Another Public Holiday! The Japanese seem to have them about once a fortnight! Probably not but it certainly seems like it.
The local bus took us back to Odawara station with Mt Fuji peaking over the mountains to the north, or west, or somewhere. It’s easy to get confused when traveling in the northern hemisphere.
A faint Fiji from the hotel balcony
The trains today were a Shinkansen from Odawara to Nagoya (about 2 hours) and then a limited express, wide view (ie big windows, whereas the Shinkansen has smaller aircraft style ones) to Takayama through the Japanese Alps, about 2 hours 20 minutes. All up we traveled about 448 kilometers in around 260 minutes, averaging 172.3 km/hour. I’m guessing the Shinkansen regularly cruises well over the 200kph mark. Quite a remarkable ride, and relatively smooth as well.
Shinkansen approaches
Shinkansen interior
The trip through the mountains was okay but I suspect would be far better in autumn, when the leaves are changing colour, or in winter when the landscape would be covered in snow. As it was we got some good views of wildish rivers, and gorges. I say “wildish” as most of the rivers we crossed appeared to be rather well-managed with weirs and concreted banks controlling the water flow. It seems that just about every flat surface between the mountains and the sea in Japan is either commercial, housing or farmland and associated infrastructure. The land around the railway lines through the mountains appears rarely free of some sort of man-made change. I was coming to the conclusion that Japan had the most controlled environment I had ever seen. With 120 million people in a land area about one and a half times that of the state of Victoria I’m hardly surprised.
Takayama is a small town in the mountains, famous for its morning markets, shops and timber work. Our hotel – which we later discovered had truly dreadful wifi – was a short, hotel-supplied bus ride from the station. We checked in, chucked a few clothes into the sink to soak and Robyn and I went off to explore the old town while Will stayed back in the hotel, presumably to swear at the wifi connection while trying to contact his mates back in Australia.
A street in Takayama old town
Bridge statue
Will joined us in town and we found a restaurant serving the local specialty Hida beef. The main style in restaurants here consists of purchasing plates of sliced meat and vegetables and then cooking them yourself on a gas grill on the table. Butchers at home could learn a thing or two from this. Luckily enough we knew the drill as we have a similar restaurant in Glenferrie Road. The meat slices were small, and the total amount of food was less than we had been used to, but maybe we were slowly lowering our intake. Not such a bad thing.
Will cooks
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