After a three and a half hour train ride from Tokyo, we arrived at Matsumoto, a pleasant city in Nagano prefecture. It’s a famous university town, with a long term connection with conductor Seiji Ozawa. It’s also famous for its sixteenth century castle and gardens, which we were seeing at the height of cherry blossom season:
This picture doesn’t show the hundreds and hundreds of visitors around the palace. I’m quite proud of that 😉
This is our lovely guide, Kyoko, (whom I insisted on ‘sanning’, although she finally put her foot down and wouldn’t let me call her ‘Kyoko-sensei’ which I thought she was perfectly entitled to do, because she was teaching us all about her culture!) I called the fake chrysanthemum she carried for us to see her (she was a good five inches shorter than me), the flower of power.
Unfortunately the castle is also famous for its incredibly steep and slippery wooden steps, which you have to ascend in socks (no shoes allowed). So I noped out of that, wandered around the gardens a bit and admired the flowers, and then headed back to the town, where a sake festival was being held!
I could have bought food (but didn’t need to, being stuffed from another big lunch), but I did buy some plum wine, which we have yet to try. I also explored the many food and tourist shops on the street from the castle – it was my first introduction to the many, many ways Japan has created to enjoy sweet things 🙂 So many bakeries and ice cream shops.
And…this. No, I got nothing
Then a long (very long – the tour company lied to me about the amount of bus travel on this trip), twisty bus ride through the Alps, fortunately through incredible scenery to an onsen hotel at Takayama. All but one of us declined to try the onsen themselves – total nudity in front of strangers in a foreign land? I think not! 🙂 – but the hotel was pleasant without being amazing. Dinner was at the hotel, and thanks to my extensive anime training, I was able to explain to our group that the bowls and burners and plates of raw meat (the famous and incredibly fatty hida beef) was for shabu-shabu, and yakiniku. At least Mr loud and obnoxious couldn’t complain about it not being cooked. The meal was great fun 🙂 And if we were still longing for the beef, there were framed photos of it to buy in the hotel shop downstairs! (I, er, declined to do so.)
Next day we got to explore Takayama itself. An old town on the Miyagama river, it’s famous for its crafts, particularly carved wood, but also for a biannual festival, where magnificent floats are carried through the city. We visited the museum where the floats are stored, and the float carriers’ uniforms are displayed:
And the shrine above the museum on the hill.
The bridge over the river
had some jolly statues along it
Along the river was a morning market with stalls and stores displaying wares and offering samples.
More food to try and sake to buy. In the San-Machi district, where the houses are really old, there were dozens of high quality craft and food shops and restaurants and sake bars to look at.
And this adorable puppet outside one of the restaurants, which was a water powered automaton that did a little head wriggle and lifted its box, each time showing a different dish of food
There was also a full sized float at the Hida hotel in whose restaurant we had a western style lunch. Yes, that’s a three story high float!
After lunch, it was another loooong drive to Shirakawago, essentially a traditional village which has been turned into a kind of rural museum. Thrilling if you’ve never seen thatched roofs before.
Doug went with the group to visit one of the house owners and look inside.
I wandered around outside instead. And then another long bus ride to Kanazawa. Onto the next post!