Blogs from Gifu, Japan, Asia

After Hiroshima, my plans were a bit fuzzy, but I headed to Takayama in the Gifu prefecture, to use it as the base for a few places I wanted to visit. Takayama is the largest city by area in Japan, but less populated as it sits in the mountainous Gifu region (Takayama means Tall Mountain). I arrived on the day there was the Spring Takayama Festival (Sanno Matsuri). It is the annual festival of the Hie Shrine to celebrate the arrival of spring, where 11 festival floats (Yatai) are taken through the city. Volunteers gather dressed up in traditional Japanese attire including Kamishimo (traditional Edo period Samurai outfits). Accompanying the procession are Shishimai (lion dance) performers, and the lively, reverberating gongs of Tokeiraku performers, who wear traditional robes decorated with the vibrant image of spirited fighting ... read more

Sleeping on the floor was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Our problem was that at 5.30 am the sun was streaming through the blinds and we were awake! Breakfast for us was served at 8 am in the Banquet Hall. It was off with our shoes as we padded across the tatami mats to our waiting table. Breakfast was a salad, fruit and a couple of croissants. This was a continental breakfast. The coffee was incredibly weak! Thankfully Don had made me a coffee in the room before we came down or I wouldn’t have been able to function! Then we went down to reception to get the shuttle bus to the bus station where we had tickets for the one hour drive to Shirakawa-go. Shirakawa-go is a world heritage ... read more

It was a beautiful, but hot day in Takayama. After breakfast, we wandered around the old town. There were two markets to see- one very small, local produce and the other, more touristy and commercial products. We prioritised these first as they were only on in the morning. We sampled Taiyaki, a fish- shaped sweet snack, cooked from a batter and filled with various fillings (we tried the chocolate, custard and cheese). They were tasty. We also tried so many more samples of sugar coated peanuts, in more flavours than imaginable. We bought some as a gift of the plum wine ones (our favourite). I bought some lovely handbags, cloth, sweets, snack, liqueur, sake and more for gifts for people at home. We had a lovely day, meandering around the old town. It was a beautiful ... read more

There are days that you look back on and wonder how things turned out the way that they did. Today was one of those days. We began with a simple plan - catch the train to Toyama, transfer to the fast train to Tokyo, catch the plane home and we're done. The plan was so simple we decided to go for a wander to the market to see if there was anything we couldn't live without. Turns out there were some shops that we hadn't visited yet and some things that we absolutely needed to get before coming home again so it was a productive trip. From there is was back to the Ryoken to finish packing and a quick taxi to the train station and everything is going according to plan. It was at this ... read more

A series of mountain towns give a flavour of smaller-town Japan. Our first stop is at Matsumoto, as we’re told the castle is worth a stop but the town has little else to capture you. We find ourselves charmed. The bus and train stations converge on the main city square, which create s hub for narrow, chararacter-filled streets with odd turns and bends. A colourful variety of shops, from musical instruments to bakeries to stationery made window-shopping fun. We pop into a coffee shop and I’m immediately drawn to a small display of fanciful post-cards, with playful scenes of children and cats - I pick out a few for our grand girls, only to find that the artist is the young woman serving us our kohi. We bought more and she signed them all for us. ... read more