An afternoon in Takayama

First stop was the Yatai Kaikan Hall, a museum where the traditional floats are displayed. The floats were huge. We were also shown a video of a festival during which the floats were paraded through the streets of Takayama town.



In another building we were shown Toshogu Shrine (which we visited on Day 3) in miniature. Here we saw the model of Tokugawa's Shrine (the one with the white barricade) which we did not see on that visit as it was located another 200 steps up the hill.



Next stop was the Kusakabe Folkcraft Museum, the former home of a merchant, preserved as it was in its heyday. There were the usual rooms - bedrooms, reception room, kitchen, etc. The most used room was the get-together room with the huge hook hanging from the ceiling from which they tethered pots to boil or heat water over a floor pit for coal embers and around which they used to sit and chat and sip tea.



There was an interesting simple little pet house that I couldn't resist photographing. The stairs to the upper storey were something; narrow and the well-worn varnished wood steps should be carefully treaded by tourists. The saggy rope bannister wasn't much but afforded a good bit of confidence to the fraidy ones.



Upstairs was a place not for those who move about without watching every step. Parts of the floor were solid and one could stand to get one's bearings before taking the next step, but there were parts of the floor which weren't floor but just cane-mat covered voids straight down to the floor below. You could see through the cane-mats so it's nobody's fault but your own if you stepped on those parts and fell through!

The external elevations of the rear of these old houses were more interesting than their frontages, I thought, so there's a shot (above).

Then we inched down another similar type staircase and into the internal courtyard for green tea and rice biscuits on the house. Those old tables and stools must be tried out. This part of the house is akin to the Aussie yards with their famous patios and paved areas, and seemed just nicely ready for a barbie. That's Harry giving one of his interesting history lectures.

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