Takayama (Part 1)

I have been itching to take a few day trips, especially now that on a time-crunch before I leave for Michigan, the summer heat arrives, and the baby is here. So we headed out to a city called Takayama on Saturday.

Takayama is a historic and traditional town filled with old style inns, shops, shrines, galleries/museums, and sake breweries. It's nestled in the mountains, so provides some beautiful scenery too. It's one of the few places in Japan that has retained it's traditional charm throughout the years.

After visiting the morning market, we headed to a National Historic Site called Takayama Jinya. It was a branch office of the Edo Bakufu (government) from 1692 to 1868. It is designated as a National Historic Site and is the only existing building of its kind in Japan. I particularly loved this building because it actually showed how people used to live. Many of the castles/temples/historic places in Japan are either reconstructed, empty, or converted into museums. This building had actual artifacts and represented a historic way of life. Here are a few pictures below of Takayama Jinya.

entrance of Takayama Jinya

conference room(s)

kitchen

bathroom

torture and interrogation room

Next we headed to old town, a district of three main streets lined with traditional shops, restaurants, museums, and sake breweries. Takayama is famous for it's sake breweries. The shops are easily recognized by the spheres of cedar fronds outside of the entrance. Most of the breweries are open to the public for tours in January & February, but the rest of the year you can go in and sample the different sakes and make purchases.

sake brewery

Joe sampling sake with a nice Japanese
man assisting him read the labels

To finish the morning, we headed to the Takayama Festival Float Exhibition Hall. Here we learned that the Takayama Festival is one of the three most beautiful festivals in Japan - the focus of the festival is the magnificent floats which are pulled through the streets of the town. There are two festivals each year, one in April and one in October. This festival began 350 years ago, and most of the floats date back from the 17th Century. They are decorated with complicated wood carvings, detailed metal work, and gold lacquer. We hope to be able to make it to the actual float festival to see these wonderful pieces of art in action!

5 of the floats on display at the exhibit

For lunch we ate at an amazing Hida beef local restaurant called Sukeharu. We have never had Hida beef before, and many compare (and prefer) it to Kobe beef. Joe ordered the mincemeat cotlet set, and I ordered the hamburg set.Verdict is: WE LOVED IT!

the restaurant

Hida beef hamburg set

We had an incredible afternoon as well... saw one of the oldest cherry blossom trees in Japan, and went to a folk village to see old farmhouses - will post more about the second part of our day later.