Takayama Central Hotel

... and central courtyard garden. The play of light and shadow on the interior wood and mud/straw/bamboo walls, is outstanding. Takayama Jinja was once used as a local government building from Edo era, and for the next 176 ...

... turned them off and pulled them out of our beds.      Tomorrow we've got a lazy day exploring Takayama and Hida-No-Sato, a traditional village of steeply roofed thatched huts. I'm a little apprehensive of what the breakfast offering will ...

... having spent the evening drinking, was going our way and insisted on sheltering Sarah with his umbrella! Check-in at the Kanazawa Central Hotel was smooth enough and the price was surprisingly low; we soon discovered this was in keeping with the room ...

... Gifu is actually the same one as the one to Tskayama so she would just join me on the same train. Convenient! The ride to Takayama is a very scenic one: it works it's way through a river gorge up to about 900meters. The Japanese landscape in this part of ...

... in our room for a short while before venturing out into the area around our hotel.  As it turns out, our hotel is in a central location.  We first walked down Kawaramachi Street, which appears to be a major street as it is lined with numerous ...

... coffees and travel stories, they left to find their hotel, and we went down to catch the subway to the central area of Kyoto where our hotel is located. Having stayed at this hotel at the start of the trip,we had no problems finding the hotel ...

... the Kyoto night, map in hand, mainly to get our bearings and feed our faces. We headed towards central Kyoto about a 20 mintute walk from the hotel and eneded up on a shopping street much the same as Oxford Circus; this did not disappoint us becuase ...

... to the left of the famous one with the ridiculous queue- you'll understand when you see it.) After our detour and a small nap, we gathered our things, collected our jp railpasses (more to explain next) and made our way to the moutain town of ...

... close to Osaka Station too. J'Hoppers is very similar to K's House, and also has hostels in different cities in Japan (Takayama, Kyoto, Hiroshima...). The place was ok even if the acoustic insulation between the rooms was far from perfect... Even if it ...

... ;   Skiing Resort: Dynaland (Gujo, W), Hirugano Kogen (Gujo, W), Takasu Snow Park (Gujo, W), Ciao Ontake Snow Resort (Takayama, W), Nozawa Onsen Ski Resort (Nozawa Onsen, W), Hakuba Goryu (Hakuba, W), Hirugano Kogen Ski Resort (Gujo, W) ...

... Kanazawa's a lovely city and one that's often overlooked by visitors to Japan. It has many of the same features of Kyoto, Takayama and other, more famous historic Japanese sites, but manages to largely escape the glut of tourists. It was nice to have an ...

... on. China, I knew, would be a different case, a hard case, and REAL work. My seeds of doubt were planted in Takayama when the travel-agent British couple warned us of the Chinese personality: they spit everywhere, they all rush on the trains and busses ...

... get back to the station before the rain started falling again.  All in all, a fairly different festival atmosphere than say the Takayama festival I went to.  Perhaps this is more common with the summer parties?  I'll know more when I get to ...