Japan, September 28-October 7, 2007 Part 1

In October 2007 Pat and I set out for a week’s holiday in Japan, before continuing on to the US for the rest of the month. We flew from KL to Narita (Tokyo) and took a bus to YCAT, the Yokohama City Air Terminal, where a P&G colleague of Pat’s, Jan Beunder, the plant manager at Takasaki, met us. We spent the night at their lovely home high on a hill overlooking Yokohama and the bay, then a second night at the very posh Yokohama Prince Hotel right next to the train station where we began our journey to Takayama the following morning. Our bullet train left for Nagoya about 11 a.m., arriving about 1 ½ hours later. After lunch in the station, we took an express train to Takayama which climbed up into the mountains, becoming increasingly slower and later as we went along! We finally arrived about 5 p.m. and found our hotel, Asunaro Ryokan, close by the station. Below is a picture of Pat at dinner in the dining room with 12+ different courses as only the Japanese know how to do! Note on the right, sitting on a piece of tin foil, is a slice of beef with veggies which is quietly grilling itself over a piece of burning wax, like in a Sterno can. There were tempura-style fried shrimp, soba noodles and cold sake.




















Our first day in Takayama was spent walking around the town (6.72 miles!), with our first stop the Hida Kokubun-ji, the oldest temple originally built in the 8th century, but later destroyed by fire. The current buildings date back to the 16th century. In the courtyard below you see the three-storey pagoda and a huge gnarled gingko tree, which is said to be 1200 years old!















From there we explored the daily morning market along the banks of the river Miya-gawa. It was a busy place with vendors selling different sorts of pickles, huge apples with a logo or good luck message (not sure which!) on them, chili peppers tied in a chain, various crafts and so on.


































Downtown is clean as a whistle with a shopkeeper scrubbing the sidewalk in front of her shop as she opens for the day! What a difference as compared to streets in Malaysia!















A view of the river with the market stalls set up on the right bank.














Another picture of the river near some old merchants' houses that we visited: Kusakabe Mingeikan from the 1890's and next door, the sake brewery, Yoshijima-ke, from 1908.















From here we walked to the Takayama Yatai Kaikan, the Festival Floats Exhibition Hall, displaying 4 out of 23 floats used in the spring and fall festivals in town. We just missed the fall festival by about a week! These are similar to antique Mardi Gras floats from the 17th century and are all hand-carved with flowers, animals and intricate designs in lacqueur, gold and metal. They were quite large and very beautiful. The models beside each float are life-size.




































Below is a sake shop: note the huge ball of cedar hanging from the front entrance-this is what denotes that the shop sells sake! Inside were hundreds of types of sake, just like a huge wine store!




















After lunch, we took a taxi to Hida No-Sato, the Hida Village Folk Museum, located just at the edge of town. We walked around the site which featured old farmhouses (about 30 buildings) rather like Upper Canada Village, showing what traditional rural life was like in previous centuries. The village itself was virtually empty except for some tourists but display cases in some of the buildings featured old sleds, straw sandals, farm equipment, etc. Note the thick thatched roofs now growing grass and below that, a view of what the inside of the roof trusses looks like, held together with heavy rope or twine




































Below is a typical Hida farmhouse in the gassho-zukuri style (hands in prayer). The Hida region is also well known for its beef and to a lesser extent its soba, buckwheat noodles.















A tired family going home at the end of the day! The carriage was being pulled on foot by the man in front.
















When we returned to the ryokan at the end of the day, we were informed that our chef was ill so we were asked to dine in town. We chose a nearby steak house, Yamatake-Shoten where we picked out our cut of local Hida beef, shrimp and veggies which we grilled on the inset charcoal grill between us! We wandered through the quiet and very empty streets afterwards, stopping at a little bar where the bar tender spoke good English and made us cheese toast with our drink!

Breakfast on our last morning, October 3rd, consisted of a delicious egg cooked in a ham-lined tinfoil cup over a hot flame, rice, pickles, potato-crab salad, pear, tofu, miso soup and green tea…another dozen or so dishes! No one goes hungry in Japan for sure! We left Takayama on a late-morning bus through the Japanese Alps to Matsumoto, a beautiful scenic drive through a mountain pass at 1500 m, with lots of tunnels and passing by three dams on the Azusa River. Before we left, we tried to change some $100 US bills at a local bank, which they refused because they had some ink marks on them! Luckily we found an ATM in the post office which worked with our Chase debit card in English!

On to Matsumoto in Part 2...