Takayama is definitely what we were expecting - traditional, cosy, mountain town. As the day was very sunny everything looked even better than yesterday. We were exploring a busy streets of the old town where there are plenty of restaurants and souvenirs shops.
Alongside soba, beef, and old town, Takayama is also known from its sake distilleries. (if someone doesn’t know, sake is an alcoholic beverage made from rice through fermentation. It’s been made for over 1000 years all over Japan. The taste varies from dry to sweet, and when it comes to alcohol content it can reach 20%, but usually it’s 15%. Unique characteristic of sake is that it contains a lot of amino acids, which are responsible for umami flavor.)
We popped into one of the sake distilleries for some tasting. We had 2 different shots: one stronger - 20% of alcohol, the taste reminded us of Polish “bimber” and the second one, not filtered sake, had more taste of umami and was quite tasty.
One of the things that Japanese people often ask us is “where are you from”. It happened many times already, that when we reply “Poland”, their reaction is very positive. Today we met an elder lady, that literally jumped from excitement when she learnt where we are from and she told us that we are the first Polish people she’s ever met. That was so lovely :-)
At 3:30pm we had a train to Tokyo, with a change in Nagoya, and arrived at our destination at 08:10pm. We are staying at the hotel that is only 10min for Akyhabara, which is a well known district in the city. It’s considered as an otaku cultural centre, where you can shop for anime, manga, video games, computer goods and many other geeky things.
