This day's highlight is the second main purpose of the entire trip: Takayama Festival! Nothing else could compare to it today! In short: we had breakfast at the ryokan, walked to train station, took some photos of mountains and sakura blossoms on the way, the train was ridiculously packed, so we had to stand all the way to Takayama (luckily, it's the next station after Gero on express train).

Takayama festival is considered to be one of the best three festivals in Japan (and there are a lot of them!), so it was not surprising to find entire city packed with tourists. The festivities started with a marionette show at 11 am. The marionettes were traditionally added to some of the parade floats and, I guess, they got pretty advanced over the years. The three performances were fantastic, with puppets moving back and forth on special protruding beams of the three parade floats, controlled by several people hiding behind curtains inside those floats. The performances were explained, but it was very hard to hear the explanation over the noise of an enormous crowd, so I can only guess the meaning. The first puppet seemed to represent a child, who was walking around waving his arms around, playing with a fan and some bells; then he put his face into a box that was on the end of a beam and when he pulled it out, there was a dog's face on him. Second one was a woman dancing back and forth along the beam, then she suddenly bent over and there was a lion's head on her butt... The third one was a woman carrying a big jug; she put it down and there was a loud knocking, so she ran away; after a while a red-faced demon jumped out of the jug spinning wildly and waving a rattle around.

After these shows the crowds dissolved a bit and we were able to come closer to the floats and check them out. Those are very tall wooden structures with large wooden wheels, amazing carvings and lavish decorations. Takayama region is famous for its carpenters and these floats demonstrate their best skills. A number of other floats were lined up along a street leading to the shrine, which is the source of the festival, so we checked those out as well. Each float was a work of art and a woodworking masterpiece. Some had elaborate scrolls, others - gilded peacocks of their roofs, all of them were magnificent.

By the time we arrived to the shrine, the main parade was starting. Priests take a deity out of a shrine, put it into a portable shrine and parade it around the town. And it seems that the main purpose of the parade was to make as much noise as possible. People of various ages all dressed in colourful costumes and weird hats came out of the shrine's gates. Some were carrying long poles with strange symbols, others were playing flutes, beating drums and gongs of all sizes, the golden portable shrine was carried by four guys, one old man was dragging a heavy metal stuff. Overall the parade was a wild cacophony of colours, sounds and symbols for an untrained eye.

After the parade passed we had to kill some time to the evening event, so we wandered around the town, had some lunch (beef is the local specialty, so every restaurant serves beef here) and checked out the historical museum. From the inside of the museum we heard the loud noise again, as the parade was slowly passing by. We jumped out of the museum and followed the parade for a bit to take even more photos of everything. I particularly liked the costumes of miko, the priestesses, who wore traditional red trousers, white jackets and golden headdresses.

Still needing to kill some time, we went to explore a self-guided tour around local temples and shrines. There was a huge number of those, pretty much right next to each other, and all of them were holding some significant historical artifacts. The walk also took us through a park on a mountain where the town's castle used to stand. Then we came back to the town and had some dessert.

While we were eating, people already started lining up around the route of the final parade. We also found a good spot and waited there for an hour until finally flutes and drums were heard around a corner. First we saw a "lion dance": four pairs of guys were sharing colourful lion costumes with the front one holding a fierce looking head and the rear one mimicking the back of a lion with a pair of long sticks. The dancing was simple, but captivating, with "lion's" heads swinging back and forth, up and down, chomping their teeth and attacking four fabric "snakes" on the ground. Finally all snakes were caught and eaten, small children sufficiently scared, so the lions moved on. Then there was a slow majestic procession of heavy parade floats being pulled by people through dark streets of the town. Every float was decorated with lanterns, so the sight was simply fantastic! Also, on top of the floats were flute players and drummers adding musical accompaniment to the magical vision.

This was definitely an experience worth the entire trip! It is hard to describe in words and even photos cannot accurately represent the view, so I would definitely recommend anyone to come to Takayama on April 14-15!

After this exhilarating experience, cold (temperature dropped to +11 by 9 pm) and tired of standing, we went to have some dinner (beef again) and then took the last train to Gero. Luckily that train was not nearly as packed as the train to Takayama.