Day 7: Trawling through Takayama
This was a blessed thing because while Takayama does have some indoor sites, and the main shopping and cultural areas have overhangs, there was a lot of walking around its city proper. All of it worthwhile and raising Takayama further up in my lasting regard for it.
When we woke up, the forecast called for the most prominent rain to be in the afternoon, so we decided to do the further out, more outdoor-focused, shrines and temples in teh morning, leaving then the roaming around the Sanmachi District (more to come on that) for the afternoon. The plan worked out well enough, again with the exception of this level of metereology and adjustments were probably not needed. The first sights were on the east side of Takayama, where flat land turns into hills, and in one place a straight up forest - with the trip starting with the Sakurayama Hachimangu temple.
It was a large complex, in an open square within the city proper, with forest starting basically immediately behind it, that led to a really nice look. As we would come to learn, that describes basically every shrine in Takayama, but was appreciated nonetheless. The real great sight of the area was a small one-room museum in its grounds called the Sakurayama Nikkokan, which had incredibly, detailed, ornate, realisting miniaturized versions of a giant temple complex. The one thing I really couldn't discern was what temple complex was it trying to replicate, but whatever it was it was great. They broke up hte large grounds into about 5-6 different miniature replicas, all incredibly ornate, realistic and gorgeous.
From there we walked along the edge of the city proper to the other main temple area, the Higashiyama Hakusan Shrine and complex. This was built into a hill basically, with some arches and entryawys at ground level, including a separate temple, the Diaou Temple, but with most of the shrine built across multiple areas at different elevations. The first was a bit more open, with really nice, clean buildings and gardens. There was a winding road behind that took you walking through a really serene cemetary up the hill towards the final shrine that sat at the hilltop. The shrine at the top was by far the least impressive, which normally would've made me upset to expend all that energy to get there, but the view from teh top of the cemetary adn grounds below made up for it.
This area also had one last temple. this one fully separate, next to it. The Koryuzan Sogenji Temple was a bit more open and had a lot more carving and stone-work. It definitely seemed the newest of all of them, and was a nice quick way to end the first half of the tourism part of the day. Takayama is a walkable enough city that walking to the temple areas, between them and back probably encompassed 40 minutes walking, and 60 minutes touring.
For lunch we went to Aji-no-Yohei, which borders the edge of the Sanmachi area which is basically a 3x1 stretch with ornate old houses, shops, restaurants, with the main stretch being pedestrian only. We would stroll the Sanmachi a bunch later, but for now we had our sights all set fully on the restaurant, another Hida Beef focused joint. Because of our experience yesterday night we were a bit worried but instead were one of the first groups to come - by the time we left around 1:30pm it was very full, but we had no issues getting a seat.
Instead of the normal yakinaku that has a large gas grill in the middle for you to grill stuff, this one has small grills that they bring ready to order as part of a larger set meal. There's different options, but the primary ones are "Hida Beef Sets", which are some weightage of wagyu-grade Hida Beef (with the marbling to show for it), and a bunch of assorted sides, including vegetables to grill, egg custard, a tofu side with a sweet honey sauce, rice, salad with a good yuzu dressing, and a great miso soup. The beef is expensive, but all of that thrown in makes it a pricey, but not outrageous lunch. The beef was excellent, seasoned with a little bit of salt and pepper, but largely letting the beef do the talking for itself.
After lunch we had probably more time than just the Sanmachi required so added a few impromptu tourism spots which were both good. The first was called the Takayama Jinya, which is an old government building turned into museum where you go on a walking tour through its many ratan-mat rooms, ornately decorated as it would've been in the 1800s when the building would have been active. They didn't have a whole bunch of English signage, but enough that gave you a good understanding of what the building was, what each room was for, and a greater appreciation of the building. This is a place none of new existed, or at the very least none of us had shortlisted as a go-to spot, but was well worth it.
The other non-Sanmachi tourism stop was the last set of temples we visited, another one on the east side that is at the lower ends of the large "Park" that is at the cities Southeast (the Park is really a big forest that has bears and stuff). The temple was the Hie Shrine, which requires some steps and effort but was incredible, mostly because it was so well tucked into the forest, with truly giant cedars trees all over. They were huge, they were impressive and regal, and uplifted what otherwise would've been a temple very similar to the others we went to. But man those trees - again it was like visiting the Pacific Northwest, but with culture and temples thrown in.
Finally after that we took our time in the Sanmachi, which is just a great time waste. The first place we went to was the Fumasake Sake Brewery, which had a sake tasting option where you could pay for takens that you could use to pour sake. It was a bit convoluted, but the sake was excellent and helped me pick out a bottle to buy for back home. The rest of the drag was a great mix of shops, restaurants and just people milling about. Sure, it may be too commercial and priced-up accordingly, but it feels geniune. We ambled in to many places - I spending a good amount of time in a shop that was selling lacquer kitchenware. We also stopped for honey-infused soft serve, and "hida beef" sushi, which was excellent.
The sanmachi is a stretch of three blocks but is pretty easy to burn a good 60 minutes there even without stopping for a serious bit of shopping or eating - which there are plenty of options. It did allow us to mingle about long enough to make it then to Jabrani which is one of the two craft beer bars open today (with good ol' Al's closed...). The beer here was frankly not as good as Al's, but we'll take what we could to sit down for a bit.
Dinner was at a local Izakaya named Dai Dai, going there after not getting a spot at the fancy yakitori we eyed but stupidly didn't ask to make a reservation the day before. Wasn't too much an issue as Dai Dai was quite nice. Probably more simple and less fancy than the Izakaya we went to in Kyoto, but very much the real thing all the same, with a series of shareable options - best being a pork char sui Japanese style, a Teppanyaki Hida Beef Steak (surprisingly cheap) and as always good sake. Overall Dai Dai was a great fallback option, even if that Yakitori place (named Neighbird) did look excellent.
To end our time in Takayama, we went back to Rum Dance Hall, which was as cool as contained as always. The place was far busier - I guess for Japanese folk too, Thursday is the unofficial weekend start. The Japanese whiskeys were flowing, the canape was nice as ever (terrine), and the cool barman/vinyl record DJ was a hit. Overall a nice, calm way to end a great mini stay in Takayama.
