Takayama

It was a "feels like" temperature of sub zero most of the day today, so a real taste of winter for us topping out at 4°C. After catching the shuttle bus from the hotel back into town, we stopped for a coffee and croissant for breakfast (very Japanese 😁). We visited a couple of morning markets, but the benefit of a reasonable number of tourists in a town is that things seem to open a lot earlier, which gave the markets and streets of the old town area a bit of a vibe. It wasn't long before we stopped for another coffee and a local pastry found in the region. Craig did a bit of sketching whilst we were at this stop.

There is a retro museum in the old part of town, so we decided to go through that too. There was a rotary dial phone in there, so Katie is asking how to use it. Rudely, the husband seemed to remember every other phone number in Cairns from his highschool years other than mine. 🫤 But we got to pay some arcade games including PacMan, Donkey Kong, Galaga and a few other we could not work out at all!

We walked up to the top of town to the Higashiyama Walking Circuit which skips between cemeteries and temples with views down over the city. Hida beef is the local wagyu to this area, and despite setting out to eat this for lunch, Craig and I ended up with some delicious eel, and Katie with a beef and rice dish. This needed to be rectified a bit later with a street cooked beef skewer. OMG, it was like eating melt in your mouth velvet. Kate announced she could eat a lot of them easily. Totally agreed.

We tried to check out a pen and ink shop Craig had spied yesterday, but that was inexplicably closed, so we did the long long walk to the Hida Folk Village on the opposite side of the river and town. This is a collection of old buildings set up as a living museum. Really worth looking at, although we were pretty cold by the time we got to the end, so probably skipped a few in favour of not taking our shoes off and keeping the feet warm. We hightailed it back to the train station in record time to catch the 4.30pm shuttle back to the hotel, stopping in at the awesome resort shop to buy some noodles and sake for dinner in our room.

Craig and I visited the onsen. Kate declined declaring that "being naked with other naked people is not my thing". I tried to talk about "when in Rome" and all that, but to no avail. A bit of logistics planning for the multi train journey tomorrow and making up our own futons since we declined the housekeeping offer, and we are getting ready to tuck up in bed for the night.Read more