Day 3 - 10th Feb 2013 (Takayama)

We spent the morning walking around Takayama with the benefit of the waterproof boots provided by the hotel. Took the main Ekimae Chuo St. With the Walking Map, it's pretty easy to get around and everything is within a 20-odd minute walk from the station. Everything except for the temples in the mountains, that is, which we are not interested in.

Yanagibashi Bridge (actually no big deal, just one of the few bridges along the Miyagawa River.

Passed by a dango shop on the way and thought it smelt terrific so Tobs went to grab 2 sticks - original and sesame flavour. It was not very memorable. But Tobs remembered it distinctively because it was too sweet. Apparently I only ate half and then left Tobs to finish the rest of it up.

Then we walked around the old town of Takayama which is now rather touristy but you can still see some of the old architecture around. The Sanmachi Traditional Buildings Preservation Area ensures some of the old houses still remain. These are the remnants of the prospering merchant district from the Edo and Meiji periods. We popped into a sake brewery shop hopeful that there would be free tasting of sorts. It was sort-of an open house day but unfortunately, no free booze. Tobs bought a wine dumpling which is quite nice but probably not worth the price. It was really cold and we saw icicles hanging from roof edges. How unsafe!

After we finished our foot tour, we grabbed our luggages and caught the JR train to Nagoya. Was very blessed to have secured front seats and we recorded a mini video on the iPad of the journey. So different to be sitting in the front row, watching the captain do his hand signals, and treating the train like a roller caster ride (albeit a slower one without dips and rises).

Then from Nagoya we took the Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka and I was very excited to grab my oyaji cheesecake!

After dumping our stuff at Super Hotel Shin-Osaka, we travelled to Shinsaibashi for dinner. The queue at Ichiran was long (whats new) so we decided on Doraemon for okonomiyaki (no modan this time) and the ika shio yaki. But it was prepared by another girl who didn't seem that experience so I didn't have that orgasmic feeling that I did the last time. Boo.

While shopping in the area, we came across a famous pastry shop called Pablo. the limited edition cheese cake is sold out already (duh 30 pcs a day or sth) so we had to settle for the regular one. Even the regular one came in 2 different types - medium and rare. After close to 20-30mins queue, we picked rare, which has a flowy middle portion and then retreated to one of the side streets and gobbled one whole up on the spot. Umai~