Takayama Bound (Vacation Continued)

We left Matsimoto and continued on our adventure. Just across the mountain range we entered Gifu Prefecture. Our destination; the city of Takayama and our camping ground at the Mibourou Damn. We spent the next few days exploring Takayama, a fabulous little city that has really preserved Japanese architecture and tradition.

The city was full of little streets with shops, restaurants and cafes.

Rivers and steams run from the mountains and through the city, there are tons of Japanese style bridges to cross.

We saw Takayama at night.

We also luckily and accidental found a festival

Back at our campsite we decided to see some natural sites as well. We took a drive up a very skinny mountain road to one of the National Parks in the area. We checked out the waterfall and a natural outdoor onsen (bathhouse). This was very refreshing and totally unique.

This is an outdoor mountain fed bath, the water is geothermally warmed

This was the view from the bath

We found a nice couple to take our picture.


We went back to Takayama to check out their famous morning markets, don't I look awake?

I have always been a bit uncomfortable with human powered transportation, but these rickshaws were awesome. We didn't ride but we did see some really cool female rickshaw drivers.


Our Soba noodle lunch with mountain vegetables. Soba, which is buckwheat noodles is Josh and I's favorite food so far in Japan.


Well, I will leave you with this picture of this awesome motorcycle. Stay tuned for part three of our vacation, it's amazing that we did so many things in nine days.