Well, we couldn’t really leave Hida-Takayama without eating at least some Hida beef. So after leaving the Takayama Museum of History and Art, we stopped by to have…burgers at Center4 Hamburgers. Just needed a little change after a week of Japanese food.
Center4 had a rustic and very well decorated American space. Wasn’t be able to tell that its in Takayama at all. Wouldn’t be out of place if its in, e.g. Idaho, either. They asked everyone not to take pictures of the interior, so we didn’t.
We had the special Hida beef burger. The beef, even in minced, burger form, was very good. The patty was substantially more beefy than the regular, non Hida-beef patty. The burger overall and fries was also good. Everyone left very satisfied. If I get the same burger back home, I would be happy. So getting a quality burger in some mountain town in Japan was doubly satisfying. The only quibble was that we didn’t specific doneness so they just gave us somewhere between medium-well and well-done. Which was still delicious. I would have asked for medium.
In the afternoon, we made a stop at the famed village Shirakawa-go. The village is known for their clusters of gassho-zukuri farmhouses with roof made of straw, designed to easily shed snow from their steep roofs.
We arrived just after a torrential downpour, which gave the valley a verdant and fresh feel. The town is easily reachable from Kanazawa and Takayama, so there are many tourists who make a day trip. At the same time, locals live there and there are many rice fields all around the village.
Shirakawa-go is one of the most interesting places I visited in Japan, The thatched roofs have been traditionally put up/replaced in a community effort (though not as commonly these days.) That and more about the roofs there can be found here:
