Hida Takayama - Restaurant and Hotel Reviews

Our fond memories of Takayama was due in no small part to the wonderful, wonderful Ryokan that served us the best meal of the trip. IMHO that's a hard-earned title considering the effort we put into our search for authentic local cuisine in each city, with competition ranging from Kobe's steak teppanyaki, Osaka's Kansai-style broiled unagi, Kyoto's traditional Kyo-zushi, Kanazawa's fresh seafood, and Nagoya's Hitsumabushi etc. At the end, our cheap Ryokan in Takayama came up on top, and I'll pass this information to you in this article, probably the first English review on the Internet for this Ryokan.

Hotel Review: RYORI RYOKAN HANAOKA (Takayama)
Address: Gifu-ken Takayama-shi Hanaoka-machi 2-36
Price: 6600 yen per person including dinner and breakfast
Website/Map: http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~hanaoka2/
How To Book: Based on experiences from myself and contributing readers, we've found several ways to book:
1) If you can read Japanese, you can book through the popular hotel booking site of JALAN like we did. The price was around 6600 yen per person as of mid 2008.
2) If you can't read Japanese, you can try sending an email in simple English to: hanaoka@vesta.ocn.ne.jp
3)A fellow blogger Poppy has been able to book it through the Hida Tourism Board at hidatio@hidanet.ne.jp. The price was 6800 yen in mid 2009.
3) Alternatively, fellow blogger Mlle was successful in asking the staff at another hotel earlier in her trip to call up Hanaoka and book the room for her. This resulted in a bargain price of 6300 yen in mid 2009.
Just for everyone's reference, at the rack rate posted at Hanaoka's official site is 8000 yen on weekdays and 10000 yen on Fridays and Saturdays.
Directions: Exiting the JR Takayama station, turn left and walk for about five little blocks. You'll see a tall government building (Takayama City Hall) on your right and the police headquarters on your left. Hanaoka is directly across from the far end of the police headquarters ... there is hardly a safer location in ultra safe Japan, and it's only 8 minutes walk from the JR Station.



6600 yen (CAD$66) per person for a 13-course Kaiseki dinner that ranks top in our half-month trip, plus a 7-course breakfast, AND a restful night in a Tatami-mat room with private bathroom? You read correctly. If we consider the room charge alone to be worth 4000 yen per person, then we're only paying roughly 2000 yen for dinner and 600 for breakfast. This was actually the cheapest room-with-dinner-and-breakfast (Ippaku Nishoku) package ever in our travels throughout Japan, a full-fledged Ryori-Ryokan (gourmet inn) at rock-bottom Minshuku guesthouse prices.

How did we find this Ryokan? By browsing through JALAN, one of Japan's most popular hotel booking websites, where it had an incredible user's review rating of 4.9 out of 5 for its dinner ... and a 1400 yen discount below the regular price listed at the Ryokan's official site. To steal a line from The Godfather ... it's an offer we can't refuse!



It's only proper to start off this review with the Kaiseki dinner, which was given the long name of "Hida-gyu Miso Toban-yaki to Shun no Mikaku." Presumably it's got Hida Beef, cooked with Miso paste on top of a Toban ceramic plate, and accented with various seasonal delicacies. So what's in it really?

Okay. Course #1. I would have never expected the first course of a Kaiseki dinner to be a TERRINE ... the Owner-Chef seemed to be eager to announce his fusion creativity here. It's not a fine mousse kind of terrine, but a terrine of coarsely chopped broiled Unagi, pressed under a sushi mold and held together by the natural gelatin from the Unagi skin. The wasabi wasn't even necessary as the Unagi was very well executed and didn't have any hint of the "muddy flavor" (Dorokusa). It was a deliciously unorthodox presentation of Unagi, one which I never tasted before or after.



Course #2. Goma-Dofu ... now we're getting back to a traditional dish ... or is it? My idea of Goma-Dofu is always served with some variation of a soy-based sauce, but perhaps the Chef realized that would be too big of a shock to the palate after the sweet Unagi. This Goma-Dofu was as rich and thick as any I've ever tasted, but complimented by a smooth but only slightly sweetened Goma dressing as a transition to the milder dishes to come. Hmm ... very smart.



Course #3. A Moriawase of seasonal offerings ... I don't know what the Chef formally called this dish. The little square piece of pressed sushi was Masu (Sakura-coloured trout) Zushi, a local specialty of Toyama some 80 km to the north. It should be noted that Takayama is practically in the middle of a mountain range, so any seafood on our plate was conceivably trucked in daily from the Toyama Bay. That includes the conch and the Botan Ebi shrimp, which came with the same kind of impressive freshness I would expect of a Ryokan in Toyama. Our Chef was definite not skimping on quality ingredients here.



Course #4. The Sashimi was impressively fresh for landlocked Takayama ... in fact the freshness probably wasn't very different from what we had at the seafood capital of Kanazawa (see previous article) a few days ago. As you can see there's a slice of rolled squid with seaweed, a Botan Ebi prawn, some lean Akami tuna, and the best of all ... there's a couple pieces of superbly fresh and fatty Buri hiding behind the chrysanthemum. Wonderful quality, and this was only the second most memorable dish.



Course #5. Even in a Kaiseki dinner, our Chef did manage to squeeze one of the local Kyodo-Ryori (rustic cooking) dish into his presentation. The wild Kogomi fern is a springtime favorite of Central Japan, and the smoked Iburi-Dofu is a specialty of the neighboring city of Gujo. I don't remember how this dish tasted except for the crunchiness of the Kogomi, so it probably wasn't anything outstanding.



Course #6. My wife's favorite -- the Chawan-mushi. I remember the egg mixture being superbly light and smooth, but I don't really remember much about the ingredients at the bottom ... probably just the traditional sliced chicken and Kamaboko fish cakes.



Course #7. Of course a full Kaiseki wouldn't be complete without a Takiawase (slow-cooked) course, this one being a cut of salmon served with bamboo shoot and other veggies. Again it was well-executed, as the fish had stayed firm and plump, and served with a sweet, reduced Dashi soy sauce.



Course #8. The Yakizakana (grilled fish) course -- it looked like a sole on first glance but for some reason I thought it wasn't. Anyway I was sure that it wasn't just grilled, but slightly deep fried with the rest of the ingredients. This was an excellent course as well, as I finished even the crunchy tail of the fish.



Course #9. Finally ... the one dish we've waited for all evening ... the "Hida-gyu Miso Toban-yaki" which this Kaiseki Dinner Set was named after. Several slices of buttery soft, evenly marbled Hida Beef served in a rich, dark red Miso paste, grilled on a ceramic plate (Toban) instead of the traditional dried Hoba leaf.



The incredible softness was no different from Kobe Beef or Matsuzaka Beef, but when combined with the strong Miso, the exquisite combination of flavors was unmistakably Hida. The amount of Hida Beef was a little less than what we had at Shirakawago's excellent Shiraogi restaurant the day before, but when this whole Kaiseki Dinner of 13 courses cost only around 2000 yen (CAD$20), IMHO we're already getting twice our money's worth. I personally would be willing to pay 2000 yen just for this dish plus the sashimi.



Courses #10, #11 and #12. A wonderful clear broth for a change, after having so much Miso soup for the past week. I don't remember how I managed it, but I did finish the Soba noodles and most of the Koshi-hikari rice with marinated anchovies ... and this was after we racked up double digit number of dishes.



Course #13. My wife always had a huge dislike for strawberries. She didn't mind strawberry-flavored snacks, but if you presented her a whole strawberry as a fruit ... bleh. This was the dish that changed her perception of strawberries forever -- a plump, syrupy sweet strawberry with no hint of acidity whatsoever ... and look at its size compared to the slice of watermelon!



This was my most memorable dinner in recent years, with dishes after dishes of top quality Kaiseki courses prepared with the expertise and care of the Owner-Chef. To me the most impressive aspect was the choice of absolute top quality ingredients -- Sashimi with a freshness bettering one of the city's top Sushi-ya (see review of Michiya-zushi below), melt-in-the-mouth Hida Beef, even down to the selection of fruits -- all for an unbelievably cheap price.

So the dinner was excellent, but what about the room?



Located on the 3rd floor along with all other guest rooms, our room was 6-Tatami-mats in size plus a Genkan space at the entrance, a Western-style bathroom, and a balcony facing the snowy mountains to the East. As you can see, all the equipment had the "basic Ryokan" look to it -- an old TV sitting atop a small safe, unremarkable futons, and a little low table with a tea set. But most importantly to us, the room was spotlessly clean and was actually rather new.



Our balcony's view towards the 3,000-metres-high Norikura mountains, the third tallest volcano in Japan after Mount Fuji and Ontake-san. You can get a sense of the small size of Takayama's urban area, as the trees in the middle-ground marks the edge of the wilderness.



The simple bathroom was exceptionally clean again. In Japan, it's pretty rare to find cheap Tatami-mat rooms with a private bathroom -- typically you'll find private bathrooms only at western-style business hotels, or at the more expensive Ryokans geared towards rich retirees and higher-income families. This is one of the important but lesser-known considerations if you plan on booking Tatami-mat rooms.

We did go out for a walk at night, and made one interesting observation ... the locals disappeared, and the ratio of foreigners on the street suddenly increased by four times at night! Apparently nightlife isn't one of Takayama's penchants.



We woke up to another full and sumptuous meal, a 7-course breakfast providing the energy we needed as we prepared for our trip to the national park at Kamikochi this morning. Some of the dishes had become familiar to us by now, including the boiled wild Zenmai ferns (little pink dish at the centre of the picture) and the Miso soup with wild Nameko mushrooms. Being an urban Ryokan hasn't stopped Hanaoka from assuming its duty of introducing the region's traditional Sanzai ("wild mountain vegetables") to its clientelle.



The strong and delicious Hoba Miso had been the star of the breakfast for the third straight morning, but frankly I never got bored of it. The fragrance of the grilled Miso was the absolute best condiment for steamed rice, and as I'm writing this article I'm still regretting not bringing home a stack of Hoba leaves so that I could have this dish for breakfast on weekends. This is one of the Central Japanese dishes I miss the most.



Japanese-style layered egg omelette, grilled salmon, and cubes of dried Hida beef in mirin-soysauce marinade -- nothing out-of-this-world, but excellent as a breakfast dish nonetheless.



My wife's all-time favorite breakfast dish -- the Onsen Tamago (hotspring egg) served in a mouthwatering Dashi broth. Unlike the western poached egg which has a firm egg-white surrounding a soft yolk, the Japanese Onsen Tamago is a seemingly incredible semi-aqueous egg white orbiting around a firmer but still semi-soft yolk. Apparently this is possible since the egg-white start to become "cooked" at a slightly lower temperature than the yolk, a phenomenon recently re-discovered by 21st Century molecular gastronomy, a couple thousand years later than the Japanese.

At the end it was time to check-out and catch our bus to Hirayu Onsen en route to Kamikochi. Prior to getting the final bill my wife was still asking ... is it REALLY going to be 6600 yen (CAD$66) per person? Unbelievable, but true. 6600 yen for the best dinner of the trip, the best breakfast of the trip, AND one of the best views from the hotel room on this trip. The owner may not speak any English (my broken Japanese came to the rescue ... again), but don't let any language barrier deter you from making this your base for exploring Takayama and its surroundings. I seriously doubt you'll find a better deal elsewhere.



Food Review: MICHIYA-ZUSHI OKIMURAYA (Takayama)
Address: Gifu-ken Takayama-shi Aioi-cho 25
Hours: 11:00-14:00, 16:00-23:00
Website/Map: From GNAVI (Japanese)
Directions: Exiting the JR Takayama station, turn left, then turn right at the first major street, Kokubunji-Dori. Head straight on Kokubunji-Dori, then turn right at the little lane one block before the river. Michiya-zushi is on the left, just a few steps from Kokubunji-Dori.


If you've read some of the previous articles, you may notice my fetish for those really old and traditional culinary establishments, and this little Sushi-ya in Hida Takayama would fall into this category. At 103-years-young, Michiya-zushi is said to be the oldest existing Sushi-ya in Takayama. At lunchtime, it was as prototypical as a Sushi-ya could be -- one Chef working behind an old counter, a couple of Zashiki rooms, and an old TV playing yesterday's baseball highlights. Some may question the wisdom of having sushi 80 km from the coast, and I would usually agree, except for the ONE famous sushi ingredient you can't easily find anywhere else ...



... Takayama's famous Hida Beef, rumored to melt in the mouth like the finest Ootoro tuna ... which is why the locals proudly call their invention Hida Toro. And it cost just about as much as Ootoro, at 2100 yen (CAD$21) for four thin slices of certified A5-ranked Hida Beef.

Hmmm ... look at this shiny oiliness as the marbling fat was just starting to melt, accentuated by a slight torching of the surface. Unlike Ootoro tuna, the beef didn't turn into a full mouthful of fatty juices, but rather disintegrated into the soft, chewiness of the sushi rice upon the softest bite. My wife, who couldn't quite get over the psychological barrier of having raw beef for sushi, stopped after one piece ... which meant that I got to enjoy every bit of the smooth oily goodness of the other three pieces. Although it wasn't as magical as advertised, this Hida Toro Nigiri was still a delicious interpretation of Takayama's highly prized specialty beef.



Instead of just ordering the Hida Toro for 2100 yen, we found that it could be upgraded to a "Hida Toro Set" for only 1050 yen (CAD$11) more to include another local favorite, the Mushi-zushi (steamed sushi). Originated in Kansai where it is typically served only during the winter, this steaming hot variation of Chirashi-zushi ("scattered" sushi) is served year-round at mountainous Takayama.



Not you typical Sushi! Actually it's not even a typical Chirashi-zushi, as the entire egg was steamed on top of the rice instead of having it fried into an omelette and sliced into thin shreds. The toppings were nothing spectacular, but the Dashi soup stock absorbed into the rice gave it quite an attractive homey flavor. After all Kansai-style sushi is just as much about the rice as it is about the toppings, isn't it?



My wife had the more familiar Nigiri-zushi, a Torimase set for 2100 yen (CAD$21). There was little doubt that the toppings were transported in from Toyama, as the Chef gave us TWO pieces of Toyama Bay's famous fluorescent squid (Hotaru Ika). Though still fresher than anything we could get in Vancouver, according to my wife the freshness of the toppings here was noticeably a notch lower than what we had at Kanazawa's Omicho Market, just a few days prior.

So was this meal worth the 5250 yen (CAD$53)? I thought the Hida Toro was well worth its price to be honest, though my wife may disagree. The Mushi-zushi was interesting if unspectacular, while the Nigiri-zushi could have been skipped. Frankly if we had time for only one meal in this region, I would bypass the Hida Toro and pay a little more for a Hida Beef Steak grilled in delectable Hoba Miso. But since we already tried that the previous day in Shirakawago, the Hida Toro Nigiri was next on our list of must-try Takayama cuisines. And it was as excellent as A5-ranked Hida Beef should be expected, no matter how it's cooked ... or uncooked.

Bill for Two Persons

Hida Toro Set	3150 yen
Torimase Set	2100 yen
TOTAL	5250 yen (CAD$53)

MY WIFE'S CORNER Ever since late 19th Century, the remote town of Takayama has been consigned to the Prefecture of Gifu, which is famous for its production of top quality Edamame (young soy beans). My wife couldn't take her hands off this cellphone strap once she found it at a souvenir store -- this one is aptly named the Gifu Edamame edition, and is marked for sale only within Gifu Prefecture.

Wish We Had More Time in Hida Takayama!

I wrote about my wife's favorite Japanese town (see previous post on Uji) a few articles back. Now I get to write about my own favorite Japanese town, an old feudal settlement nestled within the mountainous Central Japan and blessed with world class festivals and sights within Day-Trip distance. It is a town where ancient traditions are highly treasured, where sculptors and Sake brewers still work inside their 18th Century Machiya townhouses, under the backdrop of the majestic Japan Alps. Welcome to my impression of Hida Takayama.



Takayama is an old provincial capital located almost at the dead centre of Japan -- if you draw a line halfway between the northern and southern tips of the Honshu Island, you'll strike across Takayama. This area of rugged mountain ranges has been known as Hida historically, and even today Takayama is still widely called Hida Takayama.



This is a very unique region within Japan, culturally separated from the rest of the country due to the treachery of the mountain passes through the feudal ages. Today you can get here from Tokyo or Osaka in approximately 4 hours by train. As for us, we arrived by local bus from the village of Shirakawago to the west, as part of our cross-mountain trip originating from Kanazawa.



SAN-MACHI


Of Takayama's numerous tourist attractions, the most famous is a well-preserved section of the original feudal town -- exactly three streets of it -- known as the San-Machi (Town of the Three). Flanked by the lazy Miyagawa river on one side and the Tera-machi temple district on the opposite, it has become a major destination for cultural tourists and photographers who arrive en masse for its incredible concentration of interesting sights and beautiful photo spots. Many of the building are designated National Cultural Treasures, and the city is recently putting together a proposal to be recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Even to the uninitiated tourist, it's like walking into an Edo Period artist colony, and some of the shops and studios have been around at least that long, with the craftsmanship being passed down from master to apprentice through generations.



One interesting feature of the old town was the high concentration of traditional Sake breweries, signified by these large balls of cedar branches (Sugitama) hanging under the roof. I counted at least four or five of them located within a couple blocks of each other, all taking advantage of the crisp, sweet tasting water from the surrounding snow-capped peaks.



The Sake varieties produced in this region seem to be aiming towards a drier, unrefined full-body taste ... or at least that's the impression I get from the samples in the local markets. There is also a noticeably greater variety of semi-filtered (Nigori) wines compared to what we saw in Kansai or Tokyo, which is probably nothing more than some marketing people coming up with wines to match the region's rustic image.



Some of the breweries offered Sake tasting for a nominal fee, but I had to give that a pass -- I knew that I wasn't going to buy anything and weigh down my backpack further, and I would feel bad about troubling the brewery staff. I think I must have been slowly adapting into the Japanese mode of thinking during my travels.



Outside the San-Machi district lies the modern city, which is somewhat commercialized but still pleasantly uncrowded for a leisurely stroll around town. Discerning souvenir hunters would uncover goldmines in the numerous traditional carpentry studios, some of which have been in business for a century or more. The store signage here reads "Ichii-Ittobori" ("first-rank one-chisel carving" ... my translation), a highly sought-after style of wood carving originating from this region.



A humorous testament of just how amazingly beautiful Takayama is -- the owner of the house must have had daily encounters with inquisitive foreigners mistaking his immaculately preserved house for a museum. When an entire section of the town looks so uniformly exquisite, it's easy to forget that real people carry on their daily lives inside these sliding doors of dark wooden lattices.

Aside from being famous for feudal townscape and breweries, Takayama also features an amazing number of interesting little museums for a city of this small size. We chose the following three.



TAKAYAMA JINYA


The city's biggest tourist attraction after the San-Machi, this medieval castle-like enclosure housed the local government from the 17th Century until the 1960s, which is quite amazing if you consider that the older generation used to stroll through this museum to pay their taxes just a few decades ago. A radical concept compared with the modern Prefecture Office across the river, the Jinya is a historical vestige from an era when the idea of a government office was an enormous mansion for the governor and his servants, gigantic storehouses for the annual tax collection (in the form of rice and grains), countless rooms for various official and private functions, and an artfully manicured courtyard garden.



Overlooking the central courtyard was a grand, multi-functional reception hall -- out of bounds to visitors of course. In fact we had to carry our own shoes in plastic bags through most of the rooms due to the Tatami mat flooring. The calligraphy at the far end reads "Loyalty" and "Filial Piety", ancient Confucian themes popular with the ruling class (for obvious reasons) through the feudal ages.



As popular with tourists as the Jinya was, the entire complex was so vast and spacious that we were able to find a quiet stretch of the veranda to just lie down and relax. For a long time I just sat there in front of the courtyard, doing nothing and thinking nothing. That was quite a rarity on this trip, as we had become so used to being pushed through the major sights by hordes of uniformed students on their school trips.



Located just a stone's throw from the San-Machi, the Jinya pronounced the Shogun's strategic presence in this remote region of giant timbers and rich gold and silver mines. You can see how the occupants poured centuries of ownership care into the architectural details of their 10,000 square metre property, down to each nail-less joinery in the complex arrangement of open beams.



There are other exhibits of daily life in the Edo Period, among them a set of earthen kitchen stoves, and a 19th Century toilet preserved in such good condition that they had to put a "DO NOT USE" warning beside the "Toilet" sign. Makes me wonder if they found out the hard way ...



But the most educational exhibit was the little courthouse, filled with various interesting instruments which I had no idea what they were until I saw ...



Whoa! No comments from me!

Takayama Jinya
Official Website: http://www.pref.gifu.lg.jp/pref/s27212/
Entrance: 400 yen (CAD$4) as of late 2008
Directions: Walking out the JR train station, head straight along Hirokoji Dori until you hit the Miyagawa river, then turn right before the bridge. Takayama Jinya will be on your right side after one block.



TAKAYAMA MATSURI YATAI KAIKAN


The most expensive museum in town (820 yen) isn't a typical museum of artworks and historical artefacts, but an air-conditioned storehouse for the centuries-old, lavishly decorated floats used in the semi-annual Takayama Festival parade. Each year, the 100,000 fortunate people who visit Takayama during the Spring and Autumn festivals are be able to see all this and more along the parade route free-of-charge ... except for the doubled and tripled hotel room prices (think Running-of-the-Bulls in Pamplona, Spain). Being not as fortunate, we had to settle for seeing only four of the floats within the museum's gigantic glass box.



You have to see the shimmer and the intricacies of the gold-leaf covered sculptures to believe the opulence -- and the immaculate condition -- of the floats, considering that many of them date back from the 1600s and are still in use twice a year. That's quite a demonstration of robustness and component replaceability in engineering terms, not to mention just plain looking good.



The most popular of all floats features a triplet of lifelike marionettes who can supposedly perform a wide range of complex gestures and requires 8 puppeteers to operate. The climax of the puppet show, which I've only seen in a video at the museum, has the pot-bellied monk raising his hand and an explosion of white confetti would appear magically out of a hidden compartment and rain down on the audience.



It's all interesting to a degree, but I'm just the kind of traveler who would rather be joining the festival alongside the locals -- that's why we timed our visit to Kyoto to coincide with the Aoi Matsuri. But then there are just too many interesting festivals in Japan to see in a lifetime. If I ever plan a trip to Central Japan again, I'll have a hard time deciding between the Shirakawago Light-Up Festival in January and the Takayama Festival in April and October.



SAKURAYAMA NIKKO-KAN


The ticket to the Takayama Matsuri Kaikan includes entrance to another exhibition of the wood-working mastery of Takayama's artisans, a 1/10 model of the Nikko Toshogu mausoleum complex that contained 100,000 individual pieces of miniature components and took 33 sculptors 15 years to complete. Talk about commitment! This was the crowning achievement in a lifetime of hard work for these artisans, and it's difficult not to be awestruck when we saw the grand scale of the model filling the large exhibition hall.



Just look at the intricate details of the Toshogu, where each little sculpture of the facade was modelled after the actual building with religious adherence. Of course the famous sculptures of the three monkeys and the sleeping cat are there as well. The top of the roof in this picture was about 50cm tall, to give an idea of the scaling.



The really cool thing is that all this is just a modern extension to the long history of artistic collaboration by the local artisans. Like Italian artisans employed by its European neighbours during the renaissance, the Hida artisans were employed (or drafted) for the construction of the temples and palaces in the ancient capital of Nara -- and that is a tradition dating back 1400 years.


Takayama Matsuri Yatai Kaikan and Sakurayama Nikko-kan
Official Website:http://www.hida-hachiman.org/
Entrance: 820 yen (CAD$8) as of late 2008
Directions: Walking out the JR train station, head straight along Hirokoji Dori across the Miyagawa river. Turn left after the river and go straight for three blocks, at the same time watching for a two-storey-tall stone Torii gate at one of the cross streets on the right side. The Torii marks the entrance to the Sakurayama Hachiman-gu shrine located in the same grounds as the two museums.



INTERESTING MUSEUMS WE DIDN'T VISIT

One of the most popular museums in town was the Hida Folk Village, an open-air exhibition of traditional Gassho-zukuri farmhouses complete with traditional handicraft demonstrations. But IMHO this is primarily for people who don't have time to visit Shirakawago and see the real, living village.

The Kusakabe Mingei-kan is one of the grand merchant houses surviving from the Edo Period. It's now converted into a museum of folk handicraft and architecture.

The Hida Takayama Inro Museum is supposed to have a large collection of hand-crafted medicine cabinets. Somehow I find this really interesting ... don't ask me why.

And then there's just a plethora of totally random museums around town, focussing on anything from teddy bears to squirrels to glassware to fossils. I don't think I've ever seen such a high concentration of museums with the possible exception of Florence Italy.


TRANSPORTATION


So you wanna come to Takayama and see Hello Kitty in a Sarubobo costume? Just joking ... there are a lot more interesting sights than this.

From Tokyo or Osaka, the easiest and fastest way is to take the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagoya, then change to the Limited Express "Wideview Hida." The whole trip should take a little over 4 hours. This costs a substantial 13500 yen (CAD$135) from Tokyo and 9500 yen (CAD$95) from Osaka, one way. Of course it's free if you've got a JR Pass. Since Shinkansen trains depart every 15 minutes and the Wideview Hida train every hour, this gives you the freedom of hopping on the train at any time and get a reasonably good connection.

The cheaper way is to take a highway bus operated by Nohi Bus (http://www.nouhibus.co.jp/english). From Tokyo, at least 4 buses depart daily at 08:00, 09:00, 14:30 and 16:00, costing 6500 yen (CAD$65) and taking 5 1/2 hours. From Osaka Nanba, two buses depart daily at 08:10 and 16:30, costing 5500 yen (CAD$55) and taking a little more than 5 hours.

If you're interested in knowing what mode of transportation we took, we arrived by Nohi Bus from the historical village of Shirakawago (2400 yen, 50 minutes), and departed via another Nohi Bus to the hotspring town of Hirayu Onsen (1530 yen, 60 minutes). A rather unorthodox route, but it turned out to be the most economical and direct path to the destinations we're interested in.



IDEAS FOR DAY-TRIPS

The pristine national park of Kamikochi is about 1.5 hours away by bus. I'll add a photo later once I get to the stage of writing an article for Kamikochi, but this is one of Japan's premier scenic areas and is quite worth a visit.

A collection of little hotspring towns known as Oku-hida Onsengo is as little as an hour away by bus ... in fact this was our next destination upon leaving Takayama. This is a relatively convenient place to go if you're interested in a dip in Central Japan's legendary open-air baths. And if you're coming during the winter, the illuminated frozen waterfall of Hirayu Ootaki is quite famous.

There's a famous hotspring town by the name of Gero, one hour south of Takayama by JR's local train. Historically it's one of the "Three Famous Hotsprings" of Japan (the other two being Beppu and Kusatsu), but nowadays it's blighted by a whole forest of multi-storey hotspring hotels. Oku-hida Onsengo is a much better choice IMHO.

The small town of Hida Furukawa, just 20 minutes north of Takayama by JR's local train, is supposed to feature a beautiful section of the old town with colourful carps swimming in the canals along the streets. Sadly we didn't have time for a visit.


Last by not least, and I'm not going to condone this ... but Shirakawago is only 50 minutes away by bus. Though I think a first trip to the Hida region wouldn't be complete without a rustic night inside one of the giant farmhouses. If you can afford two or three nights in Central Japan, do yourself a favor and spend one night at Shirakawago or Gokayama.



HOW MANY DAYS?

With so many interesting sights within striking distance, a first-timer could easily spend four or five days in Takayama without ever getting bored. We did one night in Gokayama, one in Shirakawago, one in Takayama, and one in Oku-hida Onsengo, but all that could also be done using Takayama as a base. Personally I would have preferred having one more day for doing Takayama in depth and to visit Furukawa for a half-day, but as all independent travelers know, time is never enough ...

MY WIFE'S CORNER Enter any souvenir store in Takayama, and you'll be immediately surrounded by an army of faceless humanoid dolls with pointy arms and legs. No these aren't aliens craving for your flesh, but local doll amulets known as Sarubobo (baby monkey). Traditionally passed down from parent to children and made with red cloth to resemble the reddish face of baby monkeys, Sarubobo are now sold by clever entrepreneurs in a myriad of colours, each attributed with a different mystical power. Well ... welcome to the marketing machine of Japan. This cell-phone strap is called the Sarubobo Edition, and was bought in Takayama for around 450 yen.