We stayed in a slightly down-at-heel Buddhist temple near the station called Zenko-ji. A number of rooms around the main temple altar have been given over to hosting tourists, and a new wing built onto the edge of the temple with a kitchen and shared bathrooms. Our room was 10 tatami mats big – over twice the size of our room in Tokyo – and the shoji (paper) doors opened onto a zen Buddhist garden. Gas heaters in every room kept the place warm....for the most part.

Takayama is famous for its well maintained traditional streets populated with inns, arts and crafts shops and sake breweries – and restaurants serving the also-famous Hida beef (supposedly better than Kobe beef). We splashed out on a Hida beef meal for two on our last night which was pretty amazing after a couple of days of budget supermarket bento boxes. Oishikatta!

Our first day in town we took a short bike ride (or what should have been a short bike ride, had we not got hideously lost. Twice) to Hida no Sato traditional village. Up in the hills overlooking Takayama, the prefectural government have collected a number of 18^th century farming houses shipped from all over the region for their conservation. The houses were quite spectactular – constructed from huge cedar beams, with steep pitched straw roofs to protect them from the snow.

The same day we also went to visit James' favourite sight - Yoshijima-ke – a former sake brewery in the north of the traditional district. Built by a famous carpenter of the day, its soaring cross-beams, spare lines and well lit rooms were meant to signify the prestige of the proprietor and the quality of their product. If the building was anything to go by you could imagine they did a good trade.

Takayama is a small town, so we covered pretty much all the sights in a day (maintaining the pace we set in Tokyo. Don't know how long we can keep this up...), leaving our second day for relaxation.... So we went for a run into the mountains to see the ruins of Takayama castle, which was snowy and maybe a little more like hard work than we imagined, but good fun. We rewarded ourselves with a trip to an onsen in a nearby hotel, which apparently was Sarah's favourite thing from the trip thus far. Seeing her afterwards, moisturised, conditioned and smug as a cat from the pampering, you could believe it.

This morning we got up early to catch the train to Hiroshima – hopefully its a bit warmer out west!