Takayama

So I’m hanging out in New Zealand now. It’s much warmer than where I live in Japan was when I left that’s for sure!!! Christmas and Boxing Day have been awesome and I am not less than a little sunburnt, oh well, we live and learn and wear sunscreen don't we?

But like I’ve said before I’ve got a thing or two to tidy up before I can describe my current travels.

A few weeks ago I went to Takayama with my wonderful Jamaican friend, Fay. Again, we went on yet another public holiday. We got up early in the morning for our 2 hour train journey there. Takayama sits just beyond Gifu’s border with Toyama on the Gifu side. It’s a very picturesque town famous for its beauty and its beef! I got me some amazing tasting beef and couldn’t be happier.

Takayama is a very traditional style town with rows of terraced houses come shops and the usual shrines and temples which is to be expected of any traditional Japanese town. As you can imagine I wasn’t only drawn there by the beef, though that was a huge part of it. I went there to engage in some temple-ing and some shrine-ing and some learning. I also went there by recommendation of my previously mentioned wonderful host family.

Takayama is an historical town on the Gifu side of the Gifu-Toyama border. It appears to have been one of the last bastions of the shogunate in the area at one stage and has some pretty awesome examples of traditional Japanese architecture, as well as being foreigner friendly. It was fantastic to be wandering around a town that had lots and lots of signs in English and where explanations in important places were written in both Japanese and English.

There is also, of course, the beef, oh the beef! It isn't as high quality as the wonderful and apparently extremely delicious Kobe beef but Hida beef is pretty darn good and I was quite willing to pay through the nose for it. The local rice balls on a stick coated in some sort of soy based sauce were also to die for. Food glorious food, that's all I am going to say just now.

I think the best way for me to describe Takayama is to put photos up. Coming soon once I work out how to do so from my Mac.

I am going to sign off there and go work out the photo situation.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and was neither lonely, nor cold, nor bored.

Happy Holidays!!!

Raewyn