Today we went to the old fashioned town of Takayama famous for its 'olden day street with authentic traditional shops'. In reality, it was an old fashioned street overtaken by souvenir shops. However, the area was nice to walk around in. Our accommodation (Zenkoji Temple' was questionable though. We booked a 'private twin room with bath' in a temple inn. We stayed at a temple before in Koyasan and it was an amazing experience. But this lied somewhere along the lines of a cheap-hostel with a grumpy-old-man receptionist. It wasn't much of a temple experience as you weren't allowed to see any of the temple, just the accommodation. The guy who organised it also gave the impression that it was a pain to have guests. Our private bath consisted of a shared male toilet that haven't to be broken and we were asked to use the shared toilet on the first floor. In the bathroom, we weren't permitted to use the bath but we could use the showerhead hooked onto the wall next to it. In our private room, the sliding door to the next room had warped and no longer closed properly leaving a gap that got wider as you headed upwards (so we could hear and also see a little of the people in the room net to us). So we decided to spend as little time as possible in there and headed to the Takayama Museum of Art which was expensive but had some nice stuff. Not stupid contemporary art that people like to see is priceless for reasons they cant explain, but it just had nice things to look at.
In all, I like Takayama as its nice to wander around, especially when the tourists have left. But its not the ancient village its made out to be, and definately stay clear of Zenkoji Temple.
