Things I've Done - Nagoya (Sort Of) Edition

While technically I stayed in two nights in Nagoya, I spent the bulk of the day between in Takayama as the Spring Festival was on.

The hida express

Taking the winding route through the mountains

Hilly

The main river through town

Not too much sprint melt going on

Lots of people in the Ye Olde part of town

One of the dozen carts in it's storehouse where it lives between festivals.

Four dogs in a pram wearing Kimonos.

Sadly due to rain they had to cover up their paper lanterns and cancel the cart parade

There was still a market

A local toy store had the latest in American toys.

There was still a parade though, with dragons

Emo dragons

There were musicians and samurai parading behind the dragons

This Samurai of the Magureguro Clan displays his house colors

They put on a puppet show on top of one of the stored wagons

...but it turned out the puppet was a demon all along!

 One of the things I love about Japan.

There are in excess of 1200 Starbucks in Japan, meaning they hold the 4th position on # of Starbucks per country by a wide margin. With minor changes to the menu for the country they reside in, they are all pretty much what you expect from a Starbucks... and yet, the Takayama Starbucks has two wooden mugs as their official Starbucks merch that are hand finished by local woodcrafters and they are the only one of those 1200+ stores that you can buy them in.

Some serious omiyage

Nagoya was feeling neglected, so here's a photo of the temple across the road from my hotel