Hi guys,
I’ve decided to just omit the ‘[S-series]’ because, well, I’m the only one writing stuff here anyways.
Let’s go to part 2 of our trip. Where we went to Takayama via the excellent Japanese rail network. The landscape changes from green to white as we go higher in altitude.
So this is the 3rd day, yesterday we took an evening train and the Shinkansen from Izumo city to Shin-Osaka where we spent the night in one of the nearby business hotel before continuing our journey to Takayama via Nagoya in the morning.
Takayama city sits on a higher altitude surrounded by the Japanese Alps. There are actually many places called Takayama so people here likes to say “Hida-Takayama” just to differentiate themselves from the other places. Hida was the historic name of the old province here from what I learned online.
The city has a sleepy vibe, probably because it’s winter now but we still see a considerable number of foreign tourists. Which is good, because we won’t stand out that much.
We checked in to our Ryokan, which I did not take photos of. Maybe I’ll get Claire’s photos later. It was the first ryokan we stayed in that it was mandatory to leave our shoes in a locker on the ground floor. We walked through the ryokan in the provided tabi-socks, the whole ryokan has tatami flooring so it was a new experience for us. After we drop off our luggage, we went straight out looking for lunch.
There were intermittent snow with little wind so the weather was quite bearable. Us people from the tropics were attracted to colder climates even though we were not very good with it. Ironic. Anyways we went to have beef ramen because we read that the ramen here is in its own unique style and is usually served with Hida beef. So we went to Kajibashi which wasn’t very good in our opinion… Claire had grilled beef rice and I had the beef ramen (they called it soba here). My beef was rare and the soup was lukewarm. Claire’s grilled beef was nicer but in the end, I guess it just wasn’t to our liking. There was a long queue though and we actually waited for almost 45mins for our seats… I don’t know, I think I preferred raw fish than raw beef.
So after our meal, we spent the day walking around the streets of Takayama and absorb the ambience of a quiet mountain town.
We bought a few bentos from a nearby konbini and retired to our warm ryokan room for the night. The room was superbly comfortable after being outside in the winter evening. And with the bentos in our belly, we called it a night.
Good night.
– Simon
