Day 15 Japan
It's a dreary, overcast and rainy day here in Takayama. But the temperature is very pleasant compared to further south!
The further north I go the more the climate is reminding me of Adelaide. It's still warm in direct sun but it's getting less humid and a little chilly at night.
I started out this morning walking through a couple of historic streets in town. The type of thing they have spent a lot of money restoring so it looks like old Japan and the tourists can get a good photo. Despite the weather it was a very picturesque couple of streets and it paints a very romantic notion of the Japan of days past. They are all souvenir shops now of course but if you ignore that it's a very pleasant place to walk.
There is a morning market at the end of these streets which I had a bit of a wander through as well. Mostly seems to cater to tourists but there was a little bit of fruit and veg on sale as well. Wasn't very well attended due to the rain.
There was a really nice little causeway / river running through the centre of town which was pretty interesting this morning with the rain. A couple of very nice bridges, some rocky rapids and a bunch of carp swimming around. Beautiful spot. Was fun watching the carp deliberately float downstream then frenetically swim back up through the rapids to get back to the calmer spot in the river.
Towards the end of the market there's another bridge with a huge stone torii gate at the head of it. Further down there's another one of those very pretty streets with a big temple at the end of it. Walked down and next to the temple were a couple of small museums.
One of them was the Takayama Float Museum. They have a big festival each year in which the central attraction is 20-odd wheeled towers they pull through town for some reason. This museum houses 4 of the floats at any given time on a rotating basis for visitors who aren't there during the festival. They are pretty big towers and have a lot of detail and fine work go into them. At the top of some of them is a puppet that is controlled by someone inside the float.
Apparently one of them weights a couple of ton and historically they would have 40-80 volunteers carry it as part of the festival. They don't do that anymore because they can't find enough people who are the same height who will volunteer to carry the thing. Instead they wheel it around on a trolley or something.
The audio guide was shaped like an old Sony Walkman which was kind of cute.
The next museum over was a bunch of models of a temple complex in a town called Nikko I believe. I was originally going to visit there but took it off my agenda for some reason. The models are really good and I almost found it as satisfying as wandering around the temple complex myself. Much less effort :D
After that I had a really quick look at the temple but I'm so templed-out after Kyoto and Koyasan that I just couldn't do anymore than a couple of minutes looking at it.
At this point I just started wandering aimlessly around as it was still pretty early and I wasn't sure what to do next. Australian guy in the hostel had recommended a really nice work around the outskirts of the city and I ran across a sign for it so decided to follow the path and see where it went.
Basically it turned out to be a big circular path around the edge of the city and it seemed to go through or past all the temples that may not be on the main tourist route.
Joy. More temples. Just what I wanted.
I continued the walk though as it was actually a really pleasant way to see some of the town. I didn't go into any of the temples but a lot of them were really nice to just walk past. There were also a few abandoned or at least seriously neglected temple complexes as well which were different to look at.
Eventually the path took me up a hill with some more temples and a park. And here I ran into some more Australians who were looking for the Takayama castle ruins. I found the path for them using google maps and decided to go check it out myself. Obviously it was built on top of the hill so I traipsed up there looking for something interesting.
I didn't really find anything. I know the word "ruins" implies there probably wouldn't be much there but other than a fairly large gate at the bottom of the hill I don't think I found anything that could be construed as "ruins" despite following all the paths I could find at the top of the hill. There was a square of rocks with a big concrete slab in the centre at the end of one path but I'm not convinced they were building with concrete a few hundred years ago so I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. So unless I completely missed it that was a total fizzer.
I was pretty sweaty and disgusting after all that walking so I headed back to the hostel for a shower and to change my clothes and have a bit of a break.
After a small break I headed out to the Hida no Sato folk village which was about 20 minutes from the train station on the bus. It's basically a collection of buildings from around the region that have been moved to this location to preserve them from various things (e.g. A valley being dammed). I wasn't really sure what to expect but I really quite enjoyed wandering around there.
At the start they had a few examples of games / toys from around the region which were fun to play with. A bamboo water pistol, a spinning top, some stilts and some puzzles. Otherwise it was about 30 buildings showing various styles or construction or layouts based on profession or usage. They ranged from very modest places (like a mining cottage) to what would have been very expensive places at the time (the village headman's multi-story home).
Most of my experience of Japanese construction previous has really been around temples and preserved shopping districts. Seeing these examples was really different and has really just cemented my appreciation of the style. I particularly liked the houses with the roofs that were stacks of reeds and turf.
It wasn't a big place (I was only there an hour or so) but I really enjoyed it. They seem to be continuing to work on it as they had people working there on a garden next to the lake.
Headed back to the hostel and grabbed a couple of beers from the 711 around the corner. Chatted with a couple of Aussies in the common room and ended up going out for gyoza with them for dinner. We did the worst artwork possible but stuck it up on the wall anyway.
Your art has brought shame on us all.
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