Hida no sato Village, Takayama, Gifu Prefecture.
Mid-late November already here in Olde Nagoyaland, the temperature is down, and it's dark by 5pm. I'm not a late autumn/winter person; the short, colder days do absolutely nothing for my already flagging levels of dopamine and serotonin. All things considered, this is the time of year for distractions - anything from going to galleries, visiting museums, seeing movies, live music...as long as it gets me out of my late season funk, I'm in. As the roster of events being presented in town has steadily shrunk over the last decade (Nagoya having garnered the dubious reputation of being the most BORING city in all of Japan), and everything 'worthwhile' here can basically be taken in over the span of a single weekend (done), each autumn, my wife and I make a point of blowing the scene for at least a couple of days, to change things up. An exercise in sanity preservation, if you will.
Some years there's a specific event - like a grande spectacle concert in the closest legitimate 'big city where things happen', Osaka. Something like The Who or old man McCartney - veteran acts in their dotage doing perpetual 'see us before we die or retire' tours, that are always guaranteed to get a lot of media attention, and sell out the biggest halls or stadiums in town, to audiences largely composed of pensioners, who can afford the beyond premium ticket prices. Of the two of us, I'm the dinosaur rock aficionado, and my wife, the perpetual good sport who humors my whims, and let's me drag her out to these overblown events (which she seems to enjoy, if for nothing else than the pure spectacle of it all). It's a good thing that these 'happenings' are infrequent, because they aren't cheap, particularly if you're coming in from out of town. Not to mention that, for the J-natives, an 'event concert' experience isn't complete without all the clap-trap bells and whistles...which, at the very minimum, consists of the program, tour shirt, and towel package...an ensemble that can set you back an additional ¥10,000 (USD $110) at least. Add on the hotel room, train tickets, or gas, highway tolls, parking, food and beverage...and pretty soon you're looking at a sizable chunk of your monthly income. For one night.
Several years back, my younger sister (who also celebrates a birthday in November) made it out from Vancouver, so it was into the van for the 3 hour drive from dullard Nagoyaland to Osaka's Universal Studios Japan, and then onward for a day on the tourist trail in neighbouring Kyoto. The Kansai region is within pretty easy striking distance of Olde Nagoyaland (either by car, or a variety of trains, according to your schedule/budget) and encompasses not only the sprawling metropolis of Osaka, but the site seeing meccas of Nara and Kyoto, and the scenic seaport city of Kobe - so there is never a shortage of worthwhile diversions and side trips to make.
In lieu of an expensive, overblown concert display, or the rare event of a family visitation overlapping our annual autumn jaunt period, out comes my wife's extensive stack of travel guide books and magazines. Soon, in concert with her trusty, ever-present IPhone, a short list of appealing destinations and activities that are do-able in two days is drawn up. She is a master of organization and planning, and over the years I have learned to give her a wide berth, and only volunteer input when it's solicited, lest I upset the domestic apple cart's delicate balance, and jinx the journey.
Last year we took a long road trip out past Kobe to Tokushima to see the surprisingly impressive Otsuka Museum of Art...while a few years previous, we drove out to the famous Ise shrine. On both junkets, the late autumn weather (which can either be lovely, or total shit...never in-between) co-operated, and a wonderful time was had by all. It's a seasonal tradition that I've come to really look forward to - a chance to recharge, and catch a little of what can be a majestic, breath taking season. As the end of November also marks both my wife's birthday, and our wedding anniversary, these seasonal escapes are a nice, intimate way of celebrating both days before the hubbub of the Christmas/Japanese New Year (Shogatsu) build-up swallows everything in it's path until the second week of January.
This year, after careful consideration and consternation, we settled on a mutually agreeable destination... the sleepy mountain hamlet of Takayama, in Gifu Prefecture. If speed is your game, and you plan to travel by highway, it's a roughly three hour drive northeast from Nagoya; but the weather was beautiful, and we elected to tag another hour on to our drive time, and take a slightly more meandering, scenic route. Getting out of the metropolitan areas of Japan now and then is a great idea, especially during the late autumn or spring seasonal transitions. The autumn colours in the mountains were spectacular, and we ended up pulling over several times so my wife could snap pictures. We left Nagoyaland around 10 am, and arrived in Takayama at about 2:30, having figured in a couple of hours for lollygagging along the way. As we rolled into town, the first thing we noticed (aside from the town's low-set buildings framing the splendour of the newly snow covered Japanese Alps against a radiant blue sky) were the gaggles of foreigners. In fact, they initially seemed to out-number the J-natives. Walking, cycling...two by two, four by four. Tattooed beardos in skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts (despite the distinct late season chill) wearing woefully ugly thrift-store glasses and dumb looking toques; aging, fat arsed European tour bus types swathed in Gore-Tex, the ubiquitous lost, un-shaven Crocodile Dundee or Indiana Jones stunt doubles with ridiculously over-stuffed backpacks, and myriads of what appeared to be slightly over-fed, albeit kind of lost looking English 'teachers'...generally spotty, wan and pale looking twenty-somethings on shoe-string budgets, taking a weekend jaunt to 'see the sights'. My heart sank a bit, to be honest.
It's a small town, and finding the hotel was easy. As we were pulling in to a parking spot at the side of the building, my wife pointed out that someone had pulled their car in horizontally over two lateral parking spaces, leaving only three remaining for guests. Lucky we arrived when we did, or we may have been shit-out-of-luck. As we were getting our bags out of the van, a hotel staffer (a woman in her early thirties) quite suddenly appeared beside the mis-parked white Camry waving her arms frantically, then lo-and-behold, an irritated looking, moderately well dressed white dude came bounding out about 3 meters behind her, also gesturing wildly, quite obviously (in a loud, whiney voice, no less) trying to showboat his apparently 'functional' Japanese language skills (in an obvious attempt to impress his hapless J-female companion, I guess). Occasionally you'll see foreigners do this for whatever reason, and it's almost always totally un-necessary, and cringeworthy. I got the gist of the unfolding pantomime, but asked asked my wife for confirmation anyways; as I suspected, he was reeling off a litany of excuses for having obviously not been paying attention, and parking like a complete asshole (or perhaps just deliberately parking like a complete asshole). Something to the effect of, "Yes, yes, yes, I know that I'm covering two spaces - I'm not blind. I'm in a hurry, and I just wanted to make an inquiry at the front desk, but apparently, 'there's no room at the inn', and I'm desperately trying to impress this girl, so WHY can't you people just fucking relax...", and so on. The girl from the hotel stood speechless. Meanwhile, a couple of other incoming guests had also paused to take in this live theatre event in progress. As the guy proceeded to make a complete spectacle of himself, his embarrassed looking date stood there like a deaf-mute watching the shit show unfold. A deer in the headlights.
Finally, having exhausted his ability to continue spewing peevish justifications in clever 'situational' Japanese, he, and then his stunned looking (as opposed to 'stunning looking') lady companion jumped in the car, slammed their doors, and quite obviously (and most embarrassingly) 'PEELED OUT'...to make point, I'm assuming. At this juncture, any J-locals in the immediate area will usually look at each other and shrug, then kind of look sideways at me, at which point I do my best Leonard Nimoy-as-Spock impersonation, quizzically raise one eyebrow, clasp my hands behind my back, then walk away. Lesson here - make reservations, not excuses for parking like a dickhead.
We took our gear into the lobby, and my wife went about checking us in, as I kept an eye on our bags. As she was dealing with the details, a tall, lanky and oddly dressed white guy rolled up to the counter. I couldn't figure this guy's trip out. He was wearing an over stuffed knapsack that extended about a meter off of his back, and was done up in flannels and khakis, goofy looking hiking boots that looked two sizes too big, an undersized tackle vest, thick glasses, and a wide brimmed leather hat akin something that you would see Country Joe and The Fish wearing at Woodstock. Flanking him was a really weird looking pubescent kid in a hoody, jeans and runners, who appeared to be neither Japanese or Occidental, and apparently possessed no language skills whatsoever. Before the hapless desk clerk could get out her obligatory "Konnichiwa", he cut to the chase, and proceeded to go off IN ENGLISH about their reservations (and the details thereof) rather loudly and quickly, in what seemed to be a British accent... 'Basil Fawlty' English, to be region and district precise. He was painfully over-enunciating e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, as if the desk clerk had never encountered an English speaker (never mind that the hotel was crawling with them). "Yessss. I reserved a A NON-SMOKING room for two, myself (then making a grand, sweeping arm gesture behind him)...and THE BOY. This is my P-A-S-S-P-O-R-T. The boy doesn't have one because he's J-A-P-A-N-E-S-E, you see...". And so on. He was loud. The entire lobby became privy to each of the minute, perfectly and slowly enunciated details of his precious visit R-E-S-E-R-V-A-T-I-O-N-S. Maybe I'm uptight, but, as they say, "...when in Rome", at least attempt the native tongue, even just a few words (if you can manage it), before you break into your native language...then, do mind that you needn't bellow it at the poor woman at the counter - she's standing right in front of you, and that perhaps a bit slower and simpler in the pacing and diction department is more situation- appropriate.
Jesus. I admired how the girl at the counter just kind of took it all in stride. I would have played dumb, and wasted as much of his time as possible, purposefully botched his details, or started cursing at him under my breath. As we were taking our bags to the elevator, my wife looked back over her shoulder and said "Unbelievable. I feel sorry for the staff, here. What an asshole".
By the time we stowed our bags in the adequate, rather sparse, but clean room, and used the facilities, it was 3:30; already into the last hour of sunlight, and cooling down a bit. We decide to go see the sights, and fortunately, as the hotel is centrally located, there wasn't far to go. Takayama is an old town, and most of the sightseeing is on a two km stretch of road, lined with old Edo-style machi-ya shops, selling everything from sake and pickles to local arts and crafts, and street food. We ducked out of the crowds into the Furui Machinami Museum, and took in an exhibition by a reknown, itinerant 20th century Japanese artist, the late Kiyoshi Yamashita, whose works included collage, drawings, and paintings made on found objects. Apparently there had been a rather popular T.V. series based on his life made years ago. My wife is a bit of a gallery hound and art aficionado (more so than myself, despite my extensive art school background), and though I've never been too big on 'other people's art', I've started to find more pleasure in visiting galleries as of late. Hopefully it will rub off on me, and tigger me to break my decades long moratorium on painting, and get back to work. Who knows? These days, I seem to be drifting in that direction, after recently having put my nascent rock music career to bed. Alas, that's a concern for another day (it always is).
As late afternoon rolled in to evening, matters of dining started to take precedence. The big deal in the Takayama/Hida/Shirakawago area is beef. Their local pride, Hida beef, is known all over Japan for it's premium quality, taste, and astronomical price. Needless to say, a trip to Takayama is not complete unless you lay down a small fortune, and dine on the regional specialty, which is exactly what we did after jockeying for position to snap pictures at the key 'see and be seen' tourist spots for three hours. It being our 10th anniversary, and after having walked the center of town in all directions for over an hour, scouting for potential dining spots, we decided cut loose, and went to a restaurant that a co-worker of hers (who is native to Takayama) recommended. Expect to pay dearly. A 400 gram steak will cost you in the area of ¥14000 (USD $130.00)...but goddamn. That's one next-level piece of fucking meat. If you're ever over Takayama way, have some excess ¥¥¥, and are fixing to have a religious, life changing non-vegetarian experience, that will leave you woefully unsatisfied with run-of-the-mill supermarket steak forever after, be sure check out Kitchen Hida.
We got an early start Sunday morning; at 7am, the town was fogged in, and a brisk 5C. The hotel stay included the optional standard breakfast buffet deal, and at 7:15, the dinning room was packed out with internationals. Fewer Chinese tourists than we expected, but an awful lot of what appeared to be French or Germans (I couldn't really figure out what they were on about), primarily senior citizens on some kind of package/bus tour. As far as breakfast buffets go, it was adequate, nothing special, but not repulsive. I didn't see 'Basil Fawlty' or the weird stateless boy without language skills. I guess they didn't opt in for the breakfast, or had decided to sleep late. First on the itinerary was a rustic, Edo period Public Administration Office (think City Hall), that dated back to the 1600's. Takayama Jinya.
The building is well preserved, and an interesting example of what an old school Japanese public administration building from feudal times must have been like. Of course, shoes must be removed before entering, lest the tatami and age-old polished hard wood panel floors become scuffed and damaged, and with the low morning temperatures, it didn't take long for 'blue-toe' to set in. The courtyards and gardens were beautiful, and the brilliant reds and yellows of the changing leaves on the garden's trees were gorgeous. My wife enjoyed the four season projection mapping show in the central hall (which we walked in on about 10 seconds late, and had to wait 30 minutes to repeat, so she could film it in it's entirety for posterity - groan), while I'm always more taken by the the darker corners of these old places...which, in this case, was the holding area for prisoners; where suspects were tortured, interrogated, forced to confess (often for crimes they didn't commit), then ultimately beheaded. It's hard to imagine (given the outwardly mild, civilised, and accommodating nature of the J-natives that you encounter today) that as recently as 75 years ago, even trivial misdemeanors could result in your head being liberated from the rest of your person with a razor sharp katana, and paraded out in a wicker basket, all in quite short order.
After this, it was nigh on 11 am, and off to Takayama's famous riverside Miyagawa Morning Market. By this time, the early morning fog had burned off, and given way to an azure, brilliant blue sky, and bright sunshine. The market, consisting of vendors at small kiosks and stalls extends about a half km down the scenic riverside. Pickles, fresh produce, sweets and local specialties are the order of the day, with abundant free samples on offer just about everywhere. My wife loaded up on 'omiyage' (souvenirs) for friends and co-workers, and at around noon, we decided to head back to the hotel parking lot to pick up the auto, and hit the road.
Last stop was Hida-no-sato (Hida Folk Village), which we chose for it's proximity to Takayama, and the highway haul back to Olde Nagoyaland. Our original plan was to drive out to see the old, thatched roof mountain valley houses at Shirakawago, but the clock was ticking, and with Monday and work looming, we decided to roll the dice on proximity, and make the most of the warmest part of the day. The weather was ideal, and our expectations were definitely exceeded. Hida no sato is one of a number of similarly themed historical concept parks here in Japan...what I would class as 'living environment architectural museums'. These parks are settings for authentic, vintage period buildings and structures that have been saved from the wrecker's ball for posterity, dis-assembled, transported to their new, often remote locale(s), painstakingly re-assembled, then opened to the public as interactive, archived pieces of history. Living museums. One can enter these structures, and poke around...read the history and origin of each building, and view artifacts or items particular to said building and it's region of origin. There's a really fascinating park like this about 45 minutes outside of Nagoyaland, called Meiji-mura. Well worth checking out, if for nothing else than the old Frank Lloyd Wright Tokyo Imperial Hotel, transported brick by brick, fountains and all, to be reconstructed in a surreal, lush countryside locale. The Hida no sato park's setting is also lush, and gorgeous, the operative theme being mountain village life in 16th - 19th century Japan. The expansive, elaborate, antique thatched roof farm houses are both beautiful and fascinating - conveying a real tactile sense of the past. The smells of the smoke from the central hearths and fire-pits, the age of the wood, tatami, and heaped thatched roofing are all very atmospheric and entrancing. The park's hillside stage consists of the former retaining wall and grounds site for the old Matsukura Castle, which was named for a regional feudal lord of the same name, and burned to the ground by a traitor in his inner circle, during an insurrection, in 1585. I had aimed to walk the 30 minutes of trail up to the top of the encroaching Mount Matsukura, to check out the masonry foundation ruins at the summit, and take in the apparently commanding view of Takayama, but, alas, the foot paths up the hillside, past the end of the park site, were all roped off (to my wife's relief). This minor disappointment aside, over all, we give the park detour a big 'thumbs-up'. It wasn't over-crowded with geriatric European tourists jockeying for position to get the best photo ops, and, in the right season, it's a beautiful, and scenic counter-balance to the rather 'tourist-trappy' atmosphere of Takayama, proper.
As the late afternoon mountainside chill started to set in, we decided to 'saddle up', and get on the highway for our 3 hour shot back to the slightly milder climes of Olde Nagoyaland, making one stop in at a standard, run-of-the-mill highway service area to empty our bladders, and grab a couple of bowls of noodles. While nothing spectacular, I've always loved truck stop noodles...and a paltry ¥650 for a bowl of tempura soba will fill the gaps well for a few hours. By the time we pulled in back at home, and loaded out, it was almost 7pm...just enough time for a quick dash out to the local supermarket to grab the last couple of bento boxes before closing time...and draw the curtains on another successful annual two day autumn escape.
Onward updates, and further down-home commentary from everyone's least favourite, foul-mouthed gaijin outcast, on all of this year's unfolding seasonal happenings, attendant rubbish, and so forth, will no doubt be forthcoming. I would caution you against holding your breath for too long, though. No one needs to find a bloated, purple corpse stinking up the apartment a week after you expire...that always puts a damper on the coming Yuletide festivities.
Until then, dress warmly, and ho-fucking ho.
The torture chamber, including 40kg duress blocks, kneeling rack, and holding basket for suspects, Takayama Jinya,
Takayama, Gifu Prefecture.
