Saturday 23rd June - Takayama and Getting Naked in Public

Two observations – mention you're English to Japanese of a certain age with some grasp of the language, and they will immediately comment about the Olympics. Respond to the follow-up question with “I live near Manchester” and you'll hear “Ah, soccer! Manchester United!”. Trufax.
This happened to me in Takayama, and it's happened to me again in Kanazawa (yes this blog is behind, shush).

I'll try to keep this one briefer so that I can catch up. No idea if I'll manage it but we can try.

I think I was still suffering from the after-effects of jetlag, considering I fell asleep at 10pm after the trip to Takayama, despite the trip itself not being immensely tiring. The payback for that was that I was up at 5am, but luckily at Takayama Ouan that meant that the onsen on the roof was open – morning hours were 5am to 9am. So I grabbed the basket provided in the room with two towels (one for washing, one for drying) and headed for the 13th floor. I did not bother with the samue top and pants that they also provide (and which most guests wore around the hotel all the time), because the set they left in my room was too small in the boob area and I did not want to get into the conversation about sizing when I am clearly way oversized for most things Japan. It would have sucked to put them on the spot.

On this particular morning I decided to use the smallest of the private baths, since when I got there it was free and I wanted to take a picture of one of them – obviously taking pics of the ladies public baths was not possible. Also it was a good chance to practice the whole sitting-down-to-wash thing, which I am pretty clumsy at to tell the truth, but practice makes perfect. I have to say that I really enjoyed the experience, and a good soak banished the lingering backache that was nagging at me after the flight. And the view over Takayama, while slightly steamed up, was very pretty. In the relaxation area outside the baths they provided a huge iced barrel full of little Yakult drinks for guests to cleanse their insides as well as their outsides. So I had one of those too, since everyone else was doing so.

After that, I ventured down to breakfast, where I confirmed my suspicion that I was indeed the only non-Asian in the building, heh. Breakfast was a Japanese style buffet included in the price of the room, with a few Western “continental” options as well. My God I have never seen such a bewildering array of food I can't identify haha. Honestly, it could have fed half of Tokyo in terms of variety and amount. And let me tell you that all rumours to the contrary, Japanese on holiday sure can eat. My tray looked puny by comparison to the stacked-high trays of many of the guests sitting around me,and I didn't leave the room empty by any means. I had an assortment of meat, fish, pickles, egg and of course rice, though I decided to forgo the miso soup given that it was already pretty warm at 7.30am. I also had a mini-croissant from the Western selection (which was pretty boring compared to the Japanese stuff) just because they looked nice – and in fact they were pretty good for a Japanese approximation of a foreign pastry.

It was around this point I was grateful that for whatever reason (and probably what my parents thought was a fad), I taught myself to use chopsticks as a teenager. I'm by no means an expert, but I can manage decently well, and am quite proud to report that I even managed a soft-poached egg whole without making a mess or spilling it down my shirt. I saw one guy eating yoghurt with chopsticks mind you, and that left me in awe. If I wasn't sure how to eat something  I had sneaky looks at what other people were doing and by dint of that managed to consume the lot. And of everything I had on my tray, the only thing I wasn't so keen on was the beef stew (yes, at breakfast). Hida (the area in which Takayama is located) is famous for its beef, and it wasn't that the  beef was bad – more that the Japanese like to toss everything in there and I am not keen on fat and gristle. The lean bits were very good, though, and the juices were delicious.

After breakfast I uploaded a few photos and then hit the road to do some sightseeing. My list for Takayama was fairly short as I only had a day, and consequently had eliminated the temple district in favour of seeing Hida Folk Village, that being more unique overall. But first I just went for an orientation walk around town, checking out the famous morning market and a few of the main streets in the older part of town. Takayama has a lot of quality souvenir shopping going on and while I didn't buy anything, I did stop by a couple of shops to admire some of the lacquerware, jewellery, fabrics and art on sale. There are also plenty of more ordinary souvenir shops, but even they were neat and tidy. I walked over a couple of the bridges that cross the river through the centre of town and through the old, preserved Edo-era streets before winding up at Takayama Jinya for my first scheduled sightseeing stop.

Takayama Jinya is basically an old government building from the edo period, and a great example of the architecture and design of the time. As with most of the cultural attractions in Japan, it seems, entrance was pretty cheap and you can dawdle as long as you want. There's more of the shoes off stuff – pretty much any interior of an old building requires this, and I was getting used to carrying my shoes in a plastic bag at this point!

After Takayama Jinya, I stopped on a bench outside to reapply some suncream as the heat was starting to amp up, then I headed off for a bit more wandering and to try and find a buddhist temple in the vicinity. In my efforts to do so, I completely missed it, though I did find a restaurant I had heard was good but hard to find, so quickly bookmarked it mentally and then went back to the hotel for an hour to get out of the midday heat. In the afternoon, I walked over to the bus station and picked up a combination ticket for Hida Folk Village – 900 yen for a bus each way and an entry fee.

Hida Folk Village basically is a reconstructed village in the forest on the edge of Takayama, to which they have moved threatened ancient buildings from all over the region and rebuilt them where they will be protected for generations to come. So there's a selection of building styles from the same era but different towns, and inside them are people demonstrating some of the traditional skills and crafts from the era. Before I left the hotel I'd changed my shoes for the velcro-strapped ones which are not great on rough ground due to having thin soles, but are perfect for the constant shoes on/shoes off that I had heard was the deal at Hida Folk Village. And indeed that was the case, so I was glad I changed – the interiors of all the houses were either wood or tatami or both.

It was a beautiful setting around a lake, and I spent a good long while there just pottering about and checking everything out. I also kept running into the same youngish Japanese couple who, unlike many, were quite willing to engage with a foreigner socially despite not knowing any English. It started when I was in one of the buildings and I heard this really loud BONGGGGGG which sounded like a bell and echoed for ages. I thought it was one of those sound systems that triggers for tourists to give you a flavour of the era, but when I got outside and moved on, just up the hill was the bell in question with a notice outside explaining how to ring it (signs at this place any many others in Takayama were in both Japanese and English, as it's very tourist-oriented, being on the route of a bullet train). Standing by the bell was a young woman, laughing at her boyfriend/husband, who had just rung it. He looked slightly guilty when he saw me (even though it was clearly meant to be rung) and I pantomimed an amused “IT WAS YOU!!” at him, to which he started laughing as well. Whenever our paths crossed after that he'd pull a face, mime ringing a bell and grin at me saying “bong!”  Heh :) I saw them when I was waiting for the bus to leave, and it turned out they were bikers, so that probably explains it – I usually find bikers to be a friendly and often well-travelled bunch and apparently it crosses borders.

After the folk village I headed back on the bus to Takayama, and this time managed to find the bloody temple I had been looking for – no idea how I missed it since it has an effing big pagoda outside – and then my stomach reminded me that I had not eaten since breakfast. The restaurant – Echiban – that I had spotted earlier opened at 5pm, so I literally fell in the door and took one of the only dozen seats at the counter while the chef cooked me tempura shrimp and vegetables with rice. I also ordered a small bottle of chilled sake because I needed something cold and alcoholic and am not a massive fan of beer (Japanese or otherwise) unless it's part of a social activity. There was no way I was going to finish 330ml at one meal but oh well, I am on holiday.

The meal was lovely, so he completely lived up to his reviews, and even though I was the only person in the place I didn't feel awkward. Luckily he had a little English so no confusion, and I remembered how to say “delicious!” in Japanese, to which he laughed and bowed. The bill was about 2000 yen, which I thought was pretty reasonable since almost half of that was the sake, and as I left he capped the little bottle of sake and told me to take it away with me, bless him. I never did finish it, though I had another couple of swigs back at the hotel. It was good stuff, by the way.

After resting and cleaning up, I started to pack for the following day's move to Kanazawa. When I went downstairs to collect one of my pairs of shoes which I'd left in the foot-locker, one of the English-speaking members of staff cheerfully reminded me that it was 10.30pm and therefore free noodles were go in the restaurant. I almost forgot! Since supplies are limited, I popped the shoes upstairs and then went back down, curious to try out this Takayama Ouan custom.

Basically you go in and get given a tag with a number on, then sit down. The “compere”, for want of a better word, then calls your number when your noodles are ready and you go up and collect them. I got given number 4, and was sitting there suddenly blanking on the Japanese for 4 (it's "yon", by the way) and thinking damn, this was a bad idea as I listened to him doing what sounded like a rapid-fire bingo call routine. Then suddenly among the Japanese he called out “Number Four!” and looked over at me (as did a good proportion of the restaurant haha). Slight embarrassment aside, I was thankful he did it and the noodles were very tasty – meat and veg and broth. I also managed to eat THOSE with chopsticks  and remembered to slurp appreciatively so I reckon I get another level-up for that.

And that was my last night in Takayama – apart from packing I went straight to bed and slept like the dead – until 5.30am anyway, when I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. Packing all done I decided to hit the baths again and this time took to the public bathing area which was pretty crowded for an early morning. Nevertheless I stripped off and joined in the fray with all the other ladies, and I am glad I did. Sitting naked in a hot, rock spring in the open air of an early morning looking down over Takayama was lovely, and a great start to a travel day. And I managed not to make a hash of the washing beforehand thanks to my practice at using the tiny stools the day before.

Little did I know that when I left Takayama Ouan, after telling the recpetionist that I would love to come back one day and bring my fiance (she smiled and said that yes, I should!) I'd actually also managed to leave my iPhone cable in the room by accident and that was going to cause me a pain when I got to Kanazawa – but more on that later.

• Pictures of my stay in Takayama are as usual are on Flickr here.

Music for this day was Sugizo's Kanon, for the simple fact that it was playing when I rested at the Buddhist Temple before dinner. Also it's lovely