish color of a filling to then find out it was not chocolate when biting. 

Lies…

Enough with our broken chocolate dreams, back to the day. We grabbed some other snack at a 7 eleven close by, and then went for our final goal, the Takayama Jinya.

Selfie in front of the entrance

“A room” as explained by the description…

Sara was disappointed by the fact that there weren’t enough English descriptions in the museum. Moreover  we had to leave our shoes at the entrance as the entire building floor consisted of tatami, and our feet were getting really cold.
We than decided to hurry up and finish the visit in order to put our shoes back on.
Since we were not freezing enough, we went for a green ice cream that we saw everywhere in the town. The ice cream was a green tea flavoured one, and it actually tasted great! 

Happiness is an icecream

At one hour to our train departure, we went back to the ryokan to take our backpacks and went to the station were we waited. This time the trip includes a relaxing stop in Nagoya of 7 minutes. The right time to jump off a train, run like crazy in the underground maze that is every Japanese station, trying to decode the timetable displaying the trains in Japanese and guess the platform of our next train.
Against every odd, we made it on time.
Before closing this post I would like to make one out of context consideration: after almost one week spent in Japan we realised that there are no trash cans around the streets. If you buy something to eat, you may end up walking with garbage in your hand for a couple of hours before being able to actually trash it somewhere.

This is due a terroristic attack happened in Tokyo in the 90s, where the terrorists hid a sarin gas bomb in a trash bin killing  12 people and injuring thousands (Source).

Time to sleep now.
See you tomorrow for another post.

Shirakawa-go & Takayama 

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Hello again! We had such a great sleep tonight and we were totally ready to start our day with a superb breakfast.

The hotel provided not only a nurse style nightwear for free (will add a picture soon), but also a typical Asian breakfast. We were fooled by the idea that the hotel had a continental breakfast, so we were ready for croissants and fruit. Instead, we arrived in the hall and, after being welcomed repeatedly by the staff by the now familiar “irasshaimase”, they served us Miso soup and rice with fish. The complete menu consisted of rice with seaweed and close-to-embryo formed fished, tofu with more seaweed, pickled veggies and miso soup with seaweed.

Our superb breakfast…

We are in Japan, we have to accept the fact that sweets aren’t part of the typical breakfast! Antonio was so so so happy about the meal that he held a grudge for a mere hour, until we reached the station and got some pastry covered in gold leaves, a speciality of Kanazawa, and a coffee from Starbucks.

Golden pastry

We had to spend one and a half hour in the station, so we reserved the seats for the tomorrow shinkansen and arranged some lunch (we bought some rich bento for around 1500¥ ~ 13€ for both).

Sushi fo lunch!

The bus for Shirakawa-go was not-surprisingly in time, and by the time of expected departure all the passengers were on board and their luggage meticulously ordered in the bus trunk. As the clock of the bus switched from 11:09 to 11:10, the driver turned on the engine and we departed. Perfection. (we had to film that, darn).
The bus trip lasted around 1 hour and entertained us (especially Antonio) with plenty of nice landscapes, ranging from rice fields to snowy mountains. We also have to get used to the driving direction here in Japan, the whole trip felt so strange!

Entertained Antonio

Shirakawa-go is located in a valley, surrounded by Alps like mountains covered in snow. The feeling, coming from cities with spring-ish temperatures, was to step in a 18th century’s village in the end of Autumn.

The houses here are shaped as praying hands with a thick roof made of straw. The shape is due the necessity of standing the huge amount of snow that falls in this region in winter.

Typical house​ in Shirakawa-go

As we got off the bus we decided to climb our way to the viewpoint, a 15 minutes walk uphill with the backpacks on our shoulders.

Shirakawa-go view from above

The struggle was totally worth! The view from up the hill was breathing for both the village below and the surrounding mountains covered in snow.

Hungry, we decided it was time to consume our well deserved meal. We choose a panoramic place were other people were taking pictures, to sit down and eat, but a guy, probably working in the local cafeteria, came to us telling that we could not eat there. 

Other people around us were chewing what looked like food, but he didn’t hear any reason. Jerk. We had to move and eat somewhere else. Luckily, that didn’t mine our appetite.

Bon apetit

With our bellies full, we descended to the village. Going downhill was much easier and took almost half the time.

On the side of all the roads in the village, runs a canal collecting the water coming down from the mountains. What surprised us was the fact that despite the water was cold, the canals were packed with fishes.

The canals are also used to provide water for the paddies (rice fields) that are everywhere in the village.

View of a house with a paddy on the side

Walking among the houses we found some of the scarecrows used in the paddies. Sara decided to see if she could start a carrier as one of them. I think she’s not bad at all…

Can you find Sara?

Many of the houses in Shirakawa-go can be visited paying a small admission fee of 300yen (~3 euro). We decided to visit one which was set as a museum.

Harvesting rice 1 0 1

Inside we followed a path explaining the rice harvesting procedure and the process of making Shirakawa-go building’s straw roof. There was also a room for the tea ceremony and a connection corridor with the close by temple.

Tea room

The last thing we wanted to visit before leaving for Takayama was a temple, but it was closed. 

External torii of the temple

As soon as we jumped on the bus, Antonio fell asleep again, together with most of the passenger. Thanks for the company…

We arrived in Takayama that the sun was still up, so we run to our sleeping place to leave the backpacks and went visiting the old town.

The old town extends between the Miyagawa river and a smaller one that merged with it. Along the river there are marvellous Sakuras still in blossom. We took the chance to take more pictures. 

Sakura tree on the river

Another sakura tree

In the district of Kamininomachi, we visited the main street packed with tourists walking in and out the numerous old shops. Also here, on the side of the road was running a water canal with water so clean you could drink it.

Old town district

Tired of all the mess, we aimed for the northern part of the city, where all the temples and shrines are located.

The entrance to the temple district

We liked this area more than the old town: torii, gardens, temples and graves (yes, there are also cemeteries), were all well kept.

How do you even grow something like this?

Except for another guy walking his dog, we were the only ones walking there. So quiet…

Temple with garden

Sunset on Tokayama

We ventured in a cemetery in a forest and found a dog/frog/something statue, watching over the graves.

A guardian statue

Tired and hungry we decided to walk to a restaurant suggested by a girl we met at the local tourist information center.

On the way we saw more Sakura trees in blossom. Such an amazing view…

Sakura tree in blossom

Finally we reached our restaurant: Kyoya. Here we had a taste of the superb Hida beef, and other delicatessen.

Dinner for 2…

The table had a grill in the middle. The waitress brought the meat raw and we had to cook it by ourself. 

Cooking Hida beef

3000kcal later, we were able to leave the restaurant and walk home. But we didn’t go too far that we walked into another beautiful Sakura. We just couldn’t pass by without taking a picture.

Sakura by night

Our place was a Ryokan, sporting a private onsen. We then decided to take advantage of this and have our hot spring experience. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside, but trust me when say I wish I could do this everyday!

We were also given a yukata to wear during the night and for tomorrow breakfast.

Wearing a yukata

Time to sleep now. Tomorrow’s breakfast is at 7 o clock.

Good night everyone.

See you at the next post!