14 Places To Visit In Takayama

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Day Trip (4)
Historical Site (3)
Museum (2)
Cable Car (1)

1. Sanmachi Suji Old Town

1 km from city center

Neighborhood

Three parallel streets of dark timber merchant houses with deep eaves and fine lattice fronts, preserved since the Edo period when Takayama was under direct shogunal control and grew rich on Hida timber. Six sake breweries still operate along them, each hanging a cedar ball outside when the new brew is ready. Free and always open, so walk it early before the coaches arrive.

Top Attraction

1 km from city center

Historical Site

The local government house of the Tokugawa administration, and the only one of roughly sixty that still stands anywhere in Japan. You walk through the magistrate's rooms, the tatami offices, an interrogation room with the restraints still displayed, and out to the largest surviving Edo rice storehouse. At 440 yen it is the best value in the town and it explains why the old town exists at all.

Top Attraction

33 km from city center

Day Trip

The UNESCO village of gassho-zukuri farmhouses, thatched at a steep angle to shed snow and built without a single nail, 50 minutes away by bus. Takayama is the better base for it than Kanazawa: the ride is shorter, the timetable denser, and the Hida Folk Village here shows the same architecture so the two read as one story. Reserve the bus, and note the winter light-up is not walk-up.

1 km from city center

Shopping Market

Stalls along the river selling pickles, miso, apples, sarubobo dolls and hot snacks, running every morning of the year. Check the clock before setting an alarm: this one opens at 07:00, and 08:00 from December to March, while the Jinya-mae market across town starts an hour earlier. Guides that say both open at six will have you standing on an empty riverbank in winter.

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5. Hida Folk Village

2 km from city center

Museum

More than thirty farmhouses moved here from villages across the Hida mountains and rebuilt around a pond, with hearths lit daily so the thatch stays smoked and dry. Several are gassho-zukuri, which makes this the wet-weather and short-stay alternative to the trip out to Shirakawa-go. Admission is now 700 yen. In January and February it is lit in the evenings.

Takayama Festival Floats Exhibition Hall

1 km from city center

Museum

The Takayama Matsuri runs on four days a year. This hall is how you see its floats on the other 361: four of the eleven autumn yatai at a time, gilded, lacquered and hung with carved panels, rotated three times a year. The 1,000 yen ticket also covers the Sakurayama Nikkokan next door. These are the real floats, not the replicas shown elsewhere in town.

7. Higashiyama Walking Course

1 km from city center

Walking Tour

A 3.5km marked trail linking around a dozen temples and shrines along the eastern hills, laid out in the 1600s in imitation of Kyoto's own Higashiyama. It is free and takes roughly two hours at a walk, climbing past the Takayama Castle ruins on Shiroyama before dropping back into town. Ten minutes from Sanmachi and almost nobody on it, which is the point.

34 km from city center

Cable Car

Japan's only double-decker gondola, climbing to an observation deck at 2,156 metres with the Northern Alps standing across the valley. Unlike Kamikochi, which shuts for the winter, this runs all year, and the snow walls along the approach road in spring are part of the appeal. About 90 minutes by bus. There is an outdoor onsen at the base station for afterwards.

1 km from city center

Historical Site

A sake brewer's house whose entrance hall opens into a lattice of beams and pillars rising to a skylight, so the whole structure is visible at once and lit from above. Architects come specifically to see it. It is an Important Cultural Property and a separate ticket from the Kusakabe house next door, which is heavier and darker inside. If you only enter one interior in Takayama, make it this one.

0 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

Founded in the eighth century and holding the only three-storied pagoda in Takayama, along with a ginkgo tree said to be 1,200 years old that turns the courtyard yellow in November. It is the oldest thing in the town and it sits five minutes from the station, so it is the natural first or last stop rather than a detour.

36 km from city center

Day Trip

A river valley at 1,500 metres in the Northern Alps, with the Azusa running clear over gravel and the Hotaka peaks rising straight out of it behind Kappa Bridge. Two things decide whether this works: it is open only from roughly mid April to mid November, and private vehicles have been banned beyond the Kama Tunnel since 1994, permanently and year round. Park at Hirayu and take the shuttle.

1 km from city center

Historical Site

An 1879 merchant house rebuilt after a fire using massive exposed beams of Hida cypress, now holding a folk craft collection and a small moss garden at the back. Different owner, different ticket and a very different feel from the Yoshijima house it stands beside: where that one is about light, this one is about timber. Doing both back to back takes about an hour.

12 km from city center

Day Trip

Fifteen minutes north by train, a smaller version of Takayama that most day trippers skip: white-walled storehouses along the Seto canal with carp swimming in it, and a festival hall showing the town's own floats. It became a pilgrimage site for fans of the film Your Name, which used the station and the surrounding valley. The cheapest and easiest half day out of Takayama.

38 km from city center

Day Trip

Rated for centuries as one of the three best hot springs in Japan, 45 minutes south by limited express. The water is smooth and alkaline, there are free footbaths along the river, and a yumeguri pass lets you into three participating inns, which is what makes it work as a day visit rather than an overnight. Gassho Village, a small open-air museum of relocated farmhouses, is also here.