Takayama Festival Floats

Having learnt our lesson on the journey up to Kanazawa, we made sure we’d booked tickets for today’s trains to Takayama via Toyama.

The second leg was a leisurely climb up into the mountains with plenty of evidence f snow in sheltered spots or piled up on the sides of gardens.

We got to Takayama late morning so headed off for some lunch in a cafe before exploring the old quarter, which was similar to those in Kanazawa. It’s understandable but a shame in some ways that most of these old houses have been turned into souvenir shops.

More interesting was the Takayama Floats Festival Exhibition Hall. Every Spring and Autumn, the town holds a religious festival where a number of beautifully adorned floats carry musicians around the town, both during the day and in a lantern lit procession by night.

For the rest of the year 4 of the floats are on show in the Exhibition Hall, while others are kept in storage at points around the town.

The main blip shows a floral detail from one of the floats while the other extras show all the floats currently on display (they change them every 4 months) and more details from some of them. The two devils are a pretty accurate representation of how Tess and I are feeling after 3 weeks on the road.

We went back to the hotel for a relaxing soak in the onsens before dinner, which was a tasty selection of seafood dishes, noodles, pickles and so on.