Takayama: Our home in the Alps

A travel day, we walked from our hotel to Matsumoto Station, lugging our suitcases. Two trains and several hours later, we arrived in the cute town of Takayama, our home for three nights.

With rain drizzling, we walked over to EDIOM, a large computer store so I could buy a new cord for my external hard drive. The amount of computer gizmos and gadgets, even in a town the size of Takayama, surprised me.

Takayama’s historic district, complete with wooden buildings and sidewalks, drew our attention. Hunger, though, needed to be assuaged. We found a cute restaurant, Centre4, with burgers and salads and Johnny Cash music playing in the background. Nonetheless, they were packed full. We made dinner reservations for the following night and ate the first of many meals from 7-11. The 7-11s, Family Marts, and Lawsons sell sandwiches, snacks, bento boxes, … lots of food at very low prices! Often, we would have a hotel buffet for breakfast, convenience store food for lunch, and a restaurant meal for dinner.

Although we spent three nights in Takayama, our two full days entailed, first, hiking from Magome to Tsumago and, second, exploring and hiking in Kamikochi. With a late afternoon train on our final Takayama day, we used that day to meander around Takayama, seeing the Miyagawa Morning Markets, Sanmachi Suji, Takayama Jinya, Shiroyama Park, Takayama Castle Ruins, Tensho-ji, and Sakurayama Hachimangu Shrine. Phew! It was a full day even before we retrieved our luggage and headed to Kyoto!