Takayama

Shiragawa-go, Kanazawa and beyond

Can we get away

with making a post for three days

and catch up with sleep?

So the Pension Green Lake turned out to be a little gem. In a farmhouse inn the countryside with the kindest, friendliest hostess who after all had driven out to pick us up when lost last night. Our room was great, the bathing capsule perhaps a little small but great power in the shower which is all that matters when you’re up for breakfast at 7.30. Again a delicious home-cooked scrambled eggs with crispy bacon, half a grapefruit, fresh salad and brioches with real strawberry jam. Fabulous! And Megumi, as is the wont of hosts and hostesses stood and watched us eat – we may feel it’s intrusive, they are ensuring ichi-ban service. We set off for Takayama for the spring festival or matsuri and for once had an uneventful drive except that we had to stop five minutes into the trip to photograph a family of monkeys running across the road. Amazing!

Our route took us to a conveniently placed car park close to where it was all going to happen. The attendant insisted on giving us a city map and marking our route to the centre of events. We walked along the riverside. And what a lovely walk along the riverside where being up in the mountains the cherry blossom is in good fettle – so we haven’t missed it altogether.

The main parade was due to start at 12:30 so we an hour or so to explore Takayama’s famous morning market. There are stalls with vegetables from the countryside, crafts from the town and a great candle stall where a young lady was individually calligraphing candles. Several more take home gifts, some excellent rice crackers and sesame snacks were also purchased as well as a kebab and a beer. What a kebab! You may have heard of Kobe beef as being the best and most expensive but where we are now in Hida thinks it outdoes it. Superb, delicious, phenomenal – we had to order a second and learn the words oishi katte, absolutely delicious to express our thanks.

The festival itself was fantastic – a procession throughout the old part of town by townspeople in robes representing different lodges with drummers, flute bands and then 12 magnificent red and gilded floats with fabulous paintings, wood carvings and also carrying flute and drum bands. We’ll put a couple of pictures up but once we’ve sorted through the several hundred photographs and dozen video clips (probably not till we’re back in the UK given the schedule) we’ll post a separate page about the Takayama Festival. We concluded the day with bowls of soba noodles topped with a large slice of uncooked Hida beef which slowly cooked in the warmth of the broth. Oishi katte again to our second encounter with the area famous beef.

The drive back to the pension was a bit of a problem as Mike decided that Route 73 was heading south and must get us back more quickly. Raggett off piste is not a good thing. One of the problems in mountains is that roads tend to go down valleys between them and then back up again. So an extra 50 km and ¥650 in tolls finally saw us back at the ranch. Slapped wrist but no major trauma as it was a glorious ride. Megumi welcomed us back and introduced us to her niece Yuki-e who had returned from New Zealand where she’d been studying in Christchurch at the time of the earthquake and soon was hearing all about Japan’s problems too. Her English is great and over breakfast next morning we looked at our photos and videos of the matsuri, which Megumi had never been to as she’s usually booked solid at festival time. We had a brilliant chat about this and that and plan to keep in touch via our blog and her webpage. We would recommend her pension totally to anyone who wanted to explore the area in spring, summer or autumn when the colours will be fantastic. Lots of walking, brilliant scenery, monkeys and the promise of bears. Great place and to think I was worried.

Yuki-e, Mike, Dee, and Megumi outside Pension Green Lake (courtesy husband Shigeru Yanase) and its fabulously peaceful setting

No monkey business this morning as we drove back up Route 156 to the Shiragawa-go UNESCO National Heritage Site. This is a series of traditional thatched houses with extremely steep pents against the snow. It’s a fascinating place in which heritage site exhibits exist alongside homes of ordinary working people. Again we took loads of photographs and a few video clips and will post more fully on our return. A wonderful insight into Japanese life 300 years ago and how for some it has changed little. Visiting did make me wonder about the value of World Heritage designation – yes we can all go and admire the heroic efforts of people in times past but how does it affect the few real people still trying to live their normal lives? No answers, just musing.

We then drove on seamlessly to Kanazawa and checked into our hotel before walking to the Kenrokuen Garden one of the big three of Japanese strolling gardens. It out performed all my expectations – such variety, so many things of beauty, some many places to contemplate – sheer delight! Again the 300 photos will need some editing before we post a page devoted to Kenrokuen but if you can’t wait try here. Somewhat tired we walked back to the hotel, gathered our thoughts and went out for dinner. We had some of the best sashimi ever and no we didn’t eat the head however “goodo head” with great pickled vegetables some of which we recognized.

Oh and on the way back to the hotel we just happened to shoot this sign – it’s warm – at last! 25 degrees at six o’clock. Love it!

Wednesday morning in Kanazawa started with a trip through the Ohmicho Market just across from the hotel. We discovered by pointing and asking “what’s that” many of the things we’d eaten – lotus root, bamboo shoots – well they’re good for pandas – shiso a wonderful aromatic leaf and several more. It’s a great colourful display of crabs (local speciality), fish, veg and fruit. Magic.

We then went to the museum of gold leaf. Now most of you probably don’t know that 99% of Japan’s gold leaf is produced in Kanazawa. The process of makinh 1kg gold ingots into 1 micron thick sheets of gold foil is brilliant and they had a video that showed it clearly. A few purchases ensued of course at the nearby Golf Leaf Shop – well why wouldn’t you? A quick walk through the old geisha district – still a bit red lighty at night we’re told but this was 10 am. Our next visit was to the contemporary art museum where we were intrigued, amused and provoked by an exhibition called Borderline. Several great exhibits including a scary Anish Kapoor but the most fun was Leandro Ehrlich’s Hockney-like pool. It looks like a normal swimming pool but is a brilliant trompe l’oeil with only 10 cm of water and a glass platform beneath which visitors can parade. James, we think you’ll love this as we did – imaginative, thought-provoking and fun.

We had hoped to drive down to Kyoto along the coast but it didn’t quite go right. Instead of the bright blue of yesterday we had grey humid mist. However we arrived here and saw the sea. It is Cape Kasa, the westernmost point in Kaga Prefecture. We also met a local gardener who was determined to offer Dee some vegetables to take home to cook. Dee’s now excellent Japanese enabled her to persuade her that sadly we were in hotels and going to Kyoto with no cooking facilities and had no friends to whom we could give them.

The Hokuriko Expressway, a super road, sped us to Kyoto where, being worried about delivering late the excellent Hiro from Times Rentacar talked us in, sent us to a local filling station and then helped us to the hotel. We then managed to find a restaurant serving okonomiyaki as recommended by Katie in her Kyoto advice. Stupendous! Katie, Arrigato, goseimasu.

Getting ready

Booking, booking, booking

As the week unfolds

what shall we now discover

to threaten our trip?

With the little frisson of Takayama Festival safely behind us I settle down to the slog of going stage by stage, train by train, car hire by car hire through the whole itinerary. My daughter-in-law commented on an earlier post with a fine Japanese word for us – Ganbatte. Apparently a literal translation would be Exhaust yourself but it’s used as an encouragement to hang on in there, chin up, stick with it or come on my son. With this exhortation taken to heart and being of a thorough, and cost-conscious nature I start out consulting about four or five sites for each location. A pattern soon emerges – the Japan based sites with the extra hassle of converting yen or dollars to pounds soon start to fall by the wayside with fewer and fewer hits from me among the forest of tabs open across the top of my screen. Then there’s the tedium of consulting my master plan to see what dates to enter and the number of nights for each hotel and entering them in different formats on each site.

I discover that to select a hotel I think will be appropriate, bookmark it for ratification later in the day by Dee who doesn’t share my benefit of working from home and book it with a secure ability to cancel with no fee all takes about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the destination. Choosing the one hotel with a room near Takayama should have been speedy but I still had to look at all the SOLD OUT ones before I got there. Even checking the “show only available rooms” option is not infallible as it doesn’t filter for my choice of a double room so I look at a lot of hotels with only singles. It’s time consuming, frustrating and one day I’ll invent a proper booking site that meets all my criteria.

Oh do stop whinging! It may take a while but you are going to Japan! Get over it and get on with it! My alter ego always was most encouraging. Eventually it seems the best option for me is to use Trivago.com to do a comparative trawl and then as it transpires select the best option on either Booking.com or Agoda.com which always seems to have the lowest rates between them – sometimes one, sometimes the other with no real pattern, rhyme or reason.

Three days later, I finally manage to get a spare hour or so to show Dee my selections. She starts to glaze over after about the fifth but we plough on and agree that without her looking at all the available options herself I’ve done a good job. Well time will tell won’t it?

I’m fairly comfortable with e-tickets, showing my phone to go to the cinema, green about recycling and cutting down on paper but I can’t resist printing out each booking confirmation – being careful just to include the core information and not the other three pages of guff that incautious printing from websites always seem to include. At the top of each I write the hotel number and the dates we’re staying there. The last one reads “Hotel 15, 3 to 9 May Tokyo”. So we have accommodation for every night of the 29 nights we’ll spend chasing all over Japan except for one night on a train still to be booked.

There’s a map of our day-by-day schedule on the blog but the main stages are:

1	Tokyo	2 nights	2	Mount Fuji area	1 night	3	Kiso Valley	1 night
4	not too far from Takayama	2 nights	5	Kanazawa	1 night	6	Kyoto	3 nights
7	Okayama	2 nights	8	Takamatsu	2 nights	9	Kobe	2 nights
10	Osaka	1 night		Train Osaka – Hakodate	1 night	11	Hakodate	1 night
12	Tomakomai	1 night	13	Sapporo	1 night	14	Asahikawa	2 nights
15	Tokyo	6 nights

And then Hong Kong for four nights where we hope free accommodation might be on offer.

So far so good – it looks like it will work but now to gauge the distances, train fares, mostly with a Japan Rail Pass – but the extras for sleepers – car hire, fuel costs and expressway tolls to give us an accurate estimate of what it will cost and whether I or the tour operator experts were right.

Getting ready

Friends and festivals

Will our friends’ advice

suffice to make our raw plans

any more than half-baked?

Well then, it’s decided. The first flight and the first hotel are booked. It’s also clear that we can’t afford an agency to do all our bookings so it’s a plea for help. We are very lucky that my daughter-in-law studied Japanese, is based in Hong Kong and has lots of friends who are knowledgeable about Japan. She very kindly emailed them our outline schedule and to my amazement – these are high powered businesswomen – we had wonderfully detailed and informative responses including, and I quote, “my dorky walking map of Kyoto” which is quite the most useful thing I have ever been sent. Real insider knowledge set out clearly on a series of maps we can follow when we get there. So it was onto the tablet straight away with those. It also helped us to resolve a travel issue that was proving very perplexing.

Hiroshima is an important place to visit for anyone with an interest in history – my wife, or anyone with an excessive sense of guilt – me. But it’s a very long way to travel and if we do include Hiroshima we have to drop some other Murakami or garden locations. Do we not go from Kyoto to Nara for the day? Do we miss out on the wonderful sounding Naoshima Art Island which we’d seen in a leaflet from JNTO and was highly recommended by one of our experts above. On balance and with a memory of a glazed look from an admittedly very young lady in the tourist office when asked whether she would make the long journey – it’s a no for Hiroshima. I know there will be a little regret at not standing in the peace garden to reflect – especially with Garden of the Evening Mists’ Japanese war in Malaya setting fresh in our memories – but apart from the peace park the Japan Guide lists the next three attractions as a garden (not one of Japan’s top three), a concrete reconstruction of the nuked castle and downtown. On balance it looks like the right decision.

My daughter-in-law had always said that festivals in Japan were manic, wonderful occasions and as luck would have it I discovered in the trusty japan-guide.com that Takayama has its Spring Festival on 14-15 April when we had planned to be in Tokyo but hey it’s not far so a quick schedule shuffle and the Takayama festival is on the itinerary. After all japan-guide.com says:

“Takayama is considered one of Japan’s best festivals”.

The citizens of Takayama are greedy in that they have another festival in October but given the proximity to the Northern Japan Alps maybe spring is the better option.

With my excited enthusiasm of course I’d only done a boy look at the guide. Later I discovered the hard way what it told me quite plainly had I bothered to read it:

“The festival gets especially crowded if one or both festival days fall on a weekend or national holiday. As a result, hotels in central Takayama get booked out many months in advance of the festival.”

Never in my life have I clicked on booking site hotel flags with increasing lack of concern to their proximity to the centre of town to find every single one with the legend “SOLD OUT”. Ooops! Ooops! Ooops! Spread the net to 20 miles from Takayama and a room is available. I’m usually sceptical of the exhortation “only one left book now” but in this instance my click is very firm. Who knows what the Pension Green Lake will be like? It’s not far from the festival, it has a bed, it’ll accept my booking. Tripadvisor had two high starred good reviews – but in Japanese and Google translate didn’t help much. However it’s only an hour from Shirakawa Mura the UNESCO World Heritage Site with its steep sloped, thatched-roofed houses which we want to visit anyway and we can get to Takayama.

It’ll do.

We’re there for two nights – it had better do.