Folk Life in Takayama

Robby is still sick & I wake up with 8 bug bites on my right shoulder. Mosquitos? I don’t know. I search all over our little room but can not find any plump & satisfied buggers hanging out on the walls. Thinking of little bugs feasting on one shoulder gives me the chills.

The owner of Minshuku Kuwatani-ya asks for us to change rooms, so by late morning we settle into a room more than twice as large as our last! Plenty of room for Robby to let his suitcase explode. No, actually he is much neater than I am in this enormous room.

It begins raining this morning, so we postpone our bike ride to the Hida Folk Village. Instead, we join Christine, a Singaporean math teach who is staying in our minshuku, on a walk through central Takayama. We walk through the Miyagawa Morning Market, where shopkeepers set up booths along the Miyagawa River. We see the monkey-baby figurine everywhere. Some sell wooden crafts, like pendants, earrings, & hair clips. Others sell fabric dyed especially in this region. The most prevalent type is dark blue with white patterns (flowers, geometric shapes, etc.). When my sister and I traveled to Guilin, China, in 1999, we saw the exact same fabrics. Christine says that this style is common in the rural areas of Japan. How uncanny that these patterns are the same as the ones in rural China.

Through intermittent shower storms that begin & end in a breath, we walk through the oldest neighborhood of Takayama, where the old houses - with their dark wood, cobblestone streets, & narrow stone canals (gutters, actually) - remain intact. Every shop sells souvenirs. We once complained that we couldn’t find any souvenir shops in Tokyo & Kyoto. Now we find them everywhere in this rural, mountainous town.

We have lunch at an expensive, mediocre restaurant, Suzuya, that serves Hida beef. Christine received the recommendation from the tourist information office. Robby is reluctant to stay, but I insist, afraid of appearing too frugal. I should have followed Robby’s lead. We should have left. We pay about $18 for a small meal that consists of local vegetables & Hida beef cubes cooking on top of a large leaf that sits on top of ceramic container with a flame in it. Novel, sure, but not worth the money we pay.

Restaurants can be a hit or miss. Robby thinks we should be careful of hostesses who speak crisp English. We should also watch out for fancy or trendy decor. We need to stick to our goal of eating at mom-&-pop restaurants.

Disheartened, Robby & I return to the minshuku for a nap. Then we meet up with Christine again for a walk through the northeast part of the town. We climb a residential neighborhood to look over Takayama with its mountains in the background. Robby isn’t impressed by the view, for what compares to the Alps, he asks. Sure, I respond, but consider that everything is smaller in Japan, even the mountains. Christine tells us about her life as a teacher in Singapore, which I find is much more difficult than the life of an American teacher. She works from 8am to 7pm, & teachers do not receive a lunch break unless their schedule allows for one. Students finish class at 3pm but all stay at school for enrichment programs - not study hall, but classes of choice that also assign homework. Teachers are required to stay at enrichment programs until 7pm, then they go home to “mark”. This is quite different than American schools, where some teachers bolt out of their classroom in front of their students in order to maneuver their car out of the teachers’ parking lot by 3:05pm.

Christine returns to the minshuku for a home-cooked meal, while we find a small diner run by a woman & her daughter. The diner is smaller than the size of our new room in the minshuku, & the walls are covered with framed calligraphy & pressed patterns of wood & flowers. Modern jazz streams through the speakers, & we order hot sandwiches & Hida beef with rice. With a cup of bitter green tea pudding that keeps Robby awake all night, our decent dinner costs about 2300 yen. Not bad.

Takayama is cold in the evenings, and I haven’t brought a pair of jeans, so we forgo a night stroll & return to our minshuku. Robby gets lost in his Nintendo DS game Advanced Wars: Dual Strike. I surf the T.V. channels & find the British television show MI:5. Then I commit to a Japanese-Chinese movie about four couples who wander through Shanghai all night. The main character is a female taxi driver who can’t shake a Japanese visitor who has experienced temporary memory loss. He follows her through the night, & though they can’t communicate, he learns about her unrequited love for the taxi company’s mechanic. It all sounds tame, but at one point Robby looks up to find my sleeves wet & my nose dripping. Some Chinese movies are so good at conveying longing. Robby laughs at me for being such a sap.