7-11-09 Day trip to Takayama
Posted in Trip North on 08/17/2009 05:01 am by ScottYousuke and his friend Hibino took Risa and I to the town of Takayama today.
Takayama is famous for its old style shopping district, so Yousuke thought we might enjoy walking the streets and looking at the shops.
It was a neat town, and the shopping area was entertaining although crowded. We bought the biggest sembei I’ve ever seen, and we had a great lunch at a local restaurant.
Besides the historic shopping area, Takayama is also famous for it’s huge floats that get paraded around town during the autumn festivals. The real floats are kept in storage all year, but a local millionaire created a huge museum with replicas of all the floats for tourists to enjoy all year long.
The museum is actually a hollowed out mountain, which was pretty neat. The floats themselves are awesome. They are HUGE and each one has a marionette scene at the top. Every few minutes a different float puts on a show complete with music. The replica floats use anamatronics, the authentic floats have people inside who control the puppets.
I would love to see the actual festival.