July 17 Weekend - Vacation: Hida-Takayama, Japanese Alps

So, Sae and I took Thursday and Friday off last week, then also I had Monday off due to a holiday in Japan so we had about 4 1/2 days of action. This one will be a pretty lengthy post... our time was crammed with activities and new experiences.

Thursday - July 15
We started our adventure at 6:30 AM (this is after a few hours of phone calls with the States, and Sae working from 10 PM till 6 AM of course). We left Akasaka and headed to Tokyo station to pick up the Shinkansen bullet train to Nagoya, about a 1.75 hour ride. I had my new GPS with me so I was able to clock the train, we were maintaining about 250-260 km/h the whole way - pretty cool. At Nagoya we had about 10-15 minutes to meet up with Sae's family who came from Osaka on a separate Shinkansen and get to our next train that would take us North to the Japanese Alps area on the central/western portion of Japan. The train ride was great! It was on the Takayama View line up to Hida. The train was comfortable, with very large windows. Japanese trains also have this great feature of spinning any bench around 180 degrees so people can sit together easier. So, although the ride was a solid 3+ hours up to the mountains, we had a great time together; especially with our 8 month old nephew, Huma. The ride was especially long because of all the rain that area of Japan has received recently and the trains were required to progress very slowly through some areas.

Upon arriving at Hida station we stretched our legs a bit, then went to the rental agency and picked up our rental vehicle. We had another 1.5 hour drive up and down 12% grade hills at breakneck speeds (I'll leave that topic right there, trust me, there is a story). One very cool portion of the ride was all the tunnels through the mountains. One tunnel was actually 11 km long... it was incredible, never-ending.(Sae: Tokushige kids have this game all the time. "Hold your breath in tunnels". Of course, my sister yelled, "Sae, here comes it!!"..... Boy, I was so glad that we weren't extremely competitive, otherwise, I am not blogging here after 11km tunnel with my breath held.) So, by the afternoon we were finally pulling into our onsen ryokan. It was in a very quaint, simple, small town in the foot hills of the mountains. There was two raging rivers that sandwiched the town, one on each side, that were literally awesome - very beautiful and powerful. OK - lots to explain at this point, I'll touch on Onsen, Ryokan, Small back country Japan towns.

Onsen: This is a hot spring that Japanese use for relaxation, bathing, etc. There are public onsens, gender separated public ones, and private ones. The water is "hot tub" hot and comes directly from the earth with zero sulfur smell, 100% clean.

Ryokan: Japanese old style, traditional hotel. Think old-time Japan meets western B&B. There were about 20 rooms and gender separated indoor and outdoor onsens. Our room consisted of an entry way, a large tatami (bamboo floor mat) room, a patio room, and then our own private onsen. The private onsen is a pretty big deal - this is considered an extremely nice place.

Small Back Country Japan Towns: Two words really here, words of wisdom - Bring Cash. I'm not talking $100, $200, i'm talking rock star drug dealer cash. They don't take plastic, they don't have ATMs that'll take your debit card, and these ryokan's are absolutely not cheap, near ritz prices because the room charges in Japan are per person, not per room and traditionally come with breakfast and dinner included.

Alright, so we basically arrived with enough time to relax for a bit (Sae and I had been going since about 3-4 AM), we collapsed on the floor for about an hour, then it was time for dinner. This is traditional Japanese style dinner (hardcore), with a Hida twist. First night's dinner included: Sashimi (full fish, deboned, sliced, placed back on the plate in original form with head...full intact), multiple pickles and radishes, crab, vegetables, flame cooked rice with miso, whole fish flame cooked (wooden stick through rear of fish and out through mouth, then stick stuck in rocks near open flame), ahi beef (basically tar-tar), then last but not least - the twist - Hida beef. This beef is so marbled it looks like an expensive counter top. The beef was thinly sliced and in a large wooden box. This box was placed a top an open flame heat source and basically smoked/steamed till ready. Once ready the box lid is removed, you take a piece with your chopsticks and eat it straight, eat it with sesame sauce, rice, seaweed strips, etc.

Friday - July 16
We were the only customers staying at this Ryokan last night. So, I strongly recommended Matthew to try the public onsen alone, but he said no. However, he tried the private onsen attached to our room. They used the beautifully cut big slate tiles on the floor and the private onsen and installed some huge river rocks on the floor. Since he loves the hottub at his parents' in Chicago, I knew he would enjoy this private onsen outside.

Breakfast. As well as dinner last night, there were tons of small plates served. Matthew's chopstick skill was amazingly improved and he could pick up tiny-tiny bits of pickles so easily. My mom and sister were clapping their hands for the Matthew's chopstick show.

Last night, before dinner, Matthew and I took a short walk around this ryokan and found a house that had 2 barrels on the roof. According to a guy working at ryokan, these neighbors keep those barrels for honey. In spring, some virgin bee queens ( Should I say princesses?) fly out of their mother's hive to establish their own kingdom. Being surrounded by tons of worker bees, princess bees take off. The guy said that it really looks like a huge black ball in the air. After they leave, human spread water over this "bee ball". Bees mistakenly think that it started raining, they keep flying low to find a shelter from the fake rain. Around where they will land, a new barrel is placed. If bees get in this barrel successfully, they will start building a new hive. 

This day we went for a pretty long car ride to see a World Heritage site, Shirakawago. Shirakawago is a village of extremely old houses, 17th century. They are high in the mountains and the area receives a great deal of snow in the winter so the roofs are extremely slanted, and made of think bushels of straw. We toured this town for a long time. Kiwa didn't bring a baby carrier with her, so holding him became very tiring. Instead we decided I'd wear my backpack backwards and then he'd sit in the front pocket. This worked out pretty well, and he was able to cruise the town in comfort. We were able to go in one of the Shirakawago houses, it was incredible. It was huge inside, and three stories. The photo album for this post has a lot of great photos of both the inside and the outside of the house.

After this we headed back again for the onsen and ryokan, had dinner, and called it a night.
Saturday - July 17
On Saturday we woke up and went into the private onsen quickly before breakfast. Breafast was at 8, so we went back into the large room where everyone in the ryokan eats together. It is basically a large hall with itami floor, very nice tables, and everyone sits on the floor to eat. This morning now there were a few more people at the hotel - the first night we were the only ones there. They put up these wood dividers though and you really never know other parties are in the room - all top notch, well done.

Breakfast was rice with miso, fish, and this sweet scrambled egg cube. I can say, being a gaijin, you never really get used to the raw fish for breakfast. You really need to wash from your mind what you think of breakfast. After breakfast we packed up as this was our last evening at the ryokan.

Today was an exciting day. We were going high up the mountains on a ropeway, or lift, then after that touring a famous cave. The ropeway was incredible. I was a bit nervous just because going way up in a ropeway extended off the ground by a cable reminds me a bit too much of roller coasters and flying - two things I know I can't survive from if something goes wrong. The ropeway was actually fine though, and the sites on the way up were amazing. There were two ropeways we had to take to get all the way up, a total of about a 12 minute ride. The second ropeway car was a two story one, huge, and everyone rushed to get into the top floor. We took the bottom floor, it was great because I was able to get a lot of great photos and the view was 100% the same as the top floor. Once atop the mountain, the view was incredible. I took quite a few photos and we stayed up there for about 30-40 minutes, taking in the sites, enjoying the cool air, and as luck would have it, watching the clouds roll in at that exact time. I was able to get some great photos of the clouds coming in and enveloping the peaks - segoy. Next stop was the cave which was very cool, but I can say that it was just that a cave. In some ways if you've seen one cave, you've seen them all. This one was nice in that they had a very nice small museum prior to going in the cave - it was the private collection of the cave owner, and then also once in the cave they used these very nice colorful lights that lit the gave up nicely and photographed great.

After touring this cave we left the area and we drove down to Takayama where our hotel was for Saturday night. We arrived at the Takayama Green Hotel and Sae, Kiwa, Huma, and I waited in the lobby while Sae's parents, Taka and Hitomi, returned the rental car. We didn't need the car any longer as the train to head out of the area on Sunday was very close to our hotel now.
We didn't have too much time after arriving so we walked around the hotel's market - it was this very large indoor market with many different types of shops and stores selling food and lacquer ware and other souvenirs. In Japan, from what I've picked up so far it seems, when you purchase your hotel room it comes with meals included that are offered at the hotel; great business move. So there were many options at this hotel but we chose the modern Chinese dinner. It was amazing, it was a seven course dinner with duck, shrimp, beef, soup, etc. It was extremely tasty.

Sunday July 18
This was our last day in the Takayama area. We toured the town and did a bit of shopping. We also saw one of the oldest government houses in Japan. It was from the Edo period when there were essentially Feudal lords managing the different regions of Japan. This house was amazing. Many different itami rooms, some of different quality depending on the social rank of the people that primarily occuppied the rooms. After seeing this house and taking the tour of the grounds we got on the train and headed home. This was about a 5 hour ride, but then we found ourselves back at Tokyo station; and closed another amazing time touring Japan.