Takayama Green Hotel

... building in the centre of the old town, complete with torture chamber, a few free tastings at some sake breweries and a trip to the float museum which stands next to the town's largest shrine and which shows off a rotation of the beautifully detailed floats that are brought our around the town every spring and autumn for one of Japan's most popular festivals.<br><br>We reconvened around 7pm for some more hida beef and then managed to find a great little sake bar ...

... en anglais. Donc, j'ai fait un peu de repassage, refait mes valises et lu un peu. <br><br>Takayama est dans les montagnes. C'est un petit village ou il y a beaucoup d'agriculture et ou les gens travaillent le bois. Ils sont memes reputes pour leur travail. Il y a de tres beaux bols en bois lacques qui coutent, vous vous en doutez, une fortune. C'est une petite ville et tout ferme a 4h30-5h. Et quand je dis tout, j ...

... br> Hida-no-Sato is a collection of about 30 old Japanese mountain farmhouses. Ranging from 100 to 500 years old, they were relocated from their original locations in the '60s, when they built the Miboro Dam in the Shokawa River and flooded a large area. The houses are now picturesquely arranged around a lake and include woodcutter&#8217;s huts, farmhouses, rice storage structures, and shrines. The farmhouses are ...

... student.....being that we are soooo far behind, this will be - a picture is worth a thousand words...enjoy the pictures. Your students/children are doing great...we have been sleeping Japanese style on the floor for six nights and are anxious to move on to Hiroshima for real beds and bathrooms in our room. We have been taking the Japanese style baths every night!!...<br> Gosh, hard to believe our trip is almost over!!!

... she owns the whole of japan, this going on the " if i like it it's mine, if i see it's mine" principle.<br>i love you sweetheart. we both miss you both. i'm getting some stares here, so i need to go. i'll try to get on computer tonite. have to do laundry too. <br>i'll tell tim about orientation stuff. that was very thoughtful of you. <br>miss you much, you too kate :)<br>love you forever, like you for always<br>mom

A Takayama on loge dans un temple, plutot sympa ! La ville est assez touristique et on comprend pourquoi : elle regorge de temples, vieilles batisses, distilleries de sake. Il y a beaucoup d'artisanat local : bois laque, sculptures, herbes sechees... Les sobas (nouille) au sarasin sont la specialite du coin et on approuve ;-) Toujours impossible d'aller a Kamikochi, meme de ce cote. On declare donc forfait et on part vers le sud...

... foods (weirdly enough, I'm having more fried foods here than in America) and non-sensical Japanese variety shows. Not sure if it's Kamikochi talking or what, but I feel ready at this time to get back to everyday life in Boston. Got to tackles my demons, fail some more experiences and then fix all these tiny things that need to be done--lease, pictures, mail--the list goes on an on. But before that: tomorrow is Matsumoto castle and Nagao Zenkoji temple. And then onto Tokyo. -mike

... pass a large map of Hida no Sato and welcome! Emerging from the gate , we find a big pond surrounded by the hills and traditional houses in the background and an observation hut along another side. We take a look from this hut : in the distance snow-white capped terrain of mountains rise lightly against the clear sky. It seems ...

... set aside for its own FedEx office purely to send out its goods mail order! After a few more tastings of the different variations of Miso pastes, soy sauces etc., at mid-morning we end up in one o the many small Sake breweries where we test out more than a few samples - the variety is amazing, many different types,all of which are quite different. We are told that it really does not matter whether Sake is drunk hot or cold, but that the Japanese tend to drink it hot ...

... Then just wandered this very old village until the procession of the priests around 3*30. The parade of floats is a night parade which started a little after 6:30 pm - impressive and caught a few pics for you to see. Hard to tell, but there are youngsters and young priests on the floats beating drums etc. And all floats are pulled by hand. Headed back to Gero and our ryokan after a full 12 hour day - and the high only reached 7 degrees! so we ...