Historic Takayama

WE check into the nice Rickshaw Inn, a small friendly place out of Loney Planet, to Ben greeted by transplanted Brit Nick, a mine of local info. With only about 6 rooms, it is very personal service here. You can walk to everything in this quaint well preserved town, full of many temples and ancient well preserved merchant homes. Day tourists come here from bigger cities but we have the advantage of enjoying it when they have gone home. We find a lovely little friendly restaurant. 

Hida Beef and wonderful local veggies,  and exotic mushrooms

The big draw in this agricultural area is the fresh mountain array of vegetables and the famed Hida marveled beef. The latter pretty expensive but on all the menus. They even eat it on sushi. Fatty and rich, it is melt in the mouth but hell on the arteries in any quantity I am sure.

  Suzuka is run by a friendly staff especially the affable Teppei who takes great photos of all the customers us included! We order the local specialty,individual ceramic stoves fueled by coals. On the grill is a huge mulberry leaf with sweet miso and a pile of mixed veggies on top , including lots of interesting mushrooms. Ater a few minutes you store and eat. The other dish is a bowl of stock with a pile of veggies and a slice or two of pork on top. You wait for the stock to boil then stir in all the ingredients. 

  The local specialty this time of year, apart from chestnuts in everything, is baby eggplant marinated and served with copious quantities of sake. We do a good job on that.

  It's interesting wandering around the old houses, you can recognize a sake producer by the ball of dried grasses hung above the doorway. You can go in and for a small fee, taste and buy. We settle for a small bottle of smooth local hooch for $8. The sky's the limit but we can't tell the difference...

  The two small morning markets are fun, tasting some of the local fare one morning instead of hotel breakfasts, flowers for my room, fruit so precious each apple or peach is wrapped separately. We do get fruit with our nice served breakfast at the Rickshaw Inn.

  Ted has read about the buckwheat noodle houses so we take one in one evening, We didn't slurp like we should. I didn't add the spicy seasoning so found it all verblandcompared with Vietbam noodle dishes but we've done it now.