After Kyoto we headed to Takayama, a small town in the Japanese alps. Neither DW nor me could quite remember why this town was on our itinerary, but we’re now so glad it was.

Getting there involved another bullet train and then a change on to another train up into the mountains. It was a beautiful clear day so the scenery on the second train was very pretty:

We were staying at a ryokan. This is a traditional Japanese guesthouse, not a hotel. When we arrived they had a friendly welcome for us:

And they beat the welcome drum too!

The kids had a go at this too:

The change of scene from the big cities of Tokyo and Kyoto to this small mountain town was striking. It’s a really pretty place. It was a fairly isolated place for much of its existence, so the town centre contains several streets of preserved old buildings from several centuries ago. It also has a delayed cherry blossom season because of its elevation, so we arrived to find the blossoms at their peak. It’s quite a touristy place, and the cherry blossoms meant it was especially busy while we were there, but the tourists were almost exclusively Japanese.

After we’d settled in, we went for a walk to soak up the atmosphere.

After our stroll, the rest of the crew decided they’d like to relax for a bit, so I headed off by myself for a longer walk around a forest park in the grounds of the castle ruins overlooking the town. It was glorious – fresh mountain air, a nice crisp day, and very quiet. The whole town had excellent signage in both Japanese and English, and the forest park was the same. You don’t get signs these clear at home:

After my brisk walk, I rejoined the clan back at the ryokan. As I mentioned, a ryokan is a traditional Japanese guesthouse. By traditional, I mean the whole gig. You change out of your normal clothes to relax in traditional garb:

And you get served a delicious, beautifully presented multiple course Japanese meal in the comfort of your own room, at traditional low-level tables:

After dinner, they clear away the tables and lay out mattresses for you to sleep on the floor:

Ryokans are also typically located at a hot spring. Japan has many of these dotted all over. So in the spirit of tradition, I headed off for a nice soak in the ryokan’s outdoor (male) hot spring bath (there’s a separate one for the ladies). There’s a strict etiquette to public hot baths in Japan so I did my best to follow it. It was a superbly relaxing way to end the day.

The next day we took it pretty easy. There are a few temples and shrines dotted along the outskirts of the town, on a mini “philosopher’s path”. The original philosopher’s path is in Kyoto, and we had been hoping to walk along it on our last day there, but Thing One’s doctor visit meant we weren’t able to. The Takayama version is no doubt a pale imitation, but it was a very pleasant stroll indeed.

One of the temples had a small zen rock/gravel garden. Unlike the other specimens of these we’d seen in Kyoto, this one didn’t have a fence around it. While I was taking a photo of part of it, The Boy decided to run across another part. The whole point of these gardens is to facilitate meditation through studying the patterns – so a three year old stomping across these intricate designs is definitely not ok. Luckily, I managed to grab hold of him before he started digging into one of the mounds. That would probably have been a deportation offence.

Here’s the one he DIDN’T run across (I was too embarrassed to linger to photograph the one he did):

After we’d finished our philosopher’s path walk, we figured we’d earned our lunch. After our full-on traditional Japanese fare the night before, we decided on a burger joint. Not just any burger joint mind you, but Takayama’s finest (and only). An obscure recommendation in the guide book, stuck at the back of an antiques shop. You would never find this place on your own. It was a real feast of Americana, with delicious homemade burgers. Even better, it had a fine selection of Japanese craft beers (all the rage in Japan right now apparently), so of course myself and DW had to try some:

After lunch, the girls did a little shopping and kitted themselves out in new kimonos to wear to dinner instead of the ryokan-provided ones:

That evening we had another gorgeous traditional meal in our room. Takayama is a lovely, lovely place. Although a lot cooler than Luang Prabang, it has a similar charm.

One last photo from here – this is at an Inari shrine that I came across on my forest park walk. Not quite the same scale as the one in Kyoto, but the same basic idea:

Oh, ok, one more: