
Continues from: Day 5: Kabuki (Tokyo)
Now that Kate has arrived in Japan it's finally time to leave Tokyo and start sightseeing around the rest of the country.
Today the plan was to visit the cherry blossoms along the Matsukawa River in Toyama, before continuing on to the Takayama Festival, which is considered one of Japan's three best festivals.
For this we had both purchased 7-day Japan Rail Passes however, I lost mine last night!
I think this is the first major mistake I've made during a Japanese holiday and I was very upset.
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Karakuri performance |
If you want to continue your holiday without one you may have to spend hundreds of thousands of yen on rail tickets.


The original plan was to get a bento each and then have a picnic along the river.
However, instead, we only had enough time to rush down to the river, have a quick look, take a few photos and then rush back to the train station.

After walking a short distance along the river, we took the next main street that headed back to Toyama Station.
Upon arriving we caught the next train into Takayama. Due to the festival I was worried that this train would be packed, so I made sure to reserve two tickets using my rail pass when I first arrived into Japan. Although I lost my original pass I still had the tickets so we were able to get seats.

Last time we came to Takayama it was covered in snow, so it looked quite different compared to then. It was also much more crowded, especially as we made our way to our ryokan which was located in in the main festival area.
The original reason we decided to go to Takayama was to see the cherry blossoms as we thought it would be too late in most of the rest of the country. The thing about the cherry blossoms is that they are only in full bloom for about a week (if there's no rain) and the timing varies quite a bit from year to year.


As we neared our ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) we passed a one of the floats where a karakuri performance was being conducted. This is a kind of puppet show that is performed using sophisticated mechanical dolls which can move and dance.

Upon arriving we left our bags at reception, and then went out to have a look at the festival floats which were being paraded through the streets. Kate also enjoyed a meat bun.

Later, we left our shoes at reception, checked in, selected our meal times, and were shown our room. We were a bit tired from our journey so we enjoyed the Japanese snacks provided and relaxed before going down to the onsen to have a soak in a bath.


We went to the dining area and were served a full multi course kaiseki ryori meal. It was super delicious!
We also ordered some nihonshu (sake) to go with our meal.
After dinner we headed back out to enjoy the night festival, where the floats are lit by lanterns and are dragged around town for a few hours.
They were very pretty!
One thing about the Takayama festival, in contrast to others we have visited, was the lack of yatai or food stalls.

However Takayama didn't have much of this at all. There were no stalls but a few shops were selling things like dango. I bought a stick but actually didn't like the flavor of that particular one very much at all.

Tomorrow the plan was to wake up relatively early and head down to Hikone Castle, in Shiga Prefecture and then stay a night at an AirBnB located near the foot of Mt Ibuki which we were planning to climb the following day.
Continue reading: Day 7: Hikone Castle
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