We have a guide today to take us round Takayama which will be good so after breakfast we went downstairs to collect our shoes from the locker and although we were a little early she was already in reception. After agreeing what we were going to do today we set off, it is another nice day but there is a bit more cloud about and having learnt the lesson yesterday we had our jackets but not our fleeces on! First stop was Hida Kokubunji Temple which is a buddhist temple not far from the station. This has a three story pagoda which was originally five but the pagoda was ruined by fire and subsequently a typhoon so is now only 150 years old and when they rebuilt it they reduced it to a three story one, the main thing of interest is a 1,000 year Gingko tree which is still alive but only just coming into bloom, the guide showed us a picture of the tree in the autumn and it was spectacular an explosion of yellow flowers, a bit of a shame we are not here in Autumn! From here we went to the morning market which is held every day (in the morning) this used to be a fruit and vegetable market but now is more aimed at the tourists, although there were a couple of stalls selling veg and a few of the farmers wives have branched out into making things such as slippers and bags which they sell alongside their produce, while in this area we went into a number of the shops and tried a number of things such as blossom flavoured peanuts and beancurd cakes, some were better than others, I particularly liked the lemon sherbet-like covered peanuts and Chris was quite fond of the cookies! We also went into a shop where they designed and made lacker objects, there was an indoor shrine cabinet which was really nice and a couple of boxes and vase’s that is we didn’t still have quite a lot of traveling to do I might have considered buying. After eating our way through a number of shops we walked through a bit of the old town and made our way to the river with the cherry blossom we saw yesterday, this was quite interesting as it seemed that a few more trees have come into bloom but I could just be imagining that! Next stop was temple area that has been built on the ridge at the east end of the town. This area was established during the 107 year reign of the Kanamori dynasty, Takayama has about 80 temples and 13 of them are in this area we walked round a few but didn’t actually go in any, it was a little strange as buddhist temples sit alongside shinto ones all intermixed in the same area. We also walked round one of the main temples which is where the feudal lord is buried, this was a very unpopular lord as he kept raising taxes, the farmers rioted a few times, burning some of the houses down in protest against his rule, the third time they rioted they also sent a petition to Tokyo which if I followed the story correctly resulted in him being overthrown and replaced with the Shogun, our guide was surprised that the cemetery has such a large area dedicated to him and his family bearing in mind how unpopular he was. After this we decided to walk up to the Castle park area which is where we were planning on going yesterday until we decided to change our plans and go to the museum, this is a really steep hill and most of the trees are cherry trees so should be a blaze of colour, however, as it is higher and therefore colder most haven’t actually come out yet, they are expected in the next week or so, all the same it gave us a great view over the city and the park was quite nice although the walk up had been a little steep! We threw good luck sticks at the shinto temple, our guide got ‘not very good luck’ she drew six which doesn’t seem to be very lucky, Chris pulled out five which is moderate luck and he should trust people in business, I drew eleven which is really good luck and whatever I want I shouldn’t need to wish for as it will come – not totally convinced by this but it was a nice story and I came out of it rather well! By the time we had finished all of this it was almost lunchtime but today is Tuesday which means that a lot of shops and restaurants are closed but the guide had somewhere in mind for lunch so we set off back down the hill and walked through the town. We went to a very small restaurant but the food was really nice, we had Soba noodles today rather than Raman, this is basically just like Raman but with thick noodles rather than thin, I am sure a purest will say there is a lot of difference between the two but I am not sure I could tell it, all the same the food was really nice and we pretty much cleared our plates! After this is was time to go round to the Takayama Jinya – government building, this was a branch office of the government from 1692 to 1868. This was actually during the period of the Shogun and the warrior government wielded supreme power over the nation for 15 generations (255 years). The Bakufu ruled about 60 domains in various important areas of Japan while about 250 feudal lords (called Daimyo) ruled their own domains. In 1867 the Bakufu lost its political power and returned it to Emperor Meiji but this building continued to operate as the government office until 1969 which is why it is so well preserved. We were shown all around the house and it was really nice to have someone explain it to us, there was an area for administration as well as one for collecting taxes, the building also included living quarters for the governor and had rooms where visiting high status government officials could stay. This also acted as a magistrates court which was a room where the judge sat and the ‘confession’ room which was basically a room where you either confessed or you were tortured, if you didn’t confess there were three forms of torture used, the first was you were made to sit on the stone floor, this had medium sized boulders on it where you would have to kneel down, if you still didn’t admit your guilt you were then sat on a wooden frame which was a collection of v’s so it looked like vvvvvvv again you knelt on this and you then had what looked like slabs of concrete put across your legs, if this didn’t make you confess the final ’treatment’ was that your arms were bound to your feet behind you and you were then suspended by your arms. This pretty much guaranteed you would confess to whatever it was you had been charged with. If it was a ‘local’ matter then the magistrate would pass sentence, but if it was more serious such as murder or arson then you would be put in a wicker cage and carried to Tokyo for sentencing. We finished walking round the area by entering the Rice Store House or Onkura this was built in about 1600 and is one of the biggest and oldest in Japan, the farmers were taxed heavily – they had to pay 40% of their annual harvest in tax and the way they paid was by stuffing rice into a straw rice-sack, each rice-sack weighs about 130 pounds. Our final stop of the day was the Sake brewery where for 200 yen each you can ‘sample’ sake, the first place we went into had 10 bottles of saki and along with trying each of them you get a sake cup as a souvenir, We only tried about three each and decided that this really isn’t for us, although some people were working their way though the whole set of 10 and having full cups of each – I don’t think they will be able to walk later if they kept that up! We then went across the road where although it is free you are only aloud to try two which we did but again we are still not convinced, and nor it turns out was our guide she also much prefers beer or wine to sake but because we had brought her lunch she insisted on buying us a drink which was a lemon liqueur that turned out to be rather nice, it was similar to a lemon tequila although without the salt, we went round a few more shops sampling their rice cakes and sweets and finally I felt so guilty I brought some sweets that are rather like peanut brittle it was then time to head back to the hotel for a bit of a relax before going out again this evening a good end to another really good day.
