Chik's Crib

06 July 2025

Toyama and the Alpine Trail: Osaka in Spring (Part 4)

Travel July 06, 2025 0

Arashiyama Coast

After Takayama, the coastal towns of Toyama Bay was our next stop on our way to Mount Tate. We took a train ride to the old fishing town of Himi. As we disembarked from the train, we looked around for the fishery, which was pretty easy to spot even from a distance: you just look for the cluster of birds circling over the area. There was just one thing I know about Toyama, which was to try the firefly squids. That sounded like as good a travel tip as any I've had.

The seaside was beautiful, and the walk across town was pleasant. But when we arrived at Himi Banya-gai for a late lunch, it was perhaps the most touristy spot in town. It’s purportedly a market selling sashimi fresh from the fishery, but we should have been tipped off by the parking bays for coach buses and the vast number of souvenirs shops. In hindsight, we should have just turned around and go somewhere else for lunch.

Was the sashimi truly fresher because it was next to a fishery? Doubtful, since seafood has to be flash-frozen and kept at a particular temperature for at least 15 hours before it’s safe to be eaten as sashimi. The 15 hours of downtime can cover quite a bit of ground - and countries - with modern transportation. We paid tourist prices for our food, and ate firefly squids off styrofoam trays at a fishmonger store while trying to ignore the thawed whole fish lying on ice beds next to us. The squid beaks were also not removed before the squids were served to us. We learnt the difference afterwards, when we ate firefly squids in a proper sushi restaurant back in Toyama City. My hope was that our sashimi had been at least treated correctly with at least 15 hours of freezing, and that they weren’t just served straight from the sea.

Firefly squid and halfbeak sashimi

Do I sound grouchy? Toyama gets better, I promise! Birdwatchers would be charmed by the birds that clustered around the fishery. Here's a flock of eagles on the beach that we spent too much time stalking. I'd never seen them in a flock like this before.

We spent the rest of the day a few stations down in Amarashiya Coast. The coastal train, coloured in a pleasing saturated orange, was perfectly lit by the orange sun. We caught a beautiful sunset by the beach, and watched the colours of the sky deepened into purple.

We reached Toyama city in time for dinner, and we took the tram downtown to downtown for our first proper meal in Toyama Bay. Ebizushi is a local sushi restaurant, very local, and it was a wonderful experience. We again were the only tourists in the house, but they had an English menu.

We had more firefly squids, these ones properly-prepared with the removal of their hard beaks (yeah okay I’ll stop being bitter now). Thick-cut yellowtail and sweet prawns are also some of the region’s other delicacies.

Can I also just point out that Toyama is the most tourist-friendly city so far on our trip? As we checked into the hotel, the concierge passed us two sets of city map and a few stubs of complimentary tram tickets to make our way around the city, which we used to get to the restaurant. How great was that!

There's more to Toyama than uninspiring fish markets (Okay, that was the last dig, I promise.) The next day, we visited Unazuki Onsen, an onsen town located at the base of the alps. Part of the journey was made via the shinkansen, which was an absolute engineering marvel. We travelled 35km in just 12 minutes, or a whopping average speed of 175km/hr. Despite the high speed, the ride was smooth and we barely felt the acceleration and deceleration. The shift in speed had been so gentle, a fellow passenger's water bottle sitting on his fold-out tray didn’t budge at all throughout the entire ride.

We stopped for a spot of breakfast at ふくる, a cutesy bakery selling freshly baked baumkuchen next to Shin-Kurobe Station. It’s a circular layered cake originating from Germany, baked by “painting” each cake layer individually on a rotating spit as the cake cooks in the oven. It’s incredibly labour intensive, and while I’ve read that it is not all that common to be found in Germany anymore, the craft was picked up in Japan and became quite popular here.

Hot spring water is in such abundance in this town, the water fountain at Unazuki Onsen Station pumps spring water - steaming in the cool air - through the fountain.

We tried the locally-famous Alpen cheesecake (a pyramid-shaped cheesecake that melts within 10 minutes!), then took the trolley tram ride through the Kurobe Gorge.

The tram brought us through the surrounding landscape of rivers and mountains. The tramlines that go deeper into the mountains were closed since the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, so until they reopen, the furthest that we could go was to the Kurobe Dam.

Afterwards, you can walk through the area and visit the Kurobe Dam. There's a tram schedule so you'll roughly know when each tram passes through the tracks, and if you're lucky enough to come to the area just as they rumble past (we had to sprint at one point to get to a good spot when we heard them coming), the orange coloured trains makes for a pretty cute shoot.

We stopped by Oritate Station for a late lunch at Unazuki Beer Hall. It’s a small charming quiet little town nested in the valleys, with small plots of farmlands under the alps. We arrived too late for restaurant service, but we could have our food in take-out containers and were welcomed to eat it on the second floor lounge overlooking the brewery, though we took advantage of the nice evening to sit outdoors in the cool spring air.

Lunch was hearty and flavourful. The beer curry rice went well with the fried onion rings and prawn croquettes. We ordered a small serving of each of their draughts, which were excellent. (The beers weren’t hoppy, and were done in a lighter Japanese style, but I like my beer that way). We finished off with a serving of their beer soft serve ice cream, which was a perfect way to end off our sojourn in Oritate.

Oops. We realised only after lunch that our round-trip ticket (taking us from Shin-Kurobe Station to Unazuki Station) didn't let us exit at other stations along the way, so getting off at Oritate for lunch was technically not permitted. But the train attendants were chill, and we managed to return back to Shin-Kurobe Station with our smiles, our slightly-hapless expressions and with no small amount of the general courtesy of the Japanese.

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The next day was the main attraction in Toyama: crossing the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route. There are several destinations to explore when going through the mountains; in the summer and autumn, there were plenty of trails. In spring, the main attraction would be the towering snow walls of the alpine. We woke at 4am to arrange for baggage forwarding for our luggage, and afterwards, took an early train out to Tateyama. From there, we took the transport through the mountains to Bijodaira and then Midagahara.

The reason why there weren’t any trails in spring, as we learnt as we arrived, was because the trails were all under six feet of snow.

We stayed for a night in the mountains in Midagahara, and I would recommend anybody to stay a night too. We changed into their waterproof boots, strapped in snow shoes and walked out on the grounds. Some mountains, draped in black and shades of greys, and with rivets of snow down the sides, looked exactly like calligraphy paintings. Being up in the mountains with the whole afternoon free to wander around the snowy landscape was one of the most blissful part of our trip.

The snowfall had been so heavy over the winter, as we walked along the back of the hotel, what I thought to be short shrubs were in fact treetops. Snow had blanketed the entire ground and the forests into a flat canvass, and we could walk as far as we wanted to. It wasn’t the trails that we signed up for, but it was an absolutely gorgeous stay.

I’m glad that I brought the waterproof skiing attire that I wore in Boston. It was needed for snow, as were woollen socks, gloves, and water-resistant hiking boots. Bring your thickest, waterproof clothes!

In hindsight though, because no trails are open in spring and we were staying the night, we didn’t need to take an early train from Toyama. (We were at Dentetsu Toyama Station at 5am to arrange for baggage forwarding and to board our train for the alpine mountains). We probably could have slept in for the morning and then go for an early lunch in the city before coming up the mountains. I still would have stayed for the night; the entire journey through the alpines was a crowded one, but on that leisurely afternoon, as the two of us walked around the wintry mountainside with nowhere to be and nothing else to do, it felt like pure joy. We walked for hours until we couldn’t feel our noses, returned to our resort for tea and hot chocolate until we warmed up, then headed back out again to watch the sunset.

When we were thoroughly chilled by the end of the day, we visited the resort’s hot onsen, and then went for dinner. I was a bit skeptical of the dinner that was included as part of our stay in Midagahara Hotel, because the area, high up in the mountains, wasn’t particularly accessible. In fact, I packed snacks, beer and sake in our overnight bag.

But like into many things, Japan aim to surpass all expectations. Not only was the multi-course meal incredible, there were a huge selection of drinks - beer, sake and spirits - all of which were free flow. I spotted the same exact sake that I brought up, actually.

You can help yourself to the pours, and there was also a staff there to recommend and mix drinks for you if you like. We chatted at the sake station for a bit. He beamed at my sake knowledge but also asked where I learnt to pronounce the terms from. My pronunciation must’ve been horrendous. (I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I learnt sake from a podcast hosted by two Americans; but I can't blame them for my off-tenor pronunciation of every word. I was never great with languages✌🏻.)

It snowed heavily that night, a rare occurrence in April, but there we go. The hotel’s star gazing event was cancelled on account of the poor weather, and the heavy snow even in the next morning, scuttled our plans for photography. Still, we were delighted with the snow in the way that only people from tropical countries get. We had breakfast and then walked around the freshly powdered ground.

Breakfast was pretty good, and we ate way too much of the brined firefly squids. I also found a most delightful treat labelled Salted Kelp. It has a firm gummy consistency, and then the salt flavour slowly builds up before releasing a burst of kelp flavours at the end.

The fresh snow persisted as we continued up to Murodo, with the occasional pellet-sized hail. It soon turned into a snowstorm up there: the temperature plunged to -7C, the ski slopes and the snow wall closed, and the signs warning of ‘hypothermia within 30 minutes’ came up.

True to the warnings, the snow and cold became too much to handle after more than a few minutes walk. Luckily, the transportation system was still operating. As we reached Kurobe Dam, the snow lessened just enough for photography.

It was a gorgeous stay, and the trip was beautiful even with a snowstorm.

Recent Japan Travels:

Osaka in Spring 2025: Osaka City (Part 1)

Osaka in Spring 2025: Kyoto and Uji (Part 2)

Osaka in Spring 2025: Hida-Takayama and Shirakawa-Go (Part 3)

Osaka in Spring 2025: Toyama and the Alpine Trail (Part 4)

Osaka in Spring 2025: Matsumoto, Nagano: (Part 5)

29 June 2025

Hida-Takayama and Shirakawa-Go: Osaka in Spring (Part 3)

Travel June 29, 2025 0

The morning train to Takayama yielded the most scenic sights: hilltops cresting along the countryside, with streams of the clearest blue water running parallel to the train. And the best of all, even as most of Japan’s cherry blossom trees had shed, the cooler climate of Takayama meant that there were still a lot in bloom here.

If I could pinpoint my most memorable stop of our trip, it would be Takayama. This small scenic town is away from the hustle and bustle of city life (hello Kyoto and Osaka), and that's the charm. After experiencing the metropolitan life of Osaka and Kyoto, it was immensely pleasurable to once again have the entire sidewalk to yourself.

The Nakabashi bridge

As we left Osaka and Kyoto for the mountainous towns, I had expected that the rural cuisine to be less refined. But nothing could be further away from the truth. When you’re in a region of Japan that specialises in producing both high-end beef and excellent sake, every meal is a delight. Osaka, the food capital of Japan, ain’t got nothing on Takayama.

At the old town in Sanmachi district, we had our first bite of the day: top-quality beef sushi. There are many beef specialty sushi stores to choose from, we got ours from Hida Kotte Ushi, which occupies a large historical building and has a beautiful courtyard to enjoy your sushi in. We each had a breathtakingly beautiful beef sushi topped with a quail egg yolk. There's no wastage involved in this restaurant: the sushi were served on large rice crackers instead of plates. The setup isn't meant for customers to eat a whole meal, and it's a revolving door of customers queuing up for a trio of sushi, eating the sushi with both hands, and then departing.

We walked past Senbeidou, where the shop-owner was grilling rice crackers over charcoal right at the storefront. These snacks make great souvenirs, and even as I write this a month after we visited Takayama, the crackers are still crispy and fresh, and very popular with everybody in my household. (Yes, we bought enough to last a month and beyond :0)

Beware of the red chilli pepper flake cracker. It is intensely spicy, and the burn only builds up further with time. The very first bite blew me away. I nibbled at it about half a cracker before calling it quits.

We sped walked to the nearby always-a-queue Takayama Pudding-Tei for some soft serve ice cream to soothe the chili burn. These come in picturesque cones, and the flavour was surprisingly well-developed with undertones of caramel. We also got some pudding since we were already in the store. It’s delicious - rich, eggy (but not too eggy!) and perfectly perfectly smooth.

Another noteworthy dessert shop is Iwaki, slinging trays of soft jiggly warabi-mochi from its humble storefront. It opens by 9, and is the perfect mid-morning snack. Each portion is actually an entire tray. It looks like quite a lot, and feels hefty too, but ... I forget where I'm headed with this. Anyway, any lingering doubts that two of us could finish an entire tray disappeared midway through, as we demolished it in one sitting. It was that good.

Takayama town contains eight (8!) breweries, and all of them within walking distances of the station/hotel. Isn't it just wonderful? We didn't visit all of them in our 2 nights' stay (would it have been concerning if we had?), but we visited 3 across our 3 days here. I found my favourite sakes at Harada Brewery. Two in particular were intensely fruity and floral, and so very drinkable. Because we were going through a few other towns, including up the Japanese Alps, I weren’t looking to lug any bottles along with me. But I couldn’t help myself after tasting the sake at Harada. I ended up buying a bottle of Sansha Jummai Ginjo Hanakobo Dukuri, a sake with intense lively flavours of pear and stone fruits. I got the larger size of 1.8L, instead of the regular 720ml. (What? The 720ml was 1815 yen, and the 1800ml bottle was 3070 yen. It makes so much sense). A regular-sized bottle of their seasonal Sakura also made its way into my shopping bag.

In sake brewing, there's a particular method called Hana Kobo 「花酵母」, which involves cultivating yeast from flowers and using those yeast to make sake. It's as labour-intensive as it sounds, but the yeast gives intense fruity and floral flavours to the sake. It's a style that I've heard of but never had a chance to try before today. The only reason I found out was because the Japanese script for flowers “花” turned out to be the same as its Chinese counterpart, which I saw on the bottles. I asked the clerk who confirmed that they were both Hana Kobo. No wonder both of these sakes tasted like fruit bombs. I uncovered my favourite style of sake.

On a side note, I was so excited to buy both that I didn’t scrutinise the labels fully until we left the store, where I took a closer look and developed a sinking feeling that the Japanese characters “生酒”on the seasonal Sakura meant that it was unpasteurised sake (namazake). I had to go back to the store, and unfortunately, I was right. Namazake required refrigeration as much as possible, so not only were we lugging these bottles up the mountain, we also had to ensure the Sakura bottle remained chilled throughout the entire trip. We rushed to get it from one hotel fridge to the next for the next week. But it was well worth it.

Another sake product on my Osaka wishlist was something called Doburoku. Doburoku is a rare rustic sake where the sake is served unfiltered, and you drink the sake mash together with the sake liquid. The resulting drink contains chunks of fermented rice, and is thick, creamy and sweet. It’s illegal for most sake brewers to sell without a special permit. (I know because I asked a brewer in Mitsui Brewery back in Kyoto if we could try theirs and the answer was they couldn’t sell it legally.) Even within Japan, they’re rare to find (usually only drunk at certain religious festivals), have a short shelf life and must be kept refrigerated. We found a place here licensed to sell it: Onoya Brewery. It's a quaint little place selling not just sake, but other koji-fermented products like miso and soy sauce. But clearly, the star of the brewery was the doburoku. The other product that we enjoyed tremendously was their Shiro sake, which was similar to doburoku but made from glutinous rice. It’s not a style of sake that I’ve heard of, and apparently is even rarer than doburoku. (I only found one source online that talked about this). It was slightly sweeter than Doburoku and even easier to imbibe, and I love the prominent taste of glutinous rice in each sip. We drank these rare brews as much as we could while in Takayama, and luckily we did so, because no other places throughout our trip sold these products, and a sign at the shop explained that under no circumstances could these sake products be exported.

Sampling soy sauce from Onoya Brewery

The joy of having world-class beef and sake located in one small town was compounded when I found out our hotel room at Residence Hotel Takayama Station came with a kitchen. Say wha-? This sort of hotel room was a first for me. Each ‘room’ of the hotel was a service apartment, with a washing machine/tumbler dryer combination, a kitchen and a small table for meals. A door separates the bedroom from the kitchen, so the cooking aroma doesn’t get into the bedroom, which we deeply appreciated. The kitchen has a large fridge, kitchenware and basic seasoning. There were even brand-new sponges and dishcloths, for crying out loud.

These cows were so obese, they had started storing fats in their muscles instead of in their subcutaneous layer.

It was glorious to have a kitchen where we could cook - and eat - all the beef that we wanted. It changed our original plans to go to a Yakiniku restaurant, especially after we walked into a supermarket: every cut is top-grade when you’re in Hida-Takayama. We paired our steak with a sake recommendation from Funasaka Brewery, where after we finished our sake tasting, we spoke with a store assistant and asked her for a sake recommendation to go along with a well-marbled steak. We were directed to 甚五郎爽酒 Jingoro Soshu, a rather clean-tasting sake, with a firm “if you want the Japanese way of pairing sake with food, this is the sake”. Her recommendations left no doubt on which sake I should get. It wasn’t a style that I would have chosen for myself; it was restrained and didn’t leave much of an impression during the sampling. But true to form, its light profile cleared our palates between each bite of the rich steak. Leave it to the professionals to give a solid recommendation.

It didn’t take long to sear a steak and boil a quick soup on the side. We were in and out of the grocery store in 15 minutes, and dinner was ready at the table at the 42th minute of opening the front door. (We know, because the washing machine was still running a load that we started before we went to the brewery. We got a whole routine going on while in Takayama.) As far as having a meal goes, cooking, eating and cleaning up took us about as much time as going to a restaurant. Aside from a slight kerfuckle on what should go inside the soup (I maintain that tomato brings an additional layer of umami alongside tofu, kelp and mushrooms, while the wifey says it’s not traditional), it was immensely enjoyable to cook a quiet dinner together after several hectic days of restaurant and hotel hopping.

Menya Shirakawa Bettei

Of course, it's silly to cook all the time when travelling - sampling the local cuisine is a big part of my traveling, and we didn't come all the way here to eat our cooking! We also had terrific handmade soba at Ebisu, and ramen at Menya Shirakawa Bettei (麺屋しらかわ別邸). The regional style of ramen is shoyu-based, a remnant of the Chinese influences on the land.

The old town has two morning markets, Miyagawa and Jinya-mae. They’re located quite close by each other. Perhaps we were a bit early, because most of the stores hadn't fully set up when we were there. We walked both end-to-end within a couple of hours. We bought some souvenirs and had Mitarashi Dango, a regional variant of dango where the glutinous balls are savoury rather than sweet, for breakfast.

Ebisu

Miyagawa Ryokuchi Park

A couple of hours from Takayama is the Historic Village of Shirakawa-gō, a small valley town that can be explored in half a day. It is located higher in the mountains, and the air was even cooler. The Sakura trees were in full bloom. It was beautiful.

The land sees a lot of snowfall in winter, and the architecture reflects the challenges they face. The thatched roofs were thickly padded with straw for insulation, and steeply angled to reduce the accumulation of snow on the roofs.

We walked around for a few hours before going to lunch at Hiiragi. As the food came, I was first surprised, then very impressed. I didn’t expect the quality of food to be outstanding and at decent prices. It’s a family-run restaurant, and feels a little like eating at someone’s house. We removed our shoes as we entered and sat on cushions at a low-set table. The beef slices (from Hida naturally) were well-marinated with homemade miso, and grilled at the table over a small fire while insulated by a layer of Hoba (magnolia) leaf. The grilled Ayu fish was larger than expected, and each bite was incredibly tender and sent wisps of steam drifting from the perfectly cooked meat.

After lunch, we continued walking up the road and came to a small bridge across a beautifully raging river. It’s a little away from the beaten path, but well worth the extra 10-odd minutes walk.

It was 2 days well spent in this idyllic town. As a goodbye to Takayama, we grilled a steak for the last meal we had left - breakfast. I also got some milk for tasting (one carton from Hida-Takayama, the other carton from elsewhere as a control). The milk was appropriate for breakfast, the steak less so. It was most definitely too rich for breakfast - I guess I found an upper limit to the amount of top-quality beef one can have.