So anyway, we left Osaka behind today, catching a train for Nagoya to catch another train bound for Takayama. We're now good friends with the Japan Railways Shinkansen HIKARI super express, to the point where it's almost reassuring to be sitting in one of it's immaculate cars. The train to Takayama was a bit more interesting once we left Nagoya behind, weaving in between mountains and alongside streams on our way to the smaller city of about 90,000 people.
Takayama is nice, but incredibly cold - far more so than we had initially anticipated. Nonetheless, we pressed on to our hotel, dropped our bags and then headed into the town to see what there was to see. In fact, there was not a lot. The town is quiet and pretty and there are some really cool, really interesting shops, especially in the old part of the town. But otherwise, it's not exactly a happening place. A good change of pace, though, after the frenetic pace of Kyoto and Osaka (plus Nara, Himeji and Hiroshima).
We ate dinner at a famous hamburger joint in town before heading to an izakaya (Japanese tavern) for some sake and sashimi (I did not partake, but Daniel and Ali inform me that it was delicious). And that's about it. We head to Shirakawa-go in the late morning after hanging around here for a little while.
Daniel has asked me to mention something that was omitted from the retrospective posts: on our last day in Sapporo, after we went to the beer museum, Daniel threw a snowball at Ali. To be fair, it was much more impressive than that description makes out: Ali was across the road, and he threw the snowball up in the air. A bus went by, and the snowball sailed right over the top and struck Ali cleanly. Many a nearby Japanese person LOLed. I feel I should mention as well that Daniel fell over on the footpath like 10 minutes later, thus being the only person who stacked it during our entire time there. That is all.
-Nik
