Gifu is great. It has a population of 415,000.
We visited Gifu in early November 2015. Firstly, we flew to Tokyo, stayed overnight there, then bullet trained to Nagoya. There we changed trains and headed to Gifu.
So many platforms at Nagoya station ? ! ? Don't worry. is exercise, and there are many food places ...
TOKYO
Below are morning pictures taken on the street outside our Tokyo Hotel (The Yaesu Terminal Hotel which is just across the road, and around the corner form Tokyo Station)
I was surprised how pretty such a busy metropolis could be. Tree lined streets, cute shrines, wee restaurants.
The bullet train (Shinkansen) that took us to Nagoya. Roomy.
GIFU
The trip time from Tokyo to Gifu takes a wee bit over two hours.
Gifu has a cable car to the mountain top and a castle ! Even some squirrels to feed up the top of the mountain.
INUYAMA
Inuyama means 'Dog Mountain'. So you get dog statues by the bucket loads, plus another castle !
O.K.There is a horse statue too.
MEIJIMURA MUSEUM
A twenty minute bus trip will take you to an stunning historical place, the Meijimura Museum. It is one of the many places in Japan you feel like shaking your head and saying 'only the Japanese !'
There are ummm ? maybe a hundred old buildings that have been carefully removed from their original site, and moved here ! Churches with beautiful lead light ! Early manufacturing plants ! etc.
And for big and little kids, there are old working trains and trams you can ride on.
HIKONE
Hikone (not Hakone which is north of Mt Fuji) is about 65 kilometres west of Gifu. The train trip takes around 50 minutes with a change at Maibara.
There is another castle there with such an array of massive castle walls ! There is a beautiful Japanese garden at the base of the castle and across the moat, on which you can take a boat ride.
Instead of taxi-ing back to the station, we decided to walk ! Ha ! Eventually, feeling lost, we stopped off in a wee restaurant, interrupted a kind man cooking, and asked him to call a taxi. He did this with a smile and no complaint. We waited outside, and a taxi came and dropped someone off. Not thinking, we jumped in, and as driving off saw our ordered taxi pulling up at the restaurant. Ooops. And it turned out that the railway station was just around the corner a couple of hundred metres.
GUJO
Gujo ! Gujo ! Look Japan is beautiful ! Some places, seem to go an extra magical bit, and make you want to smile and sigh with pleasure !
Gujo is 53 kilometres north of Gifu and the bus trip takes about 70 minutes.
The view from the castle.
I wanted to put many more photos of Gujo here, but ..... . Especially ones of the plastic food shops. Unbelievably, we didn't take any snaps of the miraculously real looking plastic food. In the windows of many Japanese restaurants, they have plates of what their meals look like. Well, Gujo is where they are manufactured. You can buy key rings with pieces of sushi attached etc etc.
It must be of a higher altitude than Gifu, for after a few minutes there I went into a clothing shop and bought a warm beanie and an extra T shirt.
OGAKI
Ogaki is a 12 minute train trip from Gifu. Ogaki has a beautiful canal walk, and a lovely (guess ? ) wee castle in a pretty garden. There was a bit of light rain around, so the tourist bureau clerk lent us her brolly.
Nice sign, eh.
OYADA SHRINE
Oyada promised the brochure, has 3,000 maple trees in full autumnal colour. And very well there maybe 3,000 trees there . Getting the dates exact is something no tourist agency can promise to deliver. So we went there on an hour bus trip, then walked for an hour. And greeting us was a pretty shrine, and many leaves either golden and on the ground, or green still on the trees.
It was a lovely sunny day, and on the walk up the slight incline we chatted to some lovely fellow tourists.
Maybe, if you cannot find out for sure that the golden leaves are out, and you are not going by car, ummm ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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