Takayama – Sarubobo Owns This Joint

Wow, so it didn’t take much for me to get behind in blogging. Apologies – I tend to come back to the hotel/ryokan/inn/wherever we are on any given day and drop like a rock.

Takayama was a fair hike from Hakone – a train to Nagoya (an hour or so), then another two hour shinkansen trip up the mountains. Thankfully, our ryokan was only about a 10 minute walk from the station. It was also situated – somewhat perturbingly – next to a graveyard. Having said that, the rooms were comfortable, and dinner and breakfast were included. I assume this added cost is why we had to pay for the pleasure of a towel larger than a face washer, and why we were directed by staff to refill our water bottles from the bathroom tap… Hmmm.

The town itself – though a popular (Japanese and foreign) tourist spot, is still fairly old-style. There is also a suggestion bandied around that it is a more authentic version of Kyoto. I guess we’ll analyse that for ourselves once we head up that way.

Sarubobo, as suggested in the title, dominates this place. People tie him (her?) to posts and all over shrines, hang him in the window of their shops, and sell merchandise by the ton (biscuits, glasswear, stuffed toys, coasters – you name it, there’s a good chance there’s a Sarubobo version).

Sarubobo is a good luck charm. The red ones are the most common (the original, I think?), and were meant to bring good luck in marriage and with children. There are also blue (study and work), pink (love), yellow (money) and green (health). Wikipedia reckons there are black ones, but I didn’t come across this in my travels at all.

We took a walk around the old quarter on our first day, and went into an old sake brewery for a taste test (well, I didn’t drink any, but I think Mum did…). Sake is another one of Takayama’s drawcards – there are breweries all over the place. You can get sake jelly and sake slushies, too. I took a sip of the latter, after one of our tourmates took the plunge and bought one, and asked me to back up her suspicions that it tastes like washing up liquid. It did. Didn’t stop a lot of people buying them, though. The heat has persisted here, so the shops are doing a good trade in cold food – ice cream, drinks, shaved ice.

After all the walking around, we jumped at the chance to use the outdoor foot spa outside one of the larger hotels in town. The water was painful at first, but after fifteen minutes, walking home was like padding around on a cloud.

Dinner on the first night was something of an elaborate banquet, with rice, miso, sashimi, vegies, fish, hotpot, tempura and green tea.

Day Two saw us heading for the Hida Folk Village in the morning. The place is, as a lot of previous visitors had warned, a bit of a tourist trap, but interesting in terms of its historical significance. There was a lot of off-and-on-ing with our shoes every time we went into a building, which we soon tired of, and hence settled for poking our heads in. The differences, from a layman’s point of view, were minor anyway.

I somehow found myself helping a Japanese shopkeeper in one of the little tourist shops with translations for poems on cards, after she caught me sounding things out under my breath (oops). I got a free postcard for my troubles, though.

In the afternoon the group split up and headed in various directions. I went to the one and only big electronics stre in town with one of the other girls, who had bought a new camera there the previous day (her old camera has given up the ghost) but found a problem with the shutter and wanted to exchange it for a fully-functional one. I had carelessly lost the lens cap from my new camera somewhere the previous day. Couldn’t remember when or how it had happened, but it was there when we were touring around, and gone when we got back to the ryokan.

We trekked across town in the heat, getting lost a few times along the way, until finally we reached the shop. It was at that point I felt something digging into my side. It was my chopsticks, which were trying to make an escape from my handbag through the lining. Clearly, my world possessions were rebelling! I reached inside to retrieve them before any more damage was done and… there was my lens cap. Dammit. Oh well, nice walk and a few more steps racked up on the pedometer.

Met Mum and another girl from our tour back in the old quarter, and did a bit of shopping. Mum went off to sketch after that, while the rest of us went it search of a taiyaki joint I was sure I’d seen on the way. Ended up lost (again) in the newer part of town, wandered around a bit, and eventually found our fish-shaped cakes. Yum!

Another big dinner that night – tempura and hot pot and rice and miso and vegies and fish. I couldn’t help but think, though, that if they’d cut back on a few dishes, we could have been given use of a proper-sized towel for free… I’ll get over the towel thing one day. No, really.

Another night on the futon, then up at the crack of dawn and back to the station… in the rain. Mmm, wet cargo pants. At least the ryokan staff were able to take our bags in the van. Grabbed a copy of Myojo (pop culture mag) at Takayama station before we jumped on yet another shinkansen and started the five hour journey to Hiroshima.

Tagged as: japan 09, Travel