Day 11 and we’re onto our third segment of our trip: a 3D2N stay in Takayama to visit several places: starting with Shirakawa-Go today. The itinerary as planned several months ago placed a visit to the famed village nested within a valley surrounded by mountains on Day 12 – but a further-on check a week before departure revealed that Shirakwa-Go is closed on Thursdays. So, we swapped the places of visitation between Days 11 and 12, and moved our visit to the Northern Alps to Thursday instead.
That in turn meant though that there would be a good amount of movement on Day 11. Since we’d be checking out of our Kanazawa hotel, our big luggage cases would be with us. We could use parcel forwarding services of course to send our luggage to our hotel in Takayama but we didn’t again on this occasion. We took the first Shinkansen from Kanazawa to Toyama departing 7:24AM for the short 23 minute ride to Toyama, then double-timed it to platform 3 for the 90 minute train ride southwards from Toyama to Takayama station. There’s a short nine minutes in-between for the transfer: enough but not a lot. We needed to exit the Shinkansen gate at Toyama, find the transfer gate to Takayama, then re-enter to board the Hilda train via the correct platform.
The Hida 6 Limited Express Nagoya train didn’t have a lot of passengers. So, while we’d reserve seats for this part of the journey, it probably would have worked just as well if we didn’t. In any case, the number of free seats meant that there were no issues with placing our luggage at unoccupied seats.
We arrived at 9:30AM at Takayama. The bus terminal where we next caught the bus to Shirakawa-Go is beside the train station. No ticket purchase was necessary, since the 5 Day JR Takayama-Hokuriku Area Tourist Pass included the bus fare ride to Shirakawa-Go. After leaving our luggage at our place of stay: Residence Hotel Takayama Ekimae, we had an hour to kill before the 10:54AM bus to Shirakawa-Go departed from the terminal. Takayama being the very laid back town it is meant that brunch options at mid-morning and within easy walking distance was limited. Thankfully, it was McDonald’s to the rescue: a short 2 minute walk from Takayama Station.
The bus ride from Takayama Nohi Bus Center was uneventful and pretty smooth without too many of those dramatic sharp turns and slow-downs that can cause sensitive nausea for travelers susceptible for motion sickness (i.e. I had no problems). Try to get a window seat too, as you’d be treated to beautiful scenery during the bus journey like this below:
We got to Shirakawa-Go just before noon and to a fairly crowded bus stop center at the village – I reckon noon was about the time when the early morning visitors to the village were about returning back too and taking the returning buses.
Shirakawa-Go, in a nutshell, is indeed as visually striking as the photos would have you believe, and particularly even better since you can go there multiple times if you want using the 5 Day JR Takayama-Hokuriku Area Tourist Pass. Some comments about the place and visit too:
For the return back, you can either reserve seats at selected bus return timings, or go for open seats at other timings. The former get snapped up really fast, but we had no problems getting into the open seating on the 3:15PM return bus to Takayama.
The map of the village is available here, but printed copies are available at the tourist information center where the bus terminal is.
The main viewing spot where you see those gorgeous photos everywhere else is uphill at the Shiroyama Viewpoint. This is a small area perhaps 4 meters wide where you have a gorgeous uninterrupted view of Orimachi village of Shirakawa-Go. Most visitors have the good sense and courtesy to admire the view, take their pictures, then step away for others. But I saw a local with full-frame camera gear and big fancy tripod occupying significant space and completely unfazed by the others who were trying to get some space in too. Wonder what he was looking to looking to take: it looked like had a 70-200mm f2.8 lens mounted, but that’s not enough reach for him to do crazy zoom shots.
The climb up to this vantage point is a good 10 minutes uphill though, so do mentally prepare for it. There are no benches for you to stop and rest too, but you can go really slow as there are many spots in the uphill walk where you can stop to take pictures.
Many of the dining establishments, including cafes, were not operating today. Perhaps there just weren’t enough visitors yet to the place that justify all the dining options being opened – the tourist map lists 35 such places to get grub, but I reckon at most half were operating today. As these things go too, grub items are a bit more expensive than what you’d pay for back in the city, but the price differences aren’t absurd.
Another scenic spot is the suspension bridge; not of the village itself, but both sides of Shokawa River. The initial 3-4 meters of the bridge on the village side is extremely slippery, so either walk on the extreme left side where there is snow to provide needed grip on your footwear, or hold onto the bridge railings.
The crowd visiting the village today thinned out fast from around 1PM onward. At that point, the place was really pleasant to stroll around, and take photos without too much noise in the background frame.
Pictures!
In all, I reckon you’ll want to spend at least 2 hours in the village for a leisurely slow and sufficient time to walk up to the observatory and also the bridge. Beyond that, if you’re also visiting the numerous museums or ducking into a cafe or two for beverages, then your visitation time extends. Either way, you’d want to basically decide your visitation time based on the return bus timings.
That’s it for Day 11. We’d initially wanted to check out Sanmachi-suji District in Takayama, but ended up KIVing it. We checked into our stay – Residence Hotel Takayama Station, which is a quick 2 minute walk from Takayama Station, and just next to the Takayama Nohi Bus Center. Takayama isn’t a tourist-centered city, so we had to spend a bit more time looking for dining options. Otherwise, it was going to be more McDonald’s LOL.
Continued in the next post!