Despite being 5-6 hours away from Tokyo by train, Takayama is very popular with tourists (as far as I can tell just during one of their many “festivals”).
The train ride there is scenic enough but none of the other Takayama videos I’ve seen show just how obnoxious and fake this city is.
I walked 30km in one day there and reached the top of several mountains, spotting quite a few “recently” placed stones where they claimed a great castle once stood.
The golden “palace” seen at 2:14 is merely a hotel still under construction and that entire side of the town is currently constructing lots of other fake ancient shrines and temples which will surely be tourist attractions in years to come.
Maybe I’m being too harsh and just biased after a 6 hour stuffy train ride, my massive head-ache couldn’t prepare me for the 4th grade recorder sessions and costumed men dragging giant floats but then stopping every 30 minutes to have a smoke and check their iPhone.
On the second day of the “festival” some more men joined with smaller floats and walked around town shaking them at each local business, even the McDonalds and DVD/porn shops.
My favourite spot was at the top of one of the surrounding mountains which claimed to be an ancient castle but merely had a relatively recent cemetery and child’s playground overlooking the Alps and city (there was also a toilet, hotel and coffee shop near the top).
2 Comments
nice!
Oh my gosh, jealous! We were planning on going to this festival but we did not have time since it was quite the haul to get there from tokyo 🙁 . I am glad we got to live a little bit of it through your video though! What a beautiful festival. So impressive how each float is decorated with many lanterns that are lit by real fire and are moved manually by humans. Crazy~!