In hindsight, 4 days was probably too long to stay in Kanazawa. We could have stayed only 2 or 3 days. Still, it seems like a beautiful city, and it certainly is a tourist draw. Had the weather been better I think we would have made better use of our time.

Today we scheduled a day trip into the mountains of the Hida region to Takayama. It is a city which is immensely photogenic, and extremely popular with visitors for day trips and in particular, ryokan stays, which we have done on two past trips. Today however was just a day trip to get us up into the mountains.

Takayama can be accessed via the North, from Toyama, or from the South, from Nagoya. Both routes are extremely pretty, winding their way through the mountainous terrain by following the path that a river has cut through the mountains. So the train journey is slow, but exceptionally pretty.

When you're not going through tunnels. The most frustrating thing about train travel through mountainous terrain is lining up the perfect shot of a white water river, with a snow covered mountain backdrop, only to have the damn train plunge into a tunnel, and you ending up with a photo of yourself in the train window reflection. I would estimate I took 40 photos of my own reflection on each train journey today.

The girls, however, wanted to just get out of the train at each little mountain train station however, since each quaint little village was still blanketed in left-over snow. Unfortunately there may not have been any guarantee of getting back since we weren't even sure of where we were, or whether any other trains were scheduled to stop there that day.

Arriving at Takayama, it was to their disappointment, completely devoid of snow. And, when we exited the train station, to my disappointment, it started goddamn raining again. Thankfully, it didn't last for very long, but it was still annoying.

Also disappointing is what they've done to the Takayama train station. They've modernised the hell out of it. On our past trips it suited the town, being a quaint, single story 2 turnstile shed with a couple of platforms. Now it has been turned into a 2 story modern behemoth, clearly designed to facilitate massive amount of tourism traffic. I know Takayama is popular, and progress is inevitable, but for some reason this still bothers me.

We then set about doing pretty much all there is to do in Takayama if you're not staying there overnight. We wandered slowly down towards the river, browsing shops and buying snacks along the way (including Cremia ice cream!), before taking photos around the river and historical town preservation areas, before heading for lunch.

I had been very, very keen to go back to my favourite burger restaurant in the world, Centre4 Hamburgers. Imagine my simultaneous anger and depression when I realised that they closed on Wednesday. It's a sore point, so I shall never speak of it again.

Instead, on the first trip to Takayama in 2008 I remember having a very memorable Hida beef ramen, so we wandered in that direction. To my delight the restaurant was still there, and visibly unchanged from how I remember it. Since there was a crowd out the front (always a good sign) we put our names down and waited.

After a short wait of 15 mins or so, we were ushered inside, and shown the menu, which contained all of about 5 options. We selected gyoza (Japanese dumplings) and a Hida beef don (grilled Hida been on rice), and each ordered bowls of Hida beef ramen.

The gyoza was quite good, but the star of the day was the Hida beef on rice. Quite simply the most amazing beef I've ever tried. I would have loved to have another couple of servings, but that would have made the wallet quite sad, so one was enough.

Similarly the ramen was superb. Surprisingly, especially for me, this was the first ramen of the trip, but it has set the bar very very high. The only other one on my ramen bucket list is ichiran ramen, which I'll try to do in Tokyo. May not happen though, since we're no longer staying near the Ichiran restaurant in Yokohama now that we're headed to the Disney hotel.


With lunch done, it was time to head back towards the train station for some browsing of the local stores before grabbing the train.
Takayama trains are anything but regular. We were booked on a 3:10 train, which, if we missed, would have meant that the 5:30pm train was the next option, and due to an indirect route and several changes, would have seen us get back to Kanazawa after 8pm. Missing the train wasn't an option.

Back in Kanazawa, for our last dinner we searched in vein for something special which grabbed our attention. Initially, since I'd not had anything from the Godiva chocolate shop in 6 years, and there was one at Kanazawa station, we absolutely had to stop there for expensive, but fantastic iced milk chocolate drinks.
But a restaurant that we all wanted, and were hungry enough for eluded us. We opted for a selection of breads from the "German bakery", which is the magnificent bread shop we've visited a few times over the last few days, and a selection of other goods from the convenience store at the station, which if you've had Japanese convenience store food you'll know is certainly no bad thing.

Tomorrow morning we check out of the Kanazawa Central Hotel, and bid farewell to Kanazawa, as we head back to Kyoto for what we're expecting will be a fairly crowded couple of days due to the sakura finally being in bloom.