Takayama: a mountain town that kept its dark wood

Takayama sits in a basin in the Hida mountains, high enough and far enough from anywhere that the Edo-period town was left alone. **Sanmachi Suji** is the result: three streets of merchant houses in wood darkened almost black, with deep eaves, low doorways and water channels running along the frontages. Sake breweries mark themselves with a *sugidama*, a ball of cedar branches hung above the door that browns as the new season's brew matures — seven of them still operate here, and most pour tastings from January onward. Two morning markets open at dawn, one along the Miyagawa river and one in front of Takayama Jinya, the only surviving provincial governor's office in Japan, which still has its rice storehouse and its interrogation room. The stalls sell pickles, apples, miso and *sarubobo*, the faceless red cloth dolls that Hida grandmothers made for luck. Meat is the other reason to be here: Hida beef is the region's wagyu, sold on skewers, in nigiri form over a warm rice ball, or as a proper steak in the evening. Then there is the festival. Twice a year, in April and October, Takayama pulls out its *yatai* — towering lacquered floats with gilt fittings, some carrying karakuri marionettes worked by hidden puppeteers — and the town fills. Out of season you can see four of them in the Yatai Kaikan hall. The buses to Shirakawa-go leave from the station, the Hida-no-Sato open-air museum of relocated farmhouses is twenty minutes away, and the onsen at Okuhida are an hour into the Alps.