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| Our first view of the Hida Folk Village (slightly larger view, much bigger) |
Saturday, 24 May: Takayama and
the Hida Folk Village
Cindy and Mason climb to the next building (big image, small).
I don’t know how Mike came to know about the Hida Folk Village, but this day was definitely one of the high points of the trip. This site is filled with traditional houses and other structures, brought here from other parts of Japan. All original, not restored. But let me start at the beginning:
The day started with a fine but fishless Japanese-style breakfast in the hotel lobby, with our bags beside us. Our train was relatively early, at 0843, so we had to eat and run. The train trip to Takayama was a two-hour ride through beautiful mountainous countryside, and up into the Japanese Alps. On our arrival, we put our bags into coin lockers, and hopped a bus to the Folk Village.
As you can see from the pictures, the Village is set out in the woods, so there were plenty of plants and trees to examine. And naturally plenty of koi in the pond by the Village entrance.
There were good informative labels outside each building telling where it had been moved from, and what its owner had done for a living. The old carpentry tools (not woodworking tools) on display in one of the buildings caught my eye. The third picture in the column to the right shows a hatchet in the rear, something I can’t identify next, and something called “a chopper” in the label, probably a sort of machete for cutting brush. Below that, a bunch of froes, you use a mallet to tap the sharp edge far enough into the end grain, then you give a turn and split off a shingle or even split a log that way.
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| You can see a larger version of this image, or a much larger. |
We could walk into most of the houses in the Village. Some clearly were the residences of very humble people, like the carpenter whose tools were displayed. But there were some that were, in contrast, very elegant. in the big picture above, you see a very beautiful one. I liked this snapshot very much, and have printed it up for display at the summer place in Maine.
Among the items on display was the charming little shrine that you see at the upper left corner (to the left). As I recall, there was no explanatory text, I had to make up a story for myself. Below that in the lefthand column is a big bell that was hanging in its own little pavilion.
Takayama is a mountain town, it’s in the Japanese Alps, and there were views of the nearby mountains here and there. This was May, and there still was snow up there; whether it stays all year I don’t know.
I was fascinated by the thatch on the buildings there. So well maintained, so precisely trimmed. I took lots of pictures of roof details, and you should be grateful that the one at the lower right is the only one I’ve put up on the web.
After a bus ride back to Takayama, we had some time to kill. My journal says:
«Before going to our ryokan, we wandered about the very busy town, where there were a few sake-brewers’ shops offering inexpensive tasting (for only a hundred yen, one buck). We saw lots of restaurants, but didn’t pay much attention, ’cause we thought we’d be having dinner at the ryokan.
«It was difficult getting through to the ryokan for calling for the services of their van, but eventually we got our ride up the hill a little way to our lodging. Very traditional ryokan, moreso than the place in Tokyo, but it turned out that our supper was not prepaid, so that we’d have to go into town.
«We found a very steep descent into town and realized that the ryokan was really very close. But we had trouble finding a restaurant! The town was uncannily empty for a Saturday evening at 6:00, and we searched for quite a time before we hit on a place called Le Midi specializing in Hida beef {extremely expensive} but also offering Italian-style dishes. I had a thick-cut pork cutlet that was very good, better than the veal I had had the night before on the twelfth story above Nagoya, and Mike had a mushroom risotto that looked delicious. The wine was a French generic, definitely factory-bottled, but good enough, especially after having breathed a bit. But the crème brûlée that Mark and I had was delicious, not so much for itself as for the unusually good sorbet that it was topped with. There were also four wedges of orange that must have been marinated in something fragrant, too. Just wonderful.
«The Moorman-Kings wanted to wander more in town, but M & I needed sleep, so we climbed the steep ascent and were soon out like a light.»