Japan 2006 - Part 4

Takayama

Takayama is a small city near the Japan Alps, nestled into a valley between mountains. The train line - and road - there from Nagoya spends much of its time following a river gorge, with numerous river crossings and tunnels. There are also plenty of tunnels that are open on the gorge side, effectively just providing protection against slips. A number of hydro power stations operate along the river. We visited during the city's two-day spring festival, one of two they hold each year (the other obviously being the autumn festival).

The old Sanmachi part of town. These few streets feature old-style shops and saki breweries.







Some varieties of sake on display and sale in one of the small breweries.



Enjoying hand-made soba noodles.



How do we know they were hand-made? Because the sign says so... and we asked the owner. Plus it took about 10 or 15 minutes from the time we ordered before we received our meal, where orders of noodles usually arrive in seconds.



The Miyagawa morning markets, one of two that operate most mornings beside the river. According to someone we spoke to there, most of the stall operators are country people selling their wares - mostly fresh and pickled vegetables.



A stall selling hand-made spice mixtures for noodles. When you buy some, as my wife just did, the woman grinds up some spices in her bowl and adds them to a mixture of the other displayed spices which she then packs down into one of the little cans at the front. You can get different combinations, depending on what you want.



A small shrine on a street corner. You find these everywhere in Japan, often stuck in the middle of a line of otherwise modern buildings.



The main street of town before the festival proceedings.



The Jinya-mae morning markets, a couple of bridges along from the Miyagawa markets.



Much of what look like nuts here are actually dried soya beans or similar.



A shop with some paper lanterns.



One of the "yattai" floats used in the spring festival proceedings. For the rest of the year, other than during the autumn festival, these floats, of which there are 12, are hidden away in sheds around the city.



One of the festival participants posing for photos with people. Notice the straw sandals, often worn a century or two ago (another common form of footwear was wooden clogs).



A puppet on the Ryujintai yattai during the Karakuri performance, a performance dedicated to the dieties. Three of the yattai put on these short puppet performances, where the puppets are controlled by dozens of strings by operators in the floats. The performances are fairly basic, with the puppets moving to the end of the extended arm, turning, waving, holding fans, etc, all to the accompaniment of a variety of weird music and strange cries, and with one ultimate fast transformation that is the climax of the performance.



For the puppet pictured, a lion head suddenly appears from under the rear of her kimono (supposedly this performance was banned for years, ages ago, as being too lewd). For another puppet, a dragon bursts from a wicker basket, while for the remaining puppet, something happens that results in a rain of flower petals (I didn't notice exactly what happened there). This puppet is from the third performance.



The Gojunko Procession, during which the diety Sanno-sama travels around the city in a portable shrine. For the rest of the year he resides in the Hie Jinja shrine (all according to the festival brochure). The spring festival is actually the festival of the Hie Jinja shrine, the guardian diety of the southern half of the old Takayama castle town (the autumn festival being the festival of the Sakurayama Hachimangu shrine, the guardian diety of the northern half of the old town).







The portable shrine. It appears that this would normally have been carried by bearers, but now runs on wheels, persumably to spare the festival participants.



Takayama castle no longer exists, with only a few ruins remaining in the park on a nearby hill.



The night festival, where the yattai festooned with lanterns parade through the streets of town.



This picture also gives some indication of the crowds that lined the streets. As I only had a very small tripod (less than a foot high), I was sitting it on some large box on the edge of the footpath. Numerous times other people tested the lid to see if they could stand on it, right in front of my camera of course (fortunately they couldn't), but I still had problems with people at the other end of the box standing right in the middle of my line of view. Others regularly pushed and knocked the box too, which shook and vibrated, upsetting long exposures. Getting reasonable pictures without a flash was very difficult.



But some were taken with a flash anyway.

Takayama's Hida no Sato Folk Village

The Hida no Sato folk village is just outside Takayama and includes a variety of old buildings from the Hida district (where Takayama is) relocated to this one site. The buildings mostly date from the 1700s and 1800s, and include the thatched gassho-zukuri houses and more recent ones with timber slat roofs.

The view from just inside the village entrance.



One end of a thatched building.



The ties that bind...



Inside one of the thatched buildings. The large hook hanging from the platform in the middle of the room is over the fire (obscured by the panel sitting on the floor) and was used to suspend pots over the flames. These fires were always kept lit, filling the building with smoke. Even now the fires are kept lit just enough to smoke, partly to give an idea of what it was like inside the house, but also because the smoke keeps out insects and protects the timber, and because it gives off moisture which also helps with preservation of the building. A good thatched roof was able to last between 30 and 60 years. Note also the size of the roof timbers. The Hida district gets a lot of snow in winter, up to 2 metres thick in some parts, which can be very heavy. It was still pretty cold when we were there, with patches of unmelted snow in some spots.



Not the latest alien from Dr Who about to take over the world, but a small toilet building (so I'm told - I didn't look inside myself).



A sawyer's cottage with a timber slat roof. The rocks on the roof are to keep the tiles on in high winds. At one point the government apparently outlawed using timber slats for the roof, due to them being a fire risk, so they started building the roofs with clay tiles instead. However, the clay tiles started cracking during the cold winters, so they went back to using the timber slats.



Inside a larger building. This building was apparently used as a meeting house, which is why it's so big. Notice again though the size of the roof support beams and columns. While these buildings now have electric lighting for display, originally they were always quite dark, with the fire typically being the main form of lighting.



A small wheel house. The pipe feeding water to the wheel is a small-diameter log with a channel cut into it. Inside the wheel house, the turning wheel shaft used to lift and drop solid blocks of timber, I think to crush grain.



Another gassho-zukuri house. The term "gassho-zukuri" apparently means hands in prayer (according to the Lonely Planet guide), which comes from the shape of the roof. The houses we looked in generally had three levels, with the upper two levels displaying some of the things done in the house (eg. cultivating silk worms) and the equipment used with that. Most houses also included a small barn - typically only large enough for one or perhaps two animals (the size of cows), although I don't know how many they actually used to squeeze in there.



Another larger wheel house.



The view inside a thatched house on the second level.



Finally back to Tokyo for a couple of days before flying home. Photos from this time are included in the first section on Tokyo.

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