We left the Hotel in Takayama after the free breakfast? Of cold omelette
and sausages and noodles and perhaps fried bamboo shoot with asparagus and the
only thing that was warm were the French fries, wow what a breakfast. Jennifer had
toast and jam.
We stayed of the Expressways as we were planning a trip over the mountains
on the smaller roads only to find that several of them were closed either due
to snow or perhaps landslides, who knows but anyway we had to turn round on two
occasions and head back to the main roads.
It was a little misty this morning what with the warm midday
temperature of 22 C and down to 2 Degrees Cent at night which left and mist
over the hills many of which were covered in snow.
The traffic was extremely light on all the roads we went on and todays
journey was only going to be around 65 miles from Takayama if going direct but
as mentioned we could not go through the foothills.we also saw a large number of very large houses which you don't
normally see.
normally see.
We stopped for lunch of sandwiches which we had purchase d earlier
(just in case we could not get anything sensible on the roads) and had our food
under the blossoming cherry trees which was nice. We followed the main road in
to Toyama and expected tons of traffic but no, we found the Hotel very easily
and checked in then went for a walk to the station to find out about local trains.
Again we were bemused by the lack of people, the small restaurants being
closed!! Not like Tokyo or Kyoto where most places stay open all the hours that
are available to make money.
We are planning a train ride down the coast tomorrow as against
driving where we are both engaged in driving and navigating and hope the
weather will continue to stay fine. We walked back down alongside the river
with some cherry blossom still out but some trees had passed their prime, a
little bit like the author of this blog.
We fancied Tempura tonight (English fried fish) and the Hotel gave us an address after we had tried two nearby restaurants which looked
terribly expensive but did not have any menus with photos to enable us to
understand what we are ordering. We found this little place and when we said
Tempura in several different ways it became clear that they did not do Tempura
but could make some great Yakitori, meat's on a stick.
So two large beers later and an attempt by the chef to make Tempura
and some yakitori together with a long discussion on Manchester United and
Chelsea, JT, Lamp’s, Oscar etc we enjoyed our evening.