Heading to Hida Takayama

I woke up dreaming.

Since I’m travelling through Japan you might expect me dream about the Buddha beckoning me down lonely roads, or giant Japanese cranes crossing mountains in single footsteps. Instead I dreamt about video games.

I was talking to a Japanese person, in my dream, who was telling me the ending to a scary survival horror game. As he described it I saw it vividly in my mind. He said that in game the last enemy had been a huge spider. On being defeated it disappeared into the floor and it was the end of the game.

The final boss of the second game in the series was a man of some sort and he also sank into the ground on defeat. But this time you got a closer look and actually he was falling into an enormous black pit. There, in the pit was also the spider from the first game but ten times larger than it used to be. In the dream I said, “Wow what a cool idea,” and as the image of the giant spider waiting in the pit re-emerged in my conscious mind I thought exactly the same thing.

Another dream I had that night took place on a big fairground ride. It was slowing down at the start of the dream but the man in control asked if we wanted to ride again at a new seeing that they were trying out. Everyone cried, “yeah,” in that overly enthusiastic way groups of people do. The ride started again and was notably faster. Gradually it became too fast and since I had no seatbelt on I felt myself being sucked out and was holding on for dear life.

When it stopped we got off breathless. Someone yelled and pointed to the floor. There were people who had nearly fallen out gripping onto the edge of the carriage, which was high above the ground. Susan from Neighbours was one of those people; she was trying to save herself from falling off the edge. Someone went to help her but she said something like, “I can’t be bothered with this anymore,” and promptly fell out of my dream. Perhaps I wasn’t paying her enough for a cameo.

Anyway, Hida Takayama is a smallish city about 3 hours by bus North of Nagoya. It is near a large area of mountains known as the Japanese Alps. I had decided to go there because I wanted to get out of the cities.

It’s always frustrating when from a bus or train window you see a place you’d really like to visit but have no idea where it is. For example, we passed this intriguing tower which I don’t think I will ever get to visit.


The scenery for the rest of the journey didn’t disappoint. There were whole ranges of tree covered mountains rising up around the road, which determinedly tunnelled through them. Wide shallow rivers flowed between the mountains, the water white with the chaos of rapids and rocks. A few fishermen stood equidistant from each other with optimistic baskets hanging from their arms.


Later the ground dropped far below the road and I realised we were on a huge bridge supported by pillars as high as office blocks.

Takayama city seemed to suddenly appear after the last tunnel. I looked at it from the bus window trying to gage hot it worked. Was it large? Did it have tramlines on the road and lots of convenience stores on the streets?

At the bus centre I rescued my rucksack from the bowels of the coach only to stuff it into a coin locker a moment later. I had an hour and a half to kill before I could check into my ultra cheap hotel: £15 a night ensuite! I was expecting it to be run by roaches, literally a large cockroach would be at the desk to greet me, wearing an apron and speaking such polite English that I would feel unable to mention that anything seemed strange. Then in the lift they would get me. “3500 yen a night,” they would chant in scratchy voices as the lift walls and doors broke apart to reveal themselves to be an army of camouflaged roaches, “you brought it upon yourself.”
“It’s true,” I would sob as everything became green.

Jeez, you can tell I don’t have an editor can’t you.

The tourist information centre was a wooden hut in front of the station but as institutions inside huts go it was really amazing. The woman behind the window filled my map with crosses for the places I wanted to go to, she even knew where my hotel was.

I took to the streets but after 10 minutes I realised I had no money in my wallet and there were no 7/11 convenience stores to get any. I went back to the tourist information hut. “You’re back,” she said in surprise.

She confirmed my finding, no 7/11s at all. This was the first place I had been in Japan where this was true and it was a shock. Japan has more 7/11s than America; it would be like a town in the UK with no pubs.

She offered me a good solution, there was a place that did money exchanging and had lots of ATMS, another cross appeared on my map. Life proved her right, it was exactly what I needed, I felt like I should get her a card or something.

To waste more time I followed my map to a walk mentioned in my guidebook, the start appeared to be a cemetery with this toori gate marking a path to a shrine. It was a beautiful spot but I was too tired to start the walk so headed for my hotel.


I thought it was a flower shop at first, there were so many flowers and plants outside the entrance, and it didn’t help that it was next to a real flower shop.

The woman behind the counter was reassuringly human and gave me my key, 402. The lift was reassuringly lift like and stutteringly took me to the fourth floor. My usual hotel room hide and seek excitement couldn’t help but ignite as I found the door and put in my key.

The door opened to a room so large that it had two beds. It was clean, spacious, the bathroom was where you’d expect it and everything. “Wow,” I kept saying to no one in particular. I surveyed my new domain, and it was good.

Sleep, shower, sun cream, explore. Takayama features old streets, more shrines than it seems you really need, shops and lots of bridges. Ugly statues live on one bridge.


This one appeared to be insistently pointing at something but all I could make out from following its finger was a dead crow on a TV ariel.


It got dark pretty early and I sat in the cemetery at 8pm waiting for my nightly call from Yoko and wondering why I was sitting in a cemetery. I had wanted to find somewhere off the main street but this was ridiculous. Up the dark dark steps and through the dark dark trees the shrine was lit up. I tried to relax, not imagine ghosts floating above me or psychotic killers creeping behind me with the urge to bludgeon.

A cold wind broke my nerve; I headed back into town and took the call there.

There is a convenience store here called Timely, I have never seen it anywhere else. I ate Timely sushi alone in my room, as is my usual eating habit these days. Being unable to read Japanese, being a vegetarian and being alone I don’t really want to go to restaurants but I feel like I am missing out on something.

Whenever you ask a Japanese person whether visiting a particular city or area of Japan is worth it they say, “Oh yes it is famous for its ramen,” or some other kind of food I can’t eat. This just doesn’t happen in the UK, people don’t say, “Oh yes, you must eat the steak and kidney pie in Blackpool.” It’s like Japanese people learn the geography of their country not by famous sights or history but by food. Still I can recommend Timely sushi.