Pants, who needs them?

Staying at a ryokan is pretty tiring. First there's all the bathing, then all the eating, then the resting to recover from both. Chris contemplates the view from the bath.

After bathing, it's time for breakfast. Notice we take all of our meals in a yukata to avoid buttoning pants. This morning's two-sterno breakfast came with a map.

Afterwards we spent the morning at Hida Folk Village investigating 400 year-old buildings and avoiding the attack swan.

The construction in these buildings is pretty incredible, with many different roof styles out of nothing but straw, or shingle and rocks, to stand up to snow and wind.

We took the bus back into Takayama wandered over to the sake breweries for tastings at Harada and Funasaka. Harada lets you have unlimited tastings of standard sake for 150 yen, Funasaka let you pay for individual premium tastings, which I recommend.

Takayama is full of craft shops, from wooden netsuke to paper art to lacquerware. After walking around, we returned to our hotel for a pre-dinner bath. We chose the shabu shabu option for dinner, since we had such a great meal at Hassan.

Of course it also came with sashimi, appetizers, side dishes, and dessert. The chef was impressed that we ate all our beef. I probably have to stick to sweatpants on the way home.

Naturally a bath comes after dinner, so you're nice and relaxed for bedtime. Sweet dreams!