Tommy's Japan Journal 2005-2006

Hida Takayama Day 2 and Matsumoto
October 9th, 2005

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A very pretty waterfall.

The road between Matsumoto and Takayama goes way up into the mountains.

Some stream shots at the base of the waterfall.

Some stream shots at the base of the waterfall.

Some stream shots at the base of the waterfall.

Some stream shots at the base of the waterfall.

Me and the stream.

More waterfall.

More streams. I didn't have much sleep and it was pretty, ok?

More waterfall.

Some mountain shots.

Some mountain shots.

Some mountain shots. Breathtakingly beautiful in person, slightly less on film.

One of the lakes up in the mountains.

I thought about cropping this, but, like any place, the real world is never far away and sometimes it's better to leave it in.

God only knows what these frogs are doing here. Actually, Japanese people who can read the sign probably do, too, but I have no idea.

Matsumoto castle, built way back when and never taken in battle, is surrounded by a pretty huge moat.

Through some weird good luck, the day we went happened to be the annual Soba Matsuri (soba - buckwheat noodle. matsuri - festival), which meant there was tons of super good food. Having pigged out the previous day, we resisted temptation and didn't eat much.

HAHAHAHAHA! Resist temptation. I crack me up. We ate so much it hurt.

Here's the entrance to the castle. They let you climb up, but remember this is Japan. You take off your shoes and put them in one of the plastic bags and carry your shoes with you for the whole 6 stories. Since there were 10,000 people there for the soba festival, it took *forever* to walk through.

A view to outside through an gun hole.

Every single row of tiles ends with a stamped seal.

The huge fish up on one of the roofs.

Matsumoto town from the top.

Some of the windows pop open so you can drop rocks on people scaling the walls.

The castle grounds are surrounded by huge walls, too. Here's one of the gateways.

Me and Matsumoto.

Our day in Takayama started around 6:30 or 7am, and we freshened up at the Family Mart convenience store across the street. I wasn't hungry yet, but Marisa bought some oden (veggie soup, basically). We headed out of town while everything was still closed toward Matsumoto.

Our first stop was a medium-sized waterfall, complete with stream and picnic area. Very pretty!

Stop number two was a small cafe we had noticed the day before. They had pancakes! My first pancakes since I got to Japan. Pretty good, too, though they were expensive. The most important thing was the coffee. Coffeeeeeeeee. I do take after my parents sometimes. Usually when I only sleep for 4 hours in a car waking up every hour after driving 5 hours with 5 more hours of driving ahead of me, but still.

We stopped at all the POs on the way over the mountains this time, and took our time enjoying the views. When we got to Matsumoto, we headed straight to the castle. The castle was really impressive. It would have been more impressive without all the people, because climbing the castle was actually pretty boring. Basically, there's almost nothing in the castle, so you just climb stairs to get to the top and then climb down. Since it was festival day, it took forever. We made up for the long slog by eating tons of food at the Soba festival (see captions).

It hardly seems worth the effort, but all material here is copyright Thomas Williams 2005, All Rights Reserved and nothing at all on this site may be used without my express written permission.