The next day we woke up, had breakfast and headed out for a day of sightseeing.  First stop was the Morning Market.  Every morning from 7am to noon Takayama has these morning markets where the shops open their doors and the local farmers bring their produce and set up their tents.  Being a huge fan of fairs, markets and anything where you can find local goods, it was probably one of my favorite things in Takayama. But we couldn’t dilly-dally, we had a full day ahead of us and we had to keep moving.

From the Morning Market we went wandering around old town Takayama, we saw some of the old merchant houses, sake shops and all the old town streets. The merchant house we went inside was the Yoshijima Heritage House. It was a grand house, especially when you are accustomed to the size of Tokyo apartments, but for ¥500 to enter, I was a little disappointed to have little to no explanation of each room (in Japanese or English) instead there was just a broad explanation of the entire house.  But it was a beautiful house.

After old town Takayama and a stop at a local cafe for coffee and toast we headed across the river and over to the Hida Kokubunji Temple. We sort of stumbled across the temple but I’m glad we did.  The temple was similar to any temple around Japan but next to the temple and pagoda is a huge gingko tree said to be over 1,200 years old! It was quite impressive.

Next destination, Takayama station…