Tuesday, 8 April 2008
A week into the trip and starting Day Two of the Rail Pass Week, a 7:09 departure from Kanazawa precluded thoughts of breakfast before heading to the station.
On the way out of the city, a bleak morning presented no chance to see whether recent precipitation had managed to clear the ever-present haze. Still, there were signs of recent and relatively substantial rainfall.
Given our experiences the previous day, that was hardly earth-shattering news.
Kanazawa has a well-deserved reputation for wet weather.
After we’d left the outskirts of the city, we passed through an agrarian landscape, with a misty haze covering the forested hilltops.
Suited salary-men boarded the train at some stations, and I couldn’t help noticing that there were upmarket homes scattered through the villages.
Conditions made it difficult to see the snow that I was sure capped the mountains away to our right. As we moved away from the coast, the land on the left-hand side started to rise, though again, it wasn’t possible to get a clear view of the peaks.
At Toyama, we had difficulty finding Platform 3, which wasn’t well signposted, but eventually discovered the next leg of the journey involved an upmarket version of the old-fashioned rail motor.
When we took our seats in the first carriage, it was apparent, from the picture windows that gave generous views to the front and both sides that we were travelling a particularly scenic route.
The misty conditions were far from ideal for sightseeing but gave a feeling of travelling in an enclosed world as we headed past streams boosted by recent rainfall.
Despite the rain, many trees held cherry-blossom, which suggested steady drizzle rather than the sort of downpour that would knock the flowers off the branches.
We climbed into the mountains as the mist closed in more tightly, and pylons suggested nearby hydroelectric stations as we passed through some tunnels, skirting sudden canyons and waterfalls.
A lengthy stop at Inotani, where I looked out over mist and forest-clad mountains, evoked images of hermits and Zen poets in the mist.
Moving on through Sugihara, we passed into an area where there were patches of snow on slopes not far above the line.
By this point, we were following the river valley, almost at river level with the highway on the other side of the stream protected by a roof supported by lines of pillars.
As we rolled through Sakakami, I gave up on writing in the journal because scribbling the odd observation was getting in the way of enjoying the scenery.
Approaching Takayama, the houses looked to be of much the same construction as those further down. They’d have to be very well insulated if the occupants were going to make it through harsh winters.
My suspicions about temperatures were confirmed as we alighted in Takayama just after nine o’clock in conditions colder than a mother-in-law’s kiss.
We deposited the suitcase at the hotel, then headed back to the station to catch the bus to the Hida Folk Village. There, we spent a couple of hours wandering through buildings rescued from river valleys flooded to provide water for hydroelectric schemes.
The houses weren’t all that old, not going back much beyond the middle of the eighteenth century, and came from a variety of sources, representing a range of occupations and social classes.
There were farmhouses with upper storeys devoted to the raising of silkworms, a priest’s home, a village head man’s house where the walls could be removed to make a room large enough for meetings, and a woodcutter's hut as well as a way-station from the main road.
And one building erected as a residence for a wealthy landowner.
Casual onlookers might be inclined to get sniffy and dismiss the place as a tourist trap. But it looks like a genuine attempt to preserve aspects of the area’s traditional lifestyle, with streams of melt-water flowing downhill to power water mills.
Here and there patches of snow remained in hollows protected from the springtime sun.
Each building, for example, was heated, if that’s the right word to use for a few burning coals in the living area, by fire rather than electricity.
I couldn’t help wondering how the occupants coped with temperatures that reached below minus twenty with two metres of snow on the roof.
It is not, however, the sort of place to take kids who can’t tie up their shoelaces since venturing inside almost every building involves removing the footwear.
In hindsight, I wished I’d invested in a pair of Velcro-equipped joggers.
Two hours of wandering on an empty stomach meant that we weren’t going to wait till we got back to town to eat.
Outside, we found a restaurant serving noodles with char siu pork. I washed it down with half a litre of Asahi before we headed back to the bus stop for the return trip to town.
Having just missed one bus, we thought the next one might deliver us to downtown Takayama, and it turned out that it was the next bus back to the station.
There was one minor technicality. It wouldn’t be setting out on that route for another twenty minutes since it had to complete a different loop around the town’s attractions.
The driver, thankfully, decided that although we were going to be heading back in twenty minutes, we might as well board now, rather than stand around for the intervening period.
Which is what we did.
Once we’d returned to the station precinct, it was still too early to book into the hotel.
We took a stroll to Takayama Jinya, the government official’s residence and administrative centre from the Edo Period. It turned out to be a fascinating place, although there wasn’t a great deal of information available in English. The English-speaking guide was unavailable that day.
We were, however, there at the same time as a group of Japanese with an own-language guide.
From the audience reaction, if the English-speaker is half as good as the Japanese counterpart, his guests would be in for an entertaining time.
From Takayama Jinya, we headed across the river to the Sanmachi Traditional Buildings Preservation area and old private houses.
Unfortunately, straight after we arrived, the camera decided it had had enough for the moment, prompting us to use the current visit as a reconnaissance. We'd wander back in the morning with a recharged camera for a few photographic memories.
Back at the hotel, we took it easy until dinner time, when we faced a minor dilemma.
Takayama is famous for Hida beef, and we decided that was the preferred option for the evening meal. The only problem was deciding which particular venue to choose.
We took a wander around the area west of the hotel, found a couple of possibilities, and eventually chose Yamatake-Shōten, the one closest to home.
Although it didn’t seem like it straight away, it was an inspired choice, a retail outlet for a beef-raising operation with a sideline offering a cook-it-yourself service.
Once we’d selected the beef we’d like for dinner, we picked vegetables to accompany it and moved to our table, where hot coals had been placed under the metal grill in the middle of the table.
The proprietor got us started on the cooking process, then left us to it with a bottle of 2006 Cotes du Rhone to keep us occupied while, piece by piece, we cooked our dinner. Definitely delicious.
The beef, however, would never pick up a heart-smart tick in Australia and definitely wouldn’t appeal to anyone fanatical about trimming the fat off their steak.
We were finishing off the bottle when the proprietor returned to check everything was under control.
It was.
Other customers were conspicuous by their absence, so he stayed to talk to ‘Er Indoors (his English being effectively non-existent).
He’s obviously someone with pride in his hometown and its culture and proceeded to bring out and unroll posters about the forthcoming Takayama Festival the following week.
Although I was an uninvolved bystander unable to catch the commentary the next ten minutes or so were one of the absolute highlights of the fortnight.
Each poster had been rolled and unrolled countless times and showed signs of wear and tear.
Someone doing this sort of thing for a living, or as a regular part of his business would have gone out, gathered a collection of posters, and had them laminated. Then, more than likely, he would have worked up a PowerPoint presentation he could leave running on a laptop while he attended to more pressing matters.
Our host, on the other hand, excused himself while he attended to other matters, returning after each interruption to talk about something he obviously takes great pride in.
One interruption involved getting a young Spanish couple at the next table started on the cook-it-yourself caper, attempting to communicate with them in extremely limited English. I presumed his Spanish is about as good as mine. All the while, he was commenting over his shoulder to ‘Er Indoors in Japanese. Amazing.
After that, there was nothing for it but to stroll the fifty metres back to the hotel, pick up a couple of cans of beer from a vending machine and retire for the night.