The Woodyard of Japan

A blissful few days of peace and quiet, walking, good food and air and even better conversations, I am happy to have had a glimpse of a Japan that many will never experience.

In mid-February I visited Musee, a wonderful family run manufacturing company specialising in small household appliances based in Nakatsugawa, Gifu. Two hours from Tokyo and one and a half from Nagoya, Gifu is in the centre of Japan and known for outstanding natural beauty and crafts of all kinds.

After the meeting, I was delighted to be taken to a nearby town called Magome on the Naka Sendo road. This central mountain route is an Edo era road connecting Tokyo to Kyoto and contains 69 staging posts (towns) along the way. These days it’s a popular tourist hiking route and many of the towns are restored to their original state – Magome being one of them.

Fuelled on a simple lunch of Mitarashi Dango (skewered rice dumplings smothered in a sweet miso sauce), these are sooo good … we walked to the town’s highest point and were met with a view of the stunning Kiso Valley landscape and unbelievably fresh mountain air with just a hint of cedar. I am not sure what we are breathing in London, but it’s definitely not this.

Bouyed by this experience a few days later I caught the Wide View Hida Express bound for Hida-Takayama from Nagoya. As the name Wide View implies this train is designed for sight seeing and is based on those glorious Swiss and Italian sight seeing trains of the 1950-60’s. At this time of year there were only a few other passengers most of whom, retired folks, were stopping off at the many Onsen (Hot Spring) resorts along the way.

As is the norm in Japan, my fellow passengers had bought eki-ben (eki – station, ben – bento) bento boxes to enjoy on the journey. And despite it being before 10am some were cracking open beer and sake to wash their breakfast down. In the UK, this would spell chaos, in Japan simply polite enjoyment of the moment. Curiously the train from Nagoya reverses to the first station before heading forward on a snow-covered journey through the beautiful valleys and fast flowing rivers of Gifu and onto the Japanese Alps. It’s stunning.

Befitting of information rich Japan, during the two-hour steady incline into the mountains there are informational announcements about the landscape, the rivers you are crossing and the historic significance of those and at the same time the carriage display highlights the trains battery usage, when kinetic energy is being stored and where the energy is being distributed.  

On arrival at Hida-Takayama the first thing I noticed was the absolute peace and quiet, relatively few tourists (this being February) and as in Magome, incredible fresh air.

Separated from the station area by the fast-flowing Miyagawa river, the centre consists of a small and well-preserved tourist area with shop-houses finished in blackened wood designed to showcase local crafts and food. Backing onto either side of the river are low-level buildings with the usual mixture of cafes, galleries, shops and public services, catering for the local community and tourists. While along the river, footpaths and bridges allow you to take in the view of the town and surrounding mountains and forests.

Hida-Takayama is actually two towns. Takayama, where I visited and nearby Hida. There is another town in Japan called Takayama so in order to differentiate they combined the two names. But this Takayama is well known as the woodyard of Japan, home of famous furniture manufacturers, countless workshops and craftspeople covering a bewildering range of wood related skills from house building to small object carving and is one of the reasons I wanted to visit. You don’t need to visit one of the many ‘wood museums’ to see this, it’s in the construction of buildings old and new, the street furniture and in every café, restaurant and hotel interior you encounter.

I stayed at the amusingly named (if you are an American teenager) Hotel Wood, a new hotel which is top to bottom a celebration of local craftspeople, from the simple blackened exterior to the red gridded lounge ceiling and furniture from the collection of the most famous local manufacturer Hida Sangyo. The simple and elegant Japanese style rooms are an aesthete’s dream, as was the view of houses and hills behind my sliding screen window.

While waiting for the complimentary evening drink (usually locally sourced beer, sake) and otsumame (snacks) I started to talk to a Japanese Lady – Ayako-san, who it turned out had lived just outside London for many years. My first English conversation for many weeks it was lovely to pass time with an honorary Brit. We chatted about her transition back to her home land after many years overseas (having done this myself I know its not always smooth) and her passion for knitting and goal to introduce western style knitting patterns to Japan which apparently does not use the same format – you really do learn something everyday.

She also explained to me that the wall in the hotel lobby / lounge had been created by a well known local artisan in the art of Mizugone (finely sieved earth, fine sand and fine straw fibres) which requires incredible skill to execute correctly and is used in high end tea houses etc. In the photograph above it is rendered in yellow ochre and is beautiful. For me these interactions are the best thing about travel, making me feel connected to place, having a glimpse into somebodies life and giving me the extra energy to keep going !

After breakfast and conversations in the wonderfully nostalgic Cafe Don I spent my first morning wandering around local markets and nodding hello to the many owners of Shiba Inu (dogs) who gather to catch up with the local news and gossip.

With boots and camera at the ready, I followed the pilgrim route high into the hills behind the town, towards and past the snow-covered houses and guest houses, on to the hidden temples and tea houses and towards the valleys beyond. Icy, steep and completely on my own, as peaceful as it was, I suddenly realised that nobody would know (at least for a few days) if I had slipped, fallen or just gone AWOL. Always sobering for a solo traveller in a mountainous area and a prompt to enjoy the moment while slowly returning to ground level before sampling some local sake and taking a dip in the Hotel Onsen.

As I mentioned Hida-Takayama is incredibly picturesque at this time of year especially from a height where you can see roof after multi-coloured roof piled on top of each other alongside evidence of domesticity in the form of washing lines and gardens and abandoned toys. But it is easy to imagine how treacherous and tough it could be during a bad winter. Evidence of this can be seen in the hardened snow piles on every street corner, deep eaves on buildings and the proliferation of 4×4 vehicles, including my favourite Suzuki Jimny, necessary to navigate the steep roads and snow in this region.  

The beauty of rural Japan is often spoken of in romantic terms by dwellers of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. It’s hard to imagine what that feels like as wherever you go in Japan there always seems to be too many people by UK standards. Even in this area it’s hard to be alone for very long, but as sad as I was to leave for my next stop, for those blissful few days of peace and quiet, walking, good food and air and even better conversations, I am happy to have had a glimpse of a Japan that many will never experience.