Japan Trip '08 - Part 4

Day 11

Takayama, here we come! Our accommodation here was Zenkoji 善光寺. It was a temple. Not too sure if the temple was still functioning as one, or everything was converted into a hostel. This hostel didn't have a curfew, or we thought so as it wasn't stated anywhere. But, well, we had a little problem here. Will talk about that at the end of Day 11.

Took 2 trains to reach Takayama. As usual, there would be an information counter/center near the train station. Grabbed all the brochures and maps available. They are very useful references. Made our way to Zenkoji. Too early to check in, so left our barang barang at the entrance and started our exploration of Takayama.


Lunch wasn't anything special, so skip. Next, we were supposed to take bus to Hirayu Onsen area. I think most of us were addicted to the convenience and flexibility of driving our own car (because we weren't the drive, of course convenient lah! WAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA! Poor Zm...). So we were thinking whether to take bus or rent car. As we were discussion this, the bus went off. The next bus was quite some time away. Alright! Rent car! I think we all purposely one. No one wanna make the decision, so all act ai mai ai mai until bus went off, then can happily rent car. Must be!

Toyota Car Rental was nearby, and Toyota's good! I'm a Toyota supporter! Rented a 6-7 seater car, and they gave us a Wish. Make a wish. I wish for a Wish. =.=" Wishy washy. Okay okay. GPS was slightly different from yesterday's one, but no problem for our pro driver and navigator. Oh ya, they were the same people. =) So the rest can continue enter warp mode while on board.

Here's some explanation about this term "warp mode", in case you don't know what is warpping or how is it linked. Warpping means getting you instantaneously from one place to another. So, imagine you are on the car. You close your eyes, and the next moment when you open your eye you realised you are at another place already. That's warpping! Well, in fact, actually a lot of time has passed when you "closed" your eyes, but who cares! So long when I open my eyes and I'm at my destination, that's a nice warp! =) Zy is best at it. She has the best warpping system. Her warp initiating sequences were able to execute in just a few moments. (In short, she can almost sleep the moment the car moves.) Man, is this making me sound geeky? I'm a geek. I'm a geek. I'm a geek.

At the Hirayu Onsen area, there were quite a number of onsens for us to choose from. There wasn't much references we can use, so we could only choose by looking at the name. Forest Onsen, God's Onsen, Onsen blah blah blah. Okay, I can't remember which onsen we chose in the end, but that doesn't matter anyway. Why? Because we overshot, and went further up and found Kami no Yu 神の湯, which literally means God's Bath. It must be fate, and being lazy to turn around and go back, we went to Kami no Yu instead. =\

The place wasn't as impressive as the name was, in the facilities i mean. The entrance was just a normal wood + zinc hut collecting admission fee. Okay lah, close to nature. A fast running stream was just beside the onsen area. Rest assured, although been so run down and close to nature, there were still sex-separated baths. Guys on the lower slope, gals on the higher slope. Prior to coming here, we learned our lesson @ Beppu. Bring your own towel. Yuppie! We had our towel this time.


The hot bath has a sulphuric smell. So this is a real onsen, not just hot water. Maybe it was something good that we chose Kami no Yu. Kami no Yu was located on higher slope. So we got the cleaner water! MuAHaHahAhAhAhAHaHahAHaAhaHAhAhaHHaHahaHAhAHaAaa! Sorry, it's late at night now, and I'll feel higher at night. =D)

On the way back to Takayama, spotted a waterfall. Okay, I don't know how to pronounce this name. The waterfall was splashing so much water, in the mist form, around. Just by being near the waterfall, we already got ourselves drenched. And it was pretty cold. Water was around air con's lowest temperature? Or higher a bit? But ya, it was fun! Zw took off his top and attempted to enter the waterfall zone. But failed. The plungpool didn't look friendly. And followed by Zm taking off his top off. Just to take a topless photo. Pervert... Ero-san...


Dried ourselves up a bit before entering the car. Not good to get ourselves sick at this point of time. Day 11 only. Next stop, back to Takayama, Kitayama 北山 Park. Actually it was supposed to Hida Folk Village first. But when we reached there, it was already closing time. So skip.

Kitayama Park there had a stretch of road which had plenty of hydrangreas. Very beautiful. In fact, I think we saw hydrangreas everywhere we went since Day 1. They are all around. Anyway, parked our car outside a coffee house, Ichii. Time for toilet break. Found the toilets further up. Oops. Cemetary just beside only. And the rain came pouring down. Dashed for the toilets and hid around there for the moment. A tiny shelter at the toilet, with the cemetary beside. Not really a good spot eh?


Lucky for us, the rain cleared up slightly after a while. Ran to the coffee house where we parked our car and had a nice hot drink over there. Nice ambience and view @ the coffee house. Funny thing was after we made ourselves comfortable at Ichii, the rain cleared out totally. We suspected the rain was just water sprinkled by the coffee house whenever they saw "potential customers" nearby.

The journey had to go on, couldn't stay too long sitting around doing nothing. A nice park up there and it had a mini playground too. We were suckers for sunset. Whenever we saw orange sky with the sun setting, everyone started to snap fanatically. Know why we were never a sucker for sunrise? Because we are a bunch of lazy people who didn't want to wake up early. XD

After that, we hit back to Zenkoji and parked our car there. Free parking! Hooray! Searched for dinner place. Dined, go back rest.

When we were back @ Zenkoji, we went to the common area to use internet. Met up with some other countries' backpackers and had a short convo with them. Started with some asking of backgrounds and stuff, then we started to exchange knowledge. One of the backpackers told us about Kamikochi 上高地.

Cui originally wanted to put this into the itinerary, but due to the lack of information on it, it was taken out. Now having more information, Cui suggested putting it into the next day's itinerary. Going to Kamikochi will mean a change in our schedule and money issue. We had a discussion back in our room.


Think we were a little too worked up in our discussion that our volume went a little too loud. Zenkoji's walls were all paper wall. So sound leaks out easily. The "headmaster", owner of Zenkoji, came by and had to tell us to lower our volume. =\ That's starting of the issue I said right at the start of this post. No curfew, but you had to really whisper super softly over there. And maybe you have to use super soft Whisper too. Ah... Sorry.. Lame pun joke. =\ =/

Conclusion of the disucssion - Kamikochi's in. Furukawa's out. The rest squeezed to Day 13. Set. Sleep...

Day 12

Kamikochi is a lovely place. It's a very well-preserved area. Nature at its best with minimal alternation from humans. But getting there is a headache. Firstly, private cars are not allowed to enter Kamikochi. The only way in is either through bus or taxi. So even with our rented car, we could only get close to it and take bus in.

With the limited information on hand, we know we had to go to Hirayu Onsen and take bus from there. A 2-way bus ticket costs 1800 yen, 20 odd SGD. Watch out for the bus timing too. There's only 2 buses every hour.


It was a good thing that we reached Hirayu earlier, as the carpark wasn't that near to the bus terminal. You had to walk around 5-10min (as told by Zw) to get back to the bus terminal. Zm and Zw dropped us at the terminal and went to park the car. The parking fee was 500 yen.

As we entered Kamikochi, we were really awed by the scenery that appeared in front of us. Green, green, green, green! Everywhere's so green and beautiful! Man! That was definitely something I've never experienced before. Alighted at the bus terminal of Kamikochi. After a short toilet break and some quick bites (Zy hungry again), we began our hike.


Set a few checkpoints for the time being - Kappa-bashi -> Myojin-ike -> Tokusawa. Noted something special, although this place was quite flooded with tourists doing hikes too, the place was pretty litter-free! Everyone was doing their part in keeping this place clean. And so I did my part. I did help to pick up some litters that I came across during the hike! =) So proud of myself! *Give myself a pat on the shoulder*


We stopped over slightly before Myojin-ike for a lunch break. They were selling this BBQ fish and everyone seemed to be eating that there, so we gotta try it too. The fish was directly taken from a breeding pond (??? I think so), skewed and BBQ at the fire pit. Simple process, but the fish was delicious. Just lightly salted but the fish was great.

After lunch, we went visit the Myojin-ike. Admission fee 300 yen. I swear, it's a scam!!! Or maybe I don't the importance the pond holds. I don't know why we have to pay to visit this particular pond here. =\ Xiao Guilin free admission lor! *grumble grumble grumble*

From this point on, we had to speed up a little. We had taken too much time while walking from Kappa-bashi to Myojin-ike. Kinda overrun you see.

When we finally reached Tokusawa, the time left was not here not there. Go back it would be kinda early, while go up further will be gamble if we can make it back in time. Decided not to go for the gamble, we headed back to the bus terminal. On the way back, we resumed the slow pace and took more photos along the way.


Back to the terminal, waiting for the bus to arrive. But I felt something was quite wrong. Did the last bus just went off? Were the last bus timing what we thought it was? So I went around looking for the bus schedule. Right. Last bus was 7pm and there was another @ 630pm. But the last 2 timing had some special marking. Ah... Only in operation during special season. So we did miss our last bus. We had to take taxi back down to Hirayu, and it wasn't cheap taking taxi in Japan. 6500 yen from Kamikochi to Hirayu PER cab. =\

Because of this incident, our stubborn Cui kept blaming herself for it. We spent god-knows-how-long to finally calm her and convince that it wasn't totally her fault or not even hers to begin with. She's one unique person. But I'm not going to discuss her character here. I'm main lead here, not her! WAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAA!! Keep the limelight on me.

Anyway, that was over. Back @ Hirayu, drove back to Takayama, and dinner! Good night. Not much planning was required for the next day. Tommy came and told us off btw. =~(

Day 13

Our last day in Takayama. Woke up earlier to catch the morning market. 2 of them, Miyagawa Market 宮川朝市 and Jinya-mae Market 陣屋朝市. We didn't really buy the vege and food there, but just to see how a morning market is like. The market was within walking distance from Zenkoji.


Miyagawa Market was along the river. And I think it was more suited for tourist. Beside having the morning market stalls set up along the river, there were shops by the side too. Omiyage (souvenir) shops. Got my sarubobos from here. Jinya-mae was stalls clustered together in front of Takayama Jinya, currently a museum. I think you would be able to buy some cheaper fruits at these morning markets. Fruit in Japan is darn expensive!


Next, back to Zenkoji to get our car and off to Utsue Shijuhattoki 宇津江四十八滝 (Utsue 48 Waterfalls). This place supposed to have 48 waterfalls here, but I didn't manage to count all of them. Maybe each rapid was considered as one waterfall too? But some of the waterfalls were really nice. But we still prefered the first waterfall we came across on Day 11.

The next destination, Shirakawa-go 白川郷 was pretty far away. Took around 2 hours to reach there on car. Potential Initial D routes along the way, uphill, downhill, lots of hairpin turns. But with a 7 seater car, and 5 passengers in the car, Zm was banned from Initial D-ing. =


When we finally reached Shirakawa-go, Wow... It was some kind of disappointment for me. The place was really beautiful, but it was damn packed with tourists! Tourists all over the place! The original houses of this village have very steep roofs. This is because during winter, snowfall is very common around this area. The steep roof will help to keep the snow off. Although packed with tourist, the place was literally litter-free too.

After walking around a bit, we went up to the viewing platform further up on a hill to catch a view of the entire village below. I think our stay in this place was even shorter than a single trip from Takayama to here. Travelling around really took up a big chunk of our time in this trip.


Okay, back to Takayama. Parked our car at Zenkoji, and went to a food street nearby. Chose one of the lower end restaurant there and had dinner there. Ji and me didn't order anything. Because on the way back, we stopped at a Mac and had a happy meal. We were collecting the toys. =D

Back to Zenkoji, sleep. Moving on to Lake Kawaguchi next.

To be continued...