Traditional house at Hida Village

Japan Day 5: Hida Village and Kyoto

We woke up really early in order to see Hida Village before we had to catch a train to Kyoto. We walked to Takayama train station in order to catch the bus to Hida Village. You are able to purchase tickets from a machine at the train station. The combination ticket includes the bus ride to and from Hida Village as well as the entrance fee. I cannot remember for certain, but I believe the combination was roughly 800Yen or 8$CDN. The ride took about ten minutes. (To Book Train Travel in Japan Click Here)

Hida Village is a collection of traditional Japanese buildings that have been brought from the surrounding area and arranged in a small village in order to show case the way of life for people in the Japanese alps (most built between 1700-1800).

From Hida Village we headed back to the hostel to grab our bags and head back to the train station. We booked our tickets from Takayama to Nagoya and from Nagoya to Kyoto.

The Hida Express was once again late arriving in Nagoya, so we missed our train to Kyoto and had to wait about an hour in order to catch the next JR train to Kyoto.

By the time we arrived in Kyoto it was getting pretty late, and we were tired and hungry. So we stopped at the tourist office to see what the quickest way to our hostel was. The gentleman told us that the bus was the easiest way… which could not have been more wrong. We hopped on the bus toward our hostel, along with about ninety other people. and were packed like sardines into the tiny city bus. We had our backpacks on, and it was incredibly hard to manauver and keep from falling over. Jives had a man pushing him the entire trip, and I was shoved incredibly close to a seated fellow who was picking his nose and talking loudly to himself. The ride took about 45 minutes in all honest, but it seemed like an eternity. We stood the entire time, and only became more cramped as the ride progressed.

We finally heard the call for our stop and managed to limbo our way off the bus. FREEDOM!

Side note: later on in our Kyoto stay, we took the underground metro and immediately regretted ever having stepped foot on a Kyoto city bus.

Once off the bus, it was only a few blocks (and a few minutes of angry and confused navigator Holly) before we found our hostel! We stayed three nights at Khaosan Kyoto Guesthouse for 64$CDN a night.

Once we had recovered from our bus ride, and checked in to our hostel, we decided to go out on an adventure to find food. We ended up wandering towards the Gion area of Kyoto that is famed for old wooden establishments and Geishas. Wandering a little bit past Gion, we stopped into a convenience store or Kombini and grabbed some quick food and beers to eat in the park near by.

We noticed that there were light displays on for Autumn to highlight the fall leaves, and decided to check out a temple near by that was putting on such a display, before making our way back to the hostel for the night.

Beautiful light show in the bamboo grove.