takayama

went to takayama on the morning of monday august 8th and left the evening of tuesday, august 9th, both by bus. takayama is a small, old japanese town nestled in the japan alps in central honshu. its well known amongst japanese people as a place to visit and as a result tourism has become the biggest industry there. its definately a small town that shuts down at night but during the day theres lots of things to see and do. amongst those are visiting takayama jinyu (an old japanese administrative building where samurais lived), an old hida village with traditional japanese snow houses, visiting old japanese residences, and shopping for japanese sweets and souvenirs. some thoughts:

- the bus trip from kanazawa to takayama was one of the most pleasurable ive ever been on. bus trips are funny in japan because we need to stop for a 15 minute rest for every 1 hour of driving...as a result going anywhere either in a japanese bus or travelling with a japanese person driving in a car takes forever. anyways...one of the rest stops was in a beautiful hida village in the mountains and the scenery and weather were breathtaking.

- we stayed at the cheapest business hotel near the station, the orion, and while it wasnt bad by western standards, lets just say that you get what you pay for in life sometimes

- for dinner on monday we went to try a local takayama speciality...hida beef. basically its barbeque style where you get the barbeque in the middle of the table, and fry raw beef and vegetables until theyre ready. it was great...except we found out the next day that one of the meat dishes we ordered was actually cows tongue.

- one great japanese icon was born in takayama: sarubobo, a hello kitty-like creature that in english means "happy monkey". some souvenir shops seemed to sell nothing but surabobo in every form imaginable. amanda and i both got caught up in the sarubobo hysteria and purchased some sarubobo souvenirs...for myself, i got a sarubobo cell phone clip and a sarubobo sweat rag (trust me, thats needed as badly as undershirts in nagoya)

- i bought some cookie boxes for my schools because in japan youre not allowed to go on vacation unless you bring some sort of gift back to the workplace as a token of gratitude. the amount of choices available in different looking gift boxes all selling arguably the same type of japanese sweet were staggering.

- beautiful weather over the two days that only stopped once we got on the bus at 7pm for nagoya on tuesday night...it started raining then but before that it was blisteringly hot but alright with the humidity less than nagoya

all in all, takayama was a great end to 4 great days. there was alot of walking and trekking involved so the legs are a little tired right now but it wasnt all work...lots of time for relaxation as well. japan truly is a lovely country to travel in and live in. up now is rest and relaxation in nagoya for today and tomorrow (oasis concert tomorrow!) before heading for tokyo for 5 days and climbing mt. fuji for 2 days. should be awesome.