On the last day of our trip to see our friend, (see my previous three blogs for the other days, if you would like and haven’t done so already,) we headed to Gifu city. The train was actually super short from Nagoya, and crazily cheap, so it’s a highly recommended day trip if you ever find yourself in Nagoya. The weather was a bit drizzly at times, but the temperature was perfect, the scenery beautiful, and a little bit of rain didn’t bother any of us Brits. After all, we’re all raised to know the water only stops at the skin, and really there was barely a drizzle anyway, so I don’t even think people back home would even have called it rain honestly. As I sit writing this, we are still in summer, where it has been above thirty degrees for like five months. Remembering that rain only brings on fond memories. What I’d give to have it now.
In Gifu, we got to do so many things in a short space of time because everything was conveniently located. Actually, to say that without context is a little funny considering the castle is on a literal mountain and the temples and things are like 300 metres below. However, the public transport is so convenient that everything seems relatively close and easy to access. We headed to the castle initially, saw the pagoda before heading up, got to a beautiful viewpoint up on Mount Kinka and saw the city from below.
After heading back down the mountain, we had Japanese sweet mochi/daifuku from a local stand, ate it in a little Japanese garden and then headed to a local museum. It was fun to learn about the area and see genuine artefacts. The staff were also very knowledgeable and enthusiastic to share that knowledge with us as people that were so obviously not from the area. There was a tactile activity happening in the museum too, which allowed us to use rollers and inks to make artwork in a similar way to how the woodblock prints were made. It was fascinating to see and fun to join in, even if my end result ended up looking a bit terrifying because I put the red layer on a bit wonky and it made all the characters look terrifyingly like they were bleeding from all parts of their body (including the eyes). I didn’t take a picture, for your guys sake. You’re welcome.
After the museum we tried to find the large Buddah/Daibutsu. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I adore seeing large Buddahs. They bring me a sense of inner calm that I’ve never experienced before. I frequently visit the one in Kamakura, but the one in Gifu was completely different from anything I’ve ever seen. Firstly, unlike Kamakura’s Buddah, the Gifu one is gold in colour. Also it is indoors, which makes it very inconspicuous from the roadside. Even with a map and our smartphones, we almost passed it completely. Because of this, when we saw the building from the outside, our expectations of the Buddah were lowered before entering. But once indoors, it was truly spectacular. Like most of our experiences, pictures can’t really do it justice, but if you imagine from the picture, being below this golden Buddah, standing almost fourteen metres tall in a room that is over twenty three metres high. It’s really incredible.
As the sun started to set, we headed back to the station. The same short train that had brought us that morning, returned us to Nagoya station, where we changed to the bullet train platform. We caught the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, arriving home just over two hours after we’d left Gifu station. We’d travelled so far in such a short space of time. It was unbelievable.
