1. Changi Airport
2. Nagoya Airport
3. Takayama Green Hotel
4. Takayama Old Street
5. Dinner: Centre4Burger
6. Takayama Onsen
For this trip, we managed to exchange our PremierMiles to KrisFlyerMiles, and then exchanged for 3 tickets (2 adults and 1 child) to Nagoya. In total we paid around $150 for tax for 3 person which is quite cheap IMHO. Our flight is at 1am, so that our babyTan can sleep through the 6 hours flight, in which he did. Before we check in, MamaKwan booked the GoWifi for this trip, which costed us $32.50 after discount, with unlimited bandwidth. The unlimited bandwidth was very good, we didn't bother to change our wifi connection in japan as we can unlimited use the bandwidth for our shows and communication. I remembered buying a sim card in Japan is expensive, so if you are going Japan, do try this service. The flight was quite packed and the seat beside us is taken up. Initially we thought not many people, we could have the 4 seats to just the 3 of us, but too bad.
We reached Nagoya at around 730am which was a nice timing. We are departing to Takayama which required us a total of 3hours to reach there. It will take us an hour Meitetsu Line to Meitetsu Station, then a 2 hours bus ride to Takayama JR station.
Immediately when we exited the arrival hall, there was a counter there to purchase the 1 way ticket which consisted of the train ride and bus ride to Takayama (See photo below for the illustration). At the counter, they will give you a ticket to exchange for train ticket at the train station, and then they will make reservation for you for the bus at Meitetsu Bus Station (you need reservation to get onboard the bus). This is a one stop service and we were happy with their arrangement. Thereafter, we had our quick breakfast at the cafe of Nagoya Airport Train station there (normal American breakfast) which nothing much worth mentioning.
We reached Takayama around 1pm, with all the waiting of buses and train. The bus station is just located beside the JR station, which is linked by a small pavement at the back of the bus station. From JR station, it was a 15minutes walk to our Takayama Green Hotel. We didn't realise that the Hotel provides shuttle bus service until we reached the hotel lobby and saw the brochure. We kept looking out for the hotel, and when we saw it from near, wah it was big! The hotel even has its own mini mall, which actually nothing much one. There are multiple onsen in this hotel, some open to public, some are to hotel guests only. The checking in was smooth (as always customer service is great in Japan), and we were given the hotel key (kinda old school). We hastily made our way to the room because we are rushing to the old street, in case we cannot make it tomorrow as we are going to Shirakawa for a half day tour (see Day 2).Takayama Green Hotel
This time round, we were cleverer as we took the shuttle bus service to JR Station. From there, the walk to the old street was around 10 minutes. We reduced the 15 minutes walk from hotel to Station! As for the old street, this is probably the main attraction in Takayama. Second to this, there are alot of shrines in Takayama which we would show them under Day 2, as we took the walking routes to visit most of the shrines. This old street was less crowded when we reached there. It possibly kinda of late (we reached there at around 1530hrs and the closing time was around 1700hrs). This whole stretch of houses is preserved to retain its looks and heritage and they are really very nice.
Remarkably worth mentioning, there are the famous sushi (we queued for 15minutes as there was little queue. We saw again this shop the next day, the queue was 3x longer) and a famous hida beef stick. Other than that, it was purely sight seeing and appreciating the old street and its houses.
We researched and discovered that this Centre4 Burger, although its a westernised cafe, serves good Hida Beef Burger. We could not make reservation then and hence, we arrived 30mins before the opening hours (by chance to reach early anyway) to see was there queue. Luckily there was no queue and MamaKwan made a good decision to try to enter the cafe and see whether can we make reservation. The cafe was yet to open, but there was already the receptionist (or i believe might be the lady boss) was already inside and she accepted our request to make a reservation from 6-7pm as the next reservation was only 7pm. We thanked her and made our way out to a coffee cafe that we saw while walking here, drank coffee and rest there!
MamaKwan said that the reviews said that the Hida Beef burger and normal cheese burger tasted about the same, but the normal cheese burger is 3x cheaper. Hence, we decided to order both and try whether really no diff not. The verdict was, the diff was big lor! The Hida Beef burger was much nicer than the normal cheese burger! So if you were to come here, take the Hida Beef Burger. The cafe does not allow people to take photo, but we secretly snapped two of the interior of the cafe.
Anyway this cafe is kinda small, and be sure to make reservation if you can, before you come here for dinner. The challenge about making reservation is that the people here don't really speak English, so good luck.
In the hotel, we only managed to find two onsens. One was the one that is opened to public as well as long as you pay for it, one more at the basement i think is for guests one. We only spent our time at the one opened to public as it is the biggest one.
Inside the onsen, there are three pools (at least that what PapaTan saw), two indoors (one hot, one not so hot) and one outdoor onsen. PapaTan and BabyTan spent most of our time at the indoor. Just to note, you have to strip naked in onsen if you didn't realise. Picked up from the locals, they usually use the small towel to cover private parts, so yeah, learn from it.
BabyTan really enjoyed the onsen, he didn't want to exit the pool as he was busily playing the water inside. But PapaTan had to dragged him out as he could not spend too much time under the hot condition. Then we went to the wash up area and bath. The hotel used the 马油 which looked expensive. Bathing there was nice, sitting at the area and scrubbed the body and taking own sweet time. This is really the best do in Japan!