Adventures in Japan - Takayama Autumn Festival

In October last year my husband and I set off on a long-overdue trip, taking in Japan, New Zealand and French Polynesia. It was very much like three holidays rolled into one and here I’m talking about the Japanese Alps - specifically Takayama and its Autumn Festival. Our first destination outside Tokyo was Takayama in the Japanese Alps. To get there required a number of train journeys, so I was glad that they had been pre-booked through Inside Japan. Took the trains to Takayama. After a limited express train to Nagano, the host city of the 1998 Winter Olympics, we had 90 minutes on a four carriage train that pootled on a lovely, meandering trip up through valleys to reach Takayama, where it felt not just cooler but much less humid than Tokyo. We checked in and then had a little explore around the town – we immediately noticed how much more laid-back, low-rise and traditional it felt when compared to the madness of Tokyo, despite the fact we were here at the second busiest time of year. Takayama is host to Spring and Autumn Festivals involving parades of highly decorated, large floats (yatai), some featuring ingenious puppets that are used to perform plays and dance. We were primarily there for the evening parade, so after finding a veggie gyoza restaurant we went back to the hotel, got all our warm togs on and headed to the festival route. It was already 4 people deep so I found some relatively short people to stand behind! We were waiting about an hour as the floats made their way to us but the sight was spectacular and there were dancers, drummers and other musicians, so it felt pretty magical. The following morning we checked out the deserted area around the shrine (the benefit of missing the puppet performance as everyone else was there!) and continued with some serious shopping. We had been to a shop that sold kintsugi items earlier – the craftsman breaks things to fix them in the traditional way with lacquer and gold powder, deliberately accentuating the breaks with the gold to make them a feature. Other purchases included an omamori (amulet) from the shrine, a calligraphy scroll and a couple of calligraphy brushes. Also sake, the tasting of which may have inspired the purchase of the tiny broken and fixed pottery.... Whilst shopping we stopped for a gohei mochi which is a grilled rice dumpling that's on a stick and looks a bit like a magnum ice cream. It's coated in a sesame and walnut sauce which is sticky, a bit sweet and savoury - for £1.50 each it was great! We then dropped our purchases off at the hotel before heading about 15 minutes out of town to the Hida Takayama Museum of Art. They might as well have called it Liz's idea of heaven as it was basically just Art Nouveau and Art Deco - loads of Lalique including a fountain that was originally in a luxury Parisian shopping centre, lots of Galle, some Tiffany and a piece of Mackintosh. Not only was it a fantastic collection but it's housed in beautiful rooms and there was barely anyone there - if it had been in Europe or an exhibition it would have cost a small fortune and been packed. It was an absolute treat. It's attached to a hotel and guests can visit free but it was only 1000Y (£5). After our evening meal (and some potentially lethal home-made plum wine), it was our turn to try our hands at kintsugi. Our host, Tsumago, had kindly offered us an evening workshop, so we had a great time smashing plates, glueing them back together, trying our hand at origami (paper cranes and mine was truly deformed but never mind) while the glue dried, then scraping the excess off and finally painting in the 'gold'. Bearing in mind we had 2 hours the proper process can take up to 6 months! Tsumugo took lots of photos so I tried to not have my tongue sticking out in concentration...