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.
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| The hida express |
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| Taking the winding route through the mountains |
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| Hilly |
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| The main river through town |
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| Not too much sprint melt going on |
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| Lots of people in the Ye Olde part of town |
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| One of the dozen carts in it's storehouse where it lives between festivals. |
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| Four dogs in a pram wearing Kimonos. |
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| Sadly due to rain they had to cover up their paper lanterns and cancel the cart parade |
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| There was still a market |
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| A local toy store had the latest in American toys. |
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| There was still a parade though, with dragons |
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| Emo dragons |
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| There were musicians and samurai parading behind the dragons |
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| This Samurai of the Magureguro Clan displays his house colors |
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| They put on a puppet show on top of one of the stored wagons |
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| ...but it turned out the puppet was a demon all along! |
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.
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| Some serious omiyage |
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| Nagoya was feeling neglected, so here's a photo of the temple across the road from my hotel |
