Today I got up somewhat early and hit the hotel restaruant for my free breakfast. I went for the japanese option and had a huge meal with a large piece of white fish, a couple of cubes of the sweet scambled egg you get in japan, rice, several kinds of pickles and vegetables, miso cooked on a hoba leaf (a local specialty), miso soup, what appeared to be some sort of fish ovary, and a cold lightly poached egg. With the exception of the egg and fish ovary everything was really good, epecially the hoba miso.
After breakfast I spent a bunch of time exploring the town. There is a big festival twice a year where they parade these ancient floats through the town. You can view a number of these huge intricate floats in a couple of museums. There are also a number of temples and shrines but by now I’m just about templed-n-shrined out. The the town is also know for its woodworking and lacquerware so there were some a number of shops showing this off. The highlight of this for me was some of the nice wood furniture shops they had showing off very impressive pieces.
I also swung by the two daily morning markets. People come from all around to sell vegetables, pickles, and various trinkets to locals and tourists alike. There are little stands where for a paltry 60 or 70 yen you can get 5 small rice balls roasted on a skewer. The balls have a salty, slightly soy flavor to them and weren’t bad.
After spending a number of hours in town I make the short trek down the road to Hida Folk Village, a small museum of sorts nestled on the side of the hill where they have collected a number of examples traditional architecture used in the mountains. They have actually moved a number of 100-400 year old buildings to the site where they maintain them in a beautiful park like setting. You are free to wander about inside the buildings where they have added glass showcases where they display some of the traditional tools and artifacts used by villagers. They also build fires occasionally in the fireplace to help combat the humidity to preserve the structures, leaving them with a wonderful wood smoke aroma as you wander around.
I headed back to town for a late late lunch and found a little place with what looked like a traditional sansai ryori set meal. I had more of the hoba cooked miso, some soft tofu, a number of local vegetables stewed in various ways, konnyaku in a very sweet sauce, a tuna fish like dish that had big pieces of what was seemed like a very mild onion, more local pickles, rice, and miso soup. The miso soup they do around here is different, they use a lot more onion, cabbage, and mushrooms in it making it a bit heartier.