Takayama: Miyagawa Morning Market & Jinya-mae Market

I like to walkabout in markets, its a great place to see how people go around in their lives, provide colourful scenes to shoot, see new things, and in Japan, food to try :P

There are 2 markets in Takayama - Miyagawa Morning Market and Jinya-mae Market. I strongly believe (despite no concrete reason) that there should be more stalls than what I saw... can't be it was too cold and they decided to stay at home... hmm.. but both markets are rather quiet, particular Jinya-mae market (in fact the whole town seems a little too quiet)

As Rickshaw Inn is closer to Miyagawa Market, we headed there first... after breakfast. Breakfast of the day was this kare udon.

Ok...back to Miyagawa Morning Market...

... just right after the bridge.

Along the road, there were souvenir shops. Or should I say, the stalls were on the roadside facing the shops - from memory, probably all are souvenir shops.

The most common souvenir to take home from Takayama are these charm call sarubobo which translates as "baby monkey". The origin is said that in the olden days, grandmothers made it for their daughters or granddaughters for good luck, good marriage and relationship. Hence I believe originally it was red in colour. Anyway, it is now available in a different colours, representing different things.

Blue sarubobo - good luck in studies and work, Pink Sarubobo for luck in love. Green Sarubobo for luck in health. Yellow Sarubobo is for luck in money, Purple Sarubobo to banish evil spirits, black to remove bad luck

After buying more sarubobo (LOL), I saw food! Street food that looks like tofu.

It's call Owara Tamaten - made out of egg white, though looked like tofu and tasted like marshmallow. It would made a good, different type of dessert but a little too sweet for me.

By this point, we were getting rather cold and a lady in a shop next to this owara tamaten stall called out to us, asking us to try this black bean tea. She even heated up the tea again as it was getting cold. It was good, and probably extra good in the cold weather. We were sold! Moo moo gal and I shared a pack of 12 small packets.

There were more stalls selling pickles and snacks. We then left, and walked towards Jinya-mae market. On the way there, the glutton thoughts in my head was back in action and I grab a stick of mitarashi dango.

I didn't quite like the taste of the first dango I tried back in Kamakura but I thought I'll give it another go, this was alright. I'll try some more next time :P

On the way there, we saw a man stopped his car to let a cat crossed the road. As he couldn't see if the cat has safely crossed under his car, he asked us if it was safe to go. I think that's very kind of him.

See how quiet Jinya-mae Market was...

I didn't get anything from here.. but Miss Mo got some apples, 6 or 7 of them.

We then hopped to get an earlier lunch before departing to Shirakawa-go.

This was beef miso sauce rice, 500 yen and was really good. I like it very much...the miso..

But this... beef yakitori, easily the worst thing I ate in the whole trip - stiff and rather tasteless. Also very expensive. It was the same price as the rice...

Here's a random shot of sarubobo at Hida Kokubunji Temple

Side note: Phew... that must be the longest post I wrote...