Takayama and Shirakawago One Day Tour

 

This is our fourth time in Japan in three years. Although we usually start in Tokyo, we have tried to do different things each time. Now that we are moving beyond the big tourist destinations, I will try to use this food blog as a travel blog too so that we can revisit itineraries and remember what to come back to and/or what was a pleasant "been there/done that" destination.  I will use the label travel to differentiate this from our recipes.

Travel Details:

• Booking Company: Viator
• Booking Details: 
• Name: Nagoya Shirakawa go Village and Takayama One Day Tour
• Meeting Location: near Nagoya Station
• Date: December 13, 2025, Saturday
• Tour Guide: English/Mandarin speaking tour led by Amy
• Cost: $210 USD for 2 people, air conditioned bus, no lunch provided (price includes the extra $30 to go to the Ogamachi Castle Observation Deck (center photo is from the "deck") that overlooks Shirakawa go

Itinerary:

• Leave from Nagoya to Takayama (about 2 hours with a rest stop)
• Takayama - go to the Hida - Takayama Miyagawa Morning Market first (top left and top right photo), then spend time eat crawling and buying omiyage (about 60 minutes)
• Takayama to Shirakawa Go (about 2 hours)
• Ogamachi Castle Observation Deck - to take pictures of the village
• Shirakawa go Village (about 40 minutes)
• Return to Nagoya (about 10 and a half hours)

Takayama

Takayama, in the Gifu prefecture, is known for its Hida beef. With cattle, they also have very good milk. Takayama has a little morning market, the Miyagawa Morning Market that closes at 11:00. The bus ride is about 2 hours, so we arrived at 10:30 and took Amy's advice to go straight to the market. It is basically a side street with tents along the river and stores on the right. 

Ken (Big Spazz) brought back some pickles before the vendors closed, but the morning market is mostly fresh fruits and vegetables. It is not as interesting for tourists who are in the middle of our trip like us. What is interesting are the stores on the right side of the morning market corridor.  We picked up some sarubobo dolls and then ate several versions of Hida beef on skewers as well as in sushi form (raw, thinly sliced meat on rice - quickly torched and served with ikura (salmon roe) or on a homemade rice cracker.

Ken really liked the first skewers near the market as they were tender and well seasoned. He found the other skewer closer to the old town to be a bit tough and chewy. I loved the beef sushi with ikura as I love a little funky salt explosion from the ikura, and I love my meat on the rare side. A little bit of fresh wasabi on the nigiri and it was a perfect bite. Big Spazz and I have a motto to follow a line. The best beef skewer had a line but as we were leaving, there was also a line for an obachan behind an open cooler selling small glass bottles of milk. I got the milk and I almost cried. This is the glass bottle milk of my childhood at a Japanese elementary school in Wakayama. It was, as I told my mother, hisashiburi (nostalgic). What a lovely way to leave the market. 

Takayama is known for its beef but also for its sarubobo omamori dolls. Sarubobo basically means monkey baby.  They are faceless charms meant to bring good luck. The reason they are faceless is so that the owner can imbue it with their own hopes. They were traditionally made by grandmothers in the Hida area and were traditionally red for general luck, family happiness and good health. Over the years, there are other colors for specific reasons, but we went with the traditional red for our grandbabies. 

Besides the morning market and sarubobo dolls, Takayama has an "old town" portion of well preserved narrow lanes with traditional Edo period merchant houses. Here you can visit sake breweries, find artisans selling their wares and try more local foods (like more beef skewers). 

Shirakawa go Village

Back on the bus, it was another long drive to Shirakawa. I was so glad that as we went higher into the mountains.  The snow was more prevalent along the sides of the road and on the pine trees as I really wanted to see Shirakawa go in the snow. Shirakawa go is a UNESCO World Heritage site for its gassho-zukuri farmhouses. Gassho is like prayer hands, so the roofs are steepled like prayer hands and they are made with thick grass. Thanks to being named a UNESCO site, this small village has the tourist money now to upkeep the grass roofs every 20 years rather than every 30 years. It is not a problem in winter, but during the summer, bugs can start chipping away at the roof materials, especially since they do not use fire anymore in this modern age. The smoke from the open fire did help to keep the insects away, but there is always both good and bad with "progress." 

The first stop before going across the rope bridge and river is the Ogimachi Castle observation deck. There is no castle, but this was once the sight of the castle for the area. Instead, it is an overlook where tourists can take pictures of the village from above. The village offers a photo service that we were encouraged to go to. We bought the larger print and they provide a QR code so that you can download it. We see this kind of service all over the place and do not usually order the print, but the proceeds go to support the village, so we got it. 

We were able to wander the village, go into the Wada house to see the roof from the inside, and buy some warm dango. The snow was in the fields and it was a cold 30 something, but the sun was out and despite the many buses of people in the village, there were ways to enjoy the quiet of winter. 

This is a tour worth the $200 per couple. The bus was comfortable, Amy was very good at keeping all of the participants on time and she gave great tips for how to use our short time in the two places. If we come back, we would spend a day in Takayama so that we can explore more of the stores and sake breweries, but Shirakawa go is more of a visit with a tour.