This morning we left Osaka for Takayama with a single change in Nagoya. Takayama lies at 600 m in the so called northern alps, and is surrounded by snow-capped mountains up to 3.000m.
It was a beautiful tour through the mountains up to Takayama, which beyond the beautiful scenery is famous for its old town (which is often used on Japanese soap operas) and a village of old houses from the region.
The old town has been beautifully preserved with many buildings and whole streets of houses dating from the Edo period (1600-1868), when the city thrived as a wealthy town of merchants. We spent an hour walking through the streets, in fantastic weather. many of the buildings housed sake breweries.
The Hida Folk Village is an open air museum exhibiting over 30 traditional houses from the Hida region, the mountainous district of Gifu and around Takayama. The houses were built during the Edo period (1603 – 1867) and were relocated from their original locations to create the museum in 1971.
Although we passed through Kobe on the way to Himeji, I still haven’t tasted Kobe meat whilst in Japan. Whilst not Kobe meat, Hida beef comes from this area and is just as sought after by the Japanese as Kobe beef.
200gm sirloin tasted fantastic.
On a final note, a Japanese religious movement, Mahikari, has its main shrine here, a gold and white building that is massive and dominates the skyline – you can see it from pretty much anywhere in Takayama.
