Nara & Iga
An unplanned stop on our route, we had all morning to spend in Nara, visiting Todai-ji with the Giant Buddha and watching the deer freely roaming the city.
After a nice lunch in a little cafe, we headed to Iga to visit the Ninja House and Museum. We even got to see a Ninja-Show! After a quick stop at an Onsen, we spent the night in the clouds, at a quiet Michi-no-eki in the Gifu mountains not far from Takayama.
Gifu-Shi
In the morning, we first headed to Ogimachi, a small village famous for its Gassho-zukuri farm houses. We took the short hike up to the viewing platform, for where we had fantastic views over the entire village.
Afterwards, we headed to Takayama, a town with a very traditional Japanese feel. We ate us through a number of local delicacies, mainly different versions of hida beef, frankly more miss than hit.
Matsumoto
In the afternoon, we ditched the toll road in favour of an autumnal detour across the Gifu moutains, all the way to Matsumoto. We had dinner at a family restaurant and settled in for the night.
Having been very fortunate with the weather up to this point, the next morning the rain came. It didn’t matter for our visit of Matsumoto castle and we even had brunch outside a little cafe in the famous frog road. After a couple of hours wandering the streets of Matsumoto the rain grew heavier and we decided to move on.
Nikko
On the way to Nikko, we took a short detour to the Kegan waterfall. Turns out it gets very cloudy in the mountains and we could barely make out the waterfall through the fog, but it certainly sounded very impressive!
We parked up at a michi-no-eki in Nikko and, catching a lucky break in the rain, started to look for some dinner. Instead of restaurants we stumbled upon a Matsuri street festival with a dozen lavishly decorated and illuminated floats – and more importantly, lots of delicious street food! We enjoyed a fun couple of hours munching, watching and chatting before the rain started again and we called it a night.
It was still raining the next morning, but we headed to the Tosho-gu Shrine anyway. Fortunately the owners of the nearby hotel gift shop were quick thinkers and got out their selection of umbrellas. Finally adequately equipped, we were able to enjoy this amazing temple complex and its colourful and intricate carvings. The rain and fog just added to the serene atmosphere of the place, the moss-covered lanterns seemingly glowing bright green in the mist. We had a fantastic lunch in Nikko and spent a couple of hours in the town, before heading towards our last stop not far from Narita, where we returned our campervan to JapanCampers the next morning.
Admittedly, a very packed itinerary of the island of Honshu, but we got to see and experience so much of Japan in a relatively short time. In total, we covered just over 1800 kilometers.
And after 11 days in a campervan we were ready for a bit of R&R on the beach in Okinawa, where we spent our last few days in Japan.
Click here to see more pictures from our trip and here to read more about our campervan experience.
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