The Road Trip

20th Sept (Day 7)

Today we picked up our little blue car (Suzuki Wagon R) and off into Nagoya peak hour traffic we went.  We were a bit hesitant about paying tolls as we forgot to book an electronic pass meaning we would have to pay manually.  This meant the first leg of our journey avoiding tolls took a bit longer but it turned out to be a bonus as we got to see the suburbs of Nagoya.  It took a long time to get into the countryside as the speed limits are really low on the minor roads.  Kens being careful as 30 km's over the limit is a criminal offence (which means everyone seems to travel 20 km's over the limit).


Our sightseeing spot for the day was an old Post town in the Kiso valley called Magome.  The town has one street.  It dates back to the 1600's but as all the buildings are made of timber there have been several fires over the years so none of the original buildings remain but have been rebuilt in the same style and are around 150 years old.  The Post town is a route between 2 towns Magome and Tsumago used by travellers from Kyoto and Tokyo during the Edo period.

Tricky park job.

We spent longer than expected in Magome so it was dark when we arrived at our hotel.  After removing our shoes and putting on our special hotel slippers at the front door we checked in and were shown to our room.  Bloody hell it's as big as our house.  The bath is spring fed with hot spring water and is continuously running and steaming.  

Private Onsen

Hotel front door

21st Sept (Day 8)

We woke up bright and early and it's raining.  What the heck we channelled our inner englishman and headed for the alpine town of Kamikochi for a bit of bushwalking.  Private cars are not allowed in Kamikochi so we parked at the bottom and caught a bus up to the town.  It's a place of big rivers, mountains, ponds, bears, monkeys and a volcano.  We did a 7km circuit walk along the river.  The forest is lush and green, the rivers are crystal clear.  At times it reminded us of Alpine areas of Tasmania except the ground cover is a type of bamboo and not bracken.

Kappa Bridge 

Kappa Bridge

On site Cabins

Myojin bridge

Myojin pond

Kamonji-Goya Hut 

Linda thinks this would be a good Jigsaw. 

As we headed back to our hotel we came across a family of monkeys on the road.  We then stopped off in the local town Tochio to do a bit of exploring.  We headed along the river and through a little park.  Linda was got a bit of a shock there was a naked man at the local Onsen, getting out of the bath, it is right next to the picnic area. 😵

Man made riverbed.

Suburban street Tochio.

22nd Sept (Day 9)
The day dawned a lot brighter today so we put the long pants away.
This morning we went to Takayama morning market and tasted some of the local snack foods. It was very colourful and busy but friendly and helpful stall holders.  We should have enough snacks to last us the rest of the trip.

Then it was off to Takayama old town, once again very busy.  We found a Sake brewery shop and got stuck into a few tastings.  They offered secret tastings and we rolled the dice to see what we would get.  It didn't really matter as they were all delicious.  The gold leaf infusion was a bit of a surprise.  Our feet were too tired to walk any more so we drove the back way home over the mountain rather than around it.  The roads looked as though they were not well used.

Bacchus is the place to be.

Indoor Archery

Sake

Rice fields on the way home.

Over the past week we've seen quite a few people that don't realise their dogs aren't children.  They take them to special play parks and push them around in dog prams.

23rd Sept (Day 10)

We left our luxury hotel this morning to a mild and sunny day.  Once again we decided to go the back way and avoid motorways to Shirakawa-go.  Bloody hell the twisty steep skinny mountain roads were wet and covered in debris caused by the typhoon in the East China Sea.  Picturesque but Linda was a bit nervous as there were high winds and sheer drops.

Nakadaki Falls

Google directed us to a car park in town unfortunately cars aren't allowed in town. his caused a little confusion but once the traffic controller realised we were gringos he cleared the pedestrians so we could turn round and get back to where we needed to be.

We spent the best part of the day in the village, which was totally different to the other old villages we have visited so far as many of the houses have thatched roofs.  The thatch is made of pampas grass.

Kitchen

Held together by string

Then is it was off to our ABNB in Kanazawa. Again we avoided the tolls. this time the roads were much better and we travelled through an interesting farming area located in a valley.  There are groups of four to six houses dotted amongst the rice paddies.  The scenery was beautiful.  We arrived in at our ABNB in the afternoon.  Getting to the little apartment was a bit of a squeeze. Lucky we have little car.  The streets are really narrow and pokey. Yamauchi san greeted us when we arrived and showed us to our apartment.  After settling in we thought we would take a walk into town before tea.  It was a lovely walk into town then the heavens opened and were drenched walking back.  Bloody Typhoon. 

Rural Valley

24th Sept (Day 11)

Did we mention our feet are very sore.  We're walking around 15 km's a day with a lot of standing around looking at things as well.  Today we walked around Kanazawa, on our way we stopped off at the corner fruit shop to get a couple of bananas for breakfast. Nanna didn't have a clue what we were asking for but we managed in the end to get 2 bananas.  After a lot of talking, pointing and laughing on both sides she gave us some complimentary muscat grapes.

First stop was the Kenroku-en Gardens. Gorgeous ly manicured and styled, a magnificent example of a Japanese garden.  We saw one of the gardeners pruning a large sculptured pine tree.  He was 10 meters up a ladder and pruning individual needles.  Painstaking work.

The iconic lantern

Serious pruning

Across the road to Kanazawa Castle.  A castle in Japan is the whole complex not the buildings.  Because the buildings have been destroyed by fire a number of times. The site now is a restoration of what some of the buildings looked like at a particular point in time.  Interestingly they have focused on buildings with a storage purposes.  The storage building they have reconstructed using the old techniques. The craftsmanship and joinery are art.  An unusual site that we came across while resting our tired feet was several workers cutting the grass by hand using small scythes.  They packed the trimmings into sacks ready for disposal.

Hang on tight.

That's a manicured lawn.

We then went to the Omi-cho market to see all the unusual Japanese fish, meat, vegetables and fruit.  We were surprised to see that the large muscat grapes that the lady gave us in the morning were $25.00 per bunch.

Not a bad price.

After lunch we continued on to the Higashi Chaya District which is where the old tea houses and Geisha area is.  Its obviously a thing for the young folk to hire Kimonos and visit the tea houses.  There were heaps of them.  All the girls looked lovely, most of the boys also dressed up looked like they were there under sufferance.

25th Sept (Day 12)

Our last day with the car.  We had a long journey back to Nagoya. On the way we visited the Japan Automobile Museum. They have an extensive collection from all over the world. Its very Japanese in style as the cars a packed in tightly. Many of them had an engine capacity less than 1,000cc some significantly less.

I thought these were a Myth

Anglia that went through the wash.

Twike ?

Japan spec Mk2

Since we were near the coast we thought we had better take a look at a Japanese Beach to see what it looked like.  The sand is really coarse and dark brown in colour.  There was no-one on the beach even though it was a nice day.

In the afternoon we took the expressway back to Nagoya, lucky we'd been avoiding the tolls as they nearly broke us. It was about 200 Km's and it cost just over $50.00 in tolls, but we finally got above 70 KPH.  At 120 KPH the little hire car was screaming, the speedo only went to 140 KPH.  After dropping the car off we caught the Shinkansen Train to Kyoto for the next leg of our Journey.  It only took the train 40 mins to cover about 150 Km's. According to the speed app on the phone the top speed was 289 kph at an average speed of 251 kph.