All of the convenience stores in Japan have English names: Seven-Eleven, Lawson, and Family Mart. They are ubiquitous – 50,000 stores in Japan as of 2012, and thousands more set to open this year.
For dinner, we went for grill-your-own Hida-gyū. You select your cut of beef from the refrigerator case and they bring it out for you in slices, along with some red-hot charcoal for the grill. After that, you’re on your own. There is so much marbling in the beef that it just melts in your mouth. Still recovering from the ensuing meat coma.
The Sakurayama Hachimangu Shrine is everything you would expect: majestic and eerie in the misty morning. Especially fond of the auxiliary shrine where scholars can leave used up pencils and pens for good luck on exams.
The Yoshijima House was built in 1907. The Yoshijima family was at that time a well-known brewer of sake. The architecture of the house is stunning. Such clean lines, whether from the black stitching outlining the tatami mats, the paper screen doors, or the roof beams that intertwine up to the ceiling like a 3D Mondrian grid. Most of the rooms have only tatami mats, with no fixed furniture, so the purpose of the room depends on what is placed in it. During our visit we had shiitake tea served from the pot brewing on the charcoal brazier.
Takayama is a very pretty city, even in the rain.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Takayama turns out to be a foodie haven. We spent most of the day snacking and drinking, with highlights including raw beef sushi (bottom left) and a (rather extensive) sake tasting.
In Takayama, we are staying in a traditional ryokan: futons on the floor, rice pillows, robes provided, shoes verboten.
View from our window: Ryokan Murayama, Takayama. 7:45, 15 October 2013
We arrived in Takayama in a bit of a race against the weather. After a beautiful week in Tokyo, a typhoon is headed our way. We wanted to make the most of our time in the mountains while the nice weather holds, so as soon as we arrived we threw our bags in a locker and went on the Higashiyama Walking Course, checking out the temples on this hillside and then trekking up to the top of the hill where the old Takayama castle used to sit. Just made it back to the train station as the last of the
We left Tokyo today, riding the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Shinagawa to Nagoya before changing for the regular train up into the mountains. It was super fast and efficient, but I wouldn’t say it really felt like 300km per hour except when another Shinkansen passed us heading in the opposite direction. The other noticeable aspect was the crazy cant of some curves - every now and then the train would lean in to a bend and the cityscape out of the window would disappear away. Slightly disconcerting.