Oishii! – Japan Day 07
Today would mark our second day at Takayama, and thankfully the break in the extremely cold weather prominent during this time of year has continued. We were wide awake and searching for the market in town. Through our prior research, we knew that there were two markets, and we were eager to go to both. However, the market nearer to the city square was still not ready, so we decided to head to the one closer to the canal.
Upon reaching the market, we were greeted by stores lining both sides of the street selling all sorts of merchandise, food and other goodies. Here we found one of the stores that SF just had to stop at, a shop that sold fresh hot coffee. In this weather, who could resist?
Further along, we also found some taiyaki that SF and Ashley enjoyed, as well as took a trip down the canal for some photos. We also found Hida apples, which, to our surprise, were really delicious. Even I enjoyed them, and I hate apples.
Of course, upon seeing Hida Beef croquettes, I could not resist myself. I also had some Hida Beef meatballs and some Hida Cow Milk? This town is obsessed with their produce, and I don’t blame them. All of it was amazingly delicious.
For our lunch and final meal in Takayama, we headed to
Ajikura Tengoku, one of the more famous places to have some Hida Beef Yakiniku, and boy were we not disappointed.
On the menu were prices for set menus and platters for different cuts of beef. While we obviously picked one of the most premium cuts of Hida Beef, we also ventured to try some of the Beef Tongue. When the food arrived, we wisely decided to go from cheapest to most expensive cuts. When it was time to try out the premium sirloin, oh boy did it sure impressed. The meat seemed to simply melt in your mouth and simply exploded with flavour. This was an impossible level of deliciousness that I didn’t know existed before this day. From now on I decided that any trip to Japan would not be complete without a trip to Takayama. Simply an amazing place with amazing food and pride in their produce.
And with that, it was time again to take the train to Nagoya. This was a shorter trip than from Osaka to Takayama, but it felt so sad to leave. It really was an amazing experience that we had here.
Reaching in cold Nagoya, we decided to immediately check into our hotel, Richmond hotel, which was about a 15 minute walk away from the train station. The train station was actually undergoing some heavy construction at the moment, which caused some of the shops that I wanted to visit to be closed (probably to the delight of everyone else). The hotel was extremely modern and had some interesting features, such as letting you know when the washing machines were empty, so you did not need to stay in the laundry room to wait for people to collect their clothes. It was pretty amazing, and at the same time quintessentially Japanese.
Before heading to dinner, we decided to stop by one of the other bowling alleys to see what they had in store. Taking the nearby train, we headed to Hoshigaoka BOWL, where although we were not able to buy anything, the pro-shop there directed us to another shop that might have what we wanted.
Afterwards, we headed to dinner. We headed to Maruya Honten, where they served Unagi Don of both Nagoya and Tokyo style. However, we decided that all of us prefered the sweeter, Tokyo style over the less vibrant and intense Nagoya style. Overall, although the unagi was nice, it was not as enjoyable as we perhaps expected, from a place that was hyped up as much as this.
