Skip to main content

Takayama washout


Nine years ago to the day we arrived in Takayama without a place to stay, not realising that it coincided with the Takayama Matsuri, one of Japan's three most beautiful festivals. Fortunately the staff at the tourist office found us a room and we had the pleasure of watching the enormous wooden floats being hauled through the night streets ridden by young drummers and flautists and accompanied by marchers.


Finding suitable accommodation was a lot harder this time and initial bookings split us between distant hotels for the two nights. Fortunately, there were some late releases of rooms and I got us two nights in the Best Western Hotel. We were looking forward to sharing the parade with Alex, the spectacle of lights and noise. It appeared like plenty of other foreigners were here for it too.

Unfortunately, the weather had other plans and it drizzled or showered all day. The floats were left in their tall halls, though the doors were opened for some to be shown.

Portable mini shrine with rain cover
There is still plenty to enjoy in Takayama, but first we had our own washout by taking our clothes to a coin laundry near the post office. The huge machine, rather expensive at Y1,200 for 70 minutes, was a combined washer and dryer and our clothes actually came out dry, an improvement from the coin laundries at hotels.

While the clothes were washing we walked to the Jinya mae morning market and enjoyed a breakfast of freshly cut apple and mitarishi dango, skewered rice balls grilled with local sweet miso sauce. We purchased a pack of local miso too. Last time we were here, back in 2008, a pregnant B couldn't tolerate the smell or flavour of miso, but it's a wonderful addition to many dishes.


A number of streets in Takayama have retained their old brown wooden buildings, which house restaurants, craft and produce shops. Alex decided that he too loved miso soup after sipping on a sample provided in one shop. We bought various crackers too. Along with woodcraft, embroidery and sewing are popular crafts in the region and Alex was so cute when he asked to buy a little rat toy, appropriate as most of the range of animals related to the Asian zodiac and he was born a rat.





Returning with our clean clothes and shopping to the hotel, we went out again for some lunch at Bandai Kadomise, a meal of more Hoba Miso for B and I and tempura for Alex. Miso enhances the already rich flavour of the Hida beef and grilling it over a flame is perfect meal for a cold day.



On we wandered through the old streets and along another where a long row of colourful stalls had been set up to sell typical Japanese festival food, including takoyaki, yakisoba, batter pancakes and chocolate bananas. Alex had a go at a cross between pinball and bingo where the objective is to the balls into a line of holes. No luck, though he did enjoy his consolation prize of loom bands.






Alex got a shock when, avoiding an oncoming car, he stepped into an open drain. Fortunately, the water was shallow as some alongside the street are quite deep.

As the floats would likely not be making an appearance along the streets we visited the Festival Floats Exhibition Hall to view some of these massive structures up close. I thought that the museum could have done with more multimedia of the parade itself rather than just the static displays of retired floats.


Our tickets included a visit to the Sakurayama Nikkokan, which contained exquisite model recreations of the colourful shrines at Nikko, north of Tokyo. After a quick climb up to look at the Sakurayama Hachimangu Shrine we returned out into the rain to try to catch a marionette performance on one of the floats in the sheds. Sadly, we just missed out on what must have been only a short show. Last time it went on for ages. Maybe we'll have to come back with Alex another year.










He was sitting outside a beef bun shop, his name and age provided.

We were all exhausted by this stage and collapsed into bed back at our hotel. Except for Alex who used up the battery on the iPad.

It was getting close to seven in the evening when we struggled out of the hotel again. We weren't terribly hungry after snacking on small items, including a bowl of Hida beef stew and skewers of beef, most of the afternoon. On a side street near the food stalls we found a little restaurant where we had small meals of local noodles and beef rice.




We returned to the hotel along by the "scenic route". The historic streets were shuttered and dark but for the festive paper lanterns strung up along the way, giving a very mysterious air to the quiet paths. More lanterns lit the western side of the red Nakabashi bridge, where the parade would have started and ended. It was quiet now, but for what looked to be a media crew ensconced in one brightly lit corner.







Though the parade had been cancelled there was still a festive air about Takayama, already a town worth visiting for its preserved history and food. It's difficult to leave without gaining something from here, even if it's only in the belly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ho Chi Minh to Hoi An

The easy way to get to Hoi An from Ho Chi Minh City is to fly to Danang then go via car for the final leg. Then there's my way. We had to wake at 5.30 am to get ready for a 6.15 departure from the hotel. A hotel car took us the few kilometres to the domestic terminal at the airport, where we checked into our Vietnam Airlines flight to the central Vietnam city of Hue. The airport was nothing flash, but it seemed functional. Alex had sandwiches (refused banh mi) for breakfast, then we went to the gate. Our blue Airbus A321 was parked at a remote stand, which necessitated a packed shuttle bus ride. It was nice to be aboard a full service airline again, even if the service was just a cup of water. We took off over the hazy skies of Ho Chi Minh City and for most of the smooth flight were cruising over a carpet of cloud. We descended over mountains poking their heads through the cloud, across lakes and paddy fields and over the beach. It was lovely scenery.

The Carlingford Line

We close the year and the decade with a local adventure to mark the closure of a railway line. On the January 5, 2020, the Carlingford Line from Clyde will close to be partially replaced by the Parramatta Light Rail. This is Sydney's quietest line, a single track branch for most of its length from the industrial centre of Clyde to the northwestern suburb of Carlingford. According to Wikipedia, power supply and signalling issues mean that only a single four car train can utilise the line at a time. Newer Sydney trains run in fixed eight car configurations. This will be the first and last time I traverse the Carlingford Line in its current configuration. The weather of the day is certainly appropriate for an ending, the brown smoke haze lending an apocalyptic air to proceedings. I drive to Padstow and catch the T8 line to Central, followed by the T1 towards Parramatta and Penrith. The historic homes of the Inner West give way to industrial complexes, rail storage yards and t

A lazy day at the beach

It's 2am and somebody is still setting fireworks off on the beach in front of the hotel. I can't see the explosions as I have the window shuttered, but I can still hear them. I've wanted to have a lazy day and today was the closest I got. I woke up in the night from a very sad dream. Dreams follow crazy paths, but this one resolved itself as so. An entity had been causing disruption of computer systems around the world. It turned out that this entity had emerged from the computer networks and had been struggling to gain access to more computing power so that it could live. The entity had taken on the persona of a woman. The protagonist who had "defeated" the entity discovered that it was alive, spoke to it. Ultimately fell in love with her. But his prior actions would lead to its death. As a gift to her he downloaded his memories so that she could experience life even as she died. I know it sounds like a pulpy sf or technopunk plot, but dreams are about feelings,