Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

The last few days we’ve been busy rounding out our stay here in Japan with stops in Takayama and Matsumoto in the Japanese Alps and of course Tokyo.

Takayama is home to a reconstructed rural town called Hida-no-sata with houses as they were (and in some places still are) a few hundred years ago in country-side Japan. Pretty cool and in typically Japanese style, the meticulous reconstruction (after moving them from who knows how far away) is amazing and must’ve taken a long time.

Matsumoto is known for Matsumoto-jo, one of the best, still original castles around Japan. Castle wasn’t bad, but after having seen Himeji-jo and Nijo-jo, probably not worth the effort.

Unfortunately, the other thing we came to Takayama and Matsumoto for, ie to get a bit of a feel of the Japanese Alps, was not helped by persistent cloud cover. The snow which was still everywhere was quite scenic though.

One thing these two days in the Alps did bring to the fore (again) is how little real wilderness (ie completely unaffected by Japanese infrastructure) there is in Japan. Having not ventured further north than Matsumoto this might be different in say the northern-most province of Tokkaido, but having seen a lot of places in the southern half, there is a distinct trend emerging. I read in the lonely planet guide the other day that they estimate that only three of Japan’s over 30,000 streams, rivers, etc have NOT been dammed. I would happily believe this. Everywhere we’ve been we’ve seen power lines, communications towers, roads, houses, dams, concrete reinforcements (to stop hills eroding), etc, etc and even on our more “remote” walks, we’ve been walking on very well-maintained paths, linking temples, shrines, etc.

Mind you though, none of this is different to the U.K. and probably most of Western Europe, but I’m far from convinced that I’ll ever come back to this country to purely go for a hike (ditto with the U.K.) which is interesting for a country that boasts so many walking opportunities. Fortunately this country is cool in so many other ways that it hasn’t really mattered and we’ve had a great time nonetheless.

Finally, the last few days in Tokyo. First of all a side trip to Nikko of course, followed by a walk on a beautiful day up Mitsu-toge-yama in the Fuji-san area (with awesome views of Fuji). Yesterday we spent looking around the Shinjuku, Harajuku and Shibuya suburbs which are just incredible districts filled with neon lights, shops and people. Interestingly enough, they made our hikes that I referred to above, do seem like they were out into the middle of nowhere. Everything’s relative I guess :)