Takayama to Kanazawa

Saturday, October 23rd

We started today in sporadic rain. Mostly drizzle but a couple times pretty steady rain. We were traveling in the morning so it didn't affect us much but the stop at the old village was in the drizzle. Tourist attractions in Japan typically have hordes of people and this old village was no exception. I had to plan my shots carefully to avoid having tourists in the picture.

This overlook gave tourists a chance to take long-range shots of the old village.

A stream of umbrellas crossing a suspension bridge leading into the old village.

These are "gassho" style roofs, so called after the similarity to hands pressed together in prayer.

One half of this roof has been replaced with new thatch.

This how the old roof looks. It will be replaced soon.

A garden in the old village.

A peaceful scene away from the tourists.

We stopped at an Italian restaurant called Budo no Ki (literally, grape tree) for lunch. I didn't take any photos but the namesake grape vines were trained over a wire grid about 10 inchs square supported by T-shaped trellises about 10 feet off the ground. Most of the leaves were growing upward from the vines and the grape clusters hung down. Most of the white grapes had been harvested but there were red grapes hanging right outside the restaurant.

Next stop was another old samurai house. This one was even better than the one we visited earlier.

These beautiful transom carvings are keyaki (paulonia) wood.

This alcove was in the lord's room.

View of the garden from that room.

Tokonoma in another room.

A different view of the garden from that room.

Yet a third tokonoma

small garden on the other side of the house.

Upstairs we found this room for tea ceremony. The top of the door was about 4.5 feet high.

A household shrine.

Kenrokuen Garden next invited our attention. This garden park was started in 1676 by the fifth lord of the family and is still a work in progress. It is rated as the third best in Japan and in 1922 was designated as a National Site of Scenic Beauty and in 1985 was raised to a National Site of Special Scenic Beauty.

The Karasakinomatsu (pine from Karasaki) was planted by the 13th lord as a seed from Karasaki, a town near Lake Biwa.

After a fire in 1759, the 11th lord restored the garden and created the Midori-taki waterfall.

How's this for a giant sized bonsai?

Another beautiful pine

Our last stop in Kenrokuen was for "soft cream" or simply "soft" as soft ice cream is called here. We had visited a nearby gold storage facility before entering the park so I ordered one of the special cones sprinkled with real gold dust. In Fairbanks we panned for gold, here I ate some.

Last stop today was the geisha district.

We didn't see any real geisha, but there were several tourists dressing the part.

On to the hotel, I had a satisfying hot bath before another keiseki dinner.

Takayama (Cont)

A bell and its temple near the old town.

After we left field magistrate's house, we headed to the preservation area and a samurai house. This was another area where I could have spent much more time.

As we entered the preservation district I saw an arborist going about his work using the modern
replacement for the od three-legged ladders and scaffolding.

Old Man Willow has grown around the guardrails.

Couldn't resist shooting this fancy manhole cover.

An old shrine in the District

A souvenir store in the old style.

The samurai house was crowded with tourists but we managed to work our way through.

The door used by the participants is in the right background. It is short and has a round top.
Participants must bow to enter because the doorway is so short.

A tokonoma in one of the rooms.

 For lunch today we went to a restaurant that specialized in Hida beef, a local variety of Wagyu.

The beef is cooked on a magnolia leaf to give it a little extra flavor.

Next stop on today's itinerary was the festival float museum. There were floats of many kinds and all had action dolls as part of their display.

This hallway ed into the huge cavern where the floats are kept.

This boat-shaped float is the first of the Heisei era floats.

This is the float described above.

These marionettes playing the drums are about life sized. The drums are BIG.

Back to our hotel we had a chance to enjoy the hot spring water and then had another Kaiseki dinner.

Friday in Takayama

This morning after a good buffet breakfast in the hotel, we went to the Morning Market along the canal in the designated preservation district. Both sides of the street were lined with small specialty vendors hawking their goods. As you can see from the photo, there were tourists in abundance.

Next on our itinerary this morning was a visit to the Magistrate's building. Chiaki said there once were 48 of these offices but this one is the only one left in Japan.

Ocean waves are part of this magistrate's seal

This clerk's room is representative of the several official business tatami rooms

This view of the building is from the right wing

This cookstove has no chimney because the smoke was necessary to help preserve the thatch roof  that was used before the shingles on the newer roof.

Cooking pots and vessels of various kinds

This is one of the rabbits

An interesting lock for sliding doors and shutters works by sliding the vertical wooden bar
up into the hole in the top jamb and resting it on the raised portion of the holder.

Shingle splitting area where shingles are produced for the roof.

An example of how the shingles were laid.

Toyama and Takayama

Thursday, 10/18

Down the tunnel this morning to another "set course" breakfast.

Clockwise from the grilled fish upper right we have: fruit with small mint leaves and pieces of a clear jelly which looks like ice, green tea, sashimi, dressed green salad with a small sausage, soy sauce, three kinds of seaweed simmered with usuage (fried tofu skins) in the red octagon, Napa pickles topped with mentaiko (spicy grilled cod roe), shiokara (salted chopped raw squid), sweet beans, orange juice, lightly poached egg with special sauce, white cooked daikon ball on top of very tender simmered pork and simmered yellowtail collar. Rice and miso soup are yet to be served.

Said goodbye to Hyakuraku-sou and headed for the train station to catch the scenic train to Nanao.

Some of the staff come out to the parking lot to see us off at each Japanese inn. They bow
and then wave until the bus is out of sight.

Our bus could carry 50 passengers so the sixteen people in our group, along with our English-speaking guide, Chiaki, and the local guide, Noriko, had plenty of space.

Our local guide and bus driver dressed formally including white gloves for both.

The train ride took a little over an hour with a couple photo op stops along to way.

One stop was for one of the replica mullet spotting platforms. The doll you see in this one is representative of the spotter who watched for mullet back in the day. When the fish came in the spotter would signal the fishermen who would pull the net, trapping the mullet.

Each little inlet along the bay had an oyster aquaculture operation. In this area, the old oyster shells with seed oysters are strung on ropes and hung from buoys. This area along the coast of the Sea of Japan is one of a few places in the world which have a nearly zero tidal differential. Since they don't have to worry about the tide dropping, the oyster ropes can reach almost to the bottom.

For lunch we stopped at a sushi restaurant. This one was one of those with the mechanized belt that carries different plates of sushi, and other dishes, around the restaurant. The belt wasn't in operation for lunch and the sushi master and one waitress ran the place. They knew we would be stopping in so the plates of nigiri sushi were prepared in advance and we ordered additional per individual choice. Those who ordered beer were served by the waitress but when we wanted tea, it was self-serve.

Tea bags are in the drawers. Hot water is dispensed by pushing the cup against the round rubber trigger  (just touching to top left of the cup). Boiling water comes out immediately. It allows the waitress to do other things while customers serve themselves.

After lunch we drove into Toyama to visit the Toyama International Glass Exhibition 2018.

It was an amazing exhibition. Both the exhibits and the building itself. Not photographs were allowed in the exhibits but I could have spent the rest of the afternoon there. As it was, I managed to work my way through one gallery and visit the Chihuly exhibit in the 90 minutes allotted for our visit. 

The interior of the building would have been a huge, cold, glass and steel structure except for the wooden planks installed in appropriate places as warming balance.

After the Glass show we drove to Takayama and checked into our hotel, the Associa. It is a popular hotel with tourists. During our two night stay there were ten tourist groups staying there each night.