Started the day by heading to the Banquet Hall for the traditional Japanese breakfast. The food looked exquisit, and was obviously very carefully prepared, but I learn't something about myself this morning. I don't like traditional Japanese breakfasts. The breakfast table was a square, with the centre section of the table containing a sand filled pit, on which a cauldron of miso soup sat atop a gas burner. When we were seated the gas burner was lit, and the miso soup began to bubble away. I couldn't really think of anything I wanted less than bean paste soup first thing in the morning, but that was until I looked through the rest of the bowls in front of me. Rice was recognisable, but again I couldn't eat a great deal of plain rice first thing in the morning, and in the other bowls I had some strange pickled roots, tofu in some kind of cold soup, a cold soft boiled egg again floating in some kind of strange ice cold soup with some leaves, a salad containing some strange leaves and a single cherry tomato, and a burner similar to last nights meal, which had a silver tray perched on top containing a large brown leaf, topped with onion, a pile of bean paste and a single himeji mushroom. I considered removing my floating egg and frying it on my leaf, but that would have been bad form, and a little messy, so I just left it as it was. As a result, Charlotte, Angela and myself ate little to none of the breakfast. We all ate a few spoonfuls of plain rice, and moved the bowls around in a vein attempt to fool the cleanup crew into thinking that we had eaten some of the food. Veronica ate a little of the breakfast, but even she said that it was a little too "traditional" to be appetising at that time in the morning. I'm sure that as far as traditional Japanese breakfasts go, it was pretty special, but we have been Westernised for too long to enjoy a breakfast like that. Needless to say, later in the day when we caught up with our hostess and the management when they asked us about dinner time, we informed them that we would not require breakfast tomorrow morning. Even if they don't give us any kind of refund for forgoing the breakfasts, it doesn't seem right to waste all of the beautifully prepared food when we know we aren't going to eat it. After breakfast we headed out to explore Takayama, as this is our only real full day here, so any exploring we wanted to do, it had to be done today. Luckily Takayama isn't a huge town, and we got to see all of the areas which we wanted to see all in one day. If we had more time we may have spent a little more time exploring the old streets to the North of the river, which have been declared a historical preservation site, but as it was by the end of our 5 hour walk through the town we felt that we had seen a good enough cross section of the town. Basically the majority of the township once you get away from the main streets which are lined with shops, are predominantly old style Japanese streets, which are indeed very beautiful, and initially it was fantastic to wander through the backstreets of houses which appeared to be centuries old, however it did get fairly repetitive rather quickly. All of the streets were equally as pretty as the last street, and so much so that many of the back streets we found began to look the same, and we got a little lost. God bless the compass watch. Thank you Casio. For hours we wandered through the backstreets, and along the river. The girls had a great time feeding the mass of coy fish at one section of the river. They were joined by ducks in the fight for the food. There are some very big, and obviously very well fed fish in the shallow river. Across the bridge again into the building preservation area, in which the houses in the area have been declared of enough historical significance that they are to be preserved in their original condition. Whether they are preserving the houses for historical or tourism purposes I'm not sure, but this area of town had the greatest number of tourists swarming around. The entry to the historical area from the river is through a giant cream Tori gate, which looked quite impressive. The fact that it wasn't red like 90% of the other tori gates we have seen also added to it's appeal. The preservation area was indeed beautiful. Every house in the area was aesthetically perfect. Small shrines were dotted throughout the neighbourhood, and even the stormwater drain was in its original cobblestone condition, and lined with trees looked like a picturesque stream. Exhausted from our walk, which we had realised had taken over 5 ½ hours, we returned to the ryokan for afternoon naps in preparation for dinner. After the naps there was about an hour before dinner was scheduled, so Veronica took Charlotte and Angela for another onsen, which they loved equally as much as the first one last night. I didn't go again, mostly because it was too hot, and I'm not sure whether it was this which caused my headache last night. Shortly after the girls returned, it was dinner time. Similar to last night, but instead of Shabu-shabu, on top of the lantern was a grill plate. Ah BBQ. Now what could be more Australian? And the selection of foods to be cooked was again massive. The star of the show were the fillets of Hida beef, which again looked just like Wagyu, and was heavily marbled with fat. The steak came both in small blocks roughly an inch thick, and also in thinly sliced strips. The thinly sliced strips were actually on a sashimi plate, and were partially cooked. They were from a hida beef steak which had been lightly seared, and then thinly sliced, so I'm fairly certain it was mean't to be eaten as steak sashimi as-is, but it was too rare (practically raw) for us, so onto the grill these went as well. As was the case last night, Angela wanted to eat all of the beef, but she didn't get much of it tonight, as it was just too good. It was some of the nicest steak I've ever eaten. Even with the amount we got, I would have liked even more. Again the kids meals contained virtually the same content as ours. Missing this time was the beef sashimi, so they got a slightly smaller serve originally than we did. But again our hostess returned 10 minutes into the meal with another 5 dishes each or so, as well as the main meal for the girls. The girls meals were once again superb, with a chicken katsudon style schnitzel, another full chicken breast fillet seasoned and fried, plus a full crab shell which contained a crab and prawn mornay. I'm happy to say none of the 3 girls wanted them, so I had 2 of the best crab mornay dishes I've ever had in my life. I love Japanese kids meals. The hostess gave us a strange look, as we had our sashimi fish grilling away on the hotplates, which is a cardinal sin in Japan. Only the best fish goes into sashimi, and is prepared with great care, so that it is just perfect, and the quality of the fish we had been given was superb. But after all, we are Australian, and even Veronica agreed that the fish was better cooked than raw. After all this time in Japan, I still believe that raw fish is either bait, or in need of cooking. I realise millions disagree with me, but that's just the way I feel. Desert was kiwifruit and grapes. We only got a few grapes each, but not because the servings were small. They were actually quite large. We only got a few grapes each because again Angela went from plate to plate eating everyones grapes. Hida beef and Japanese grapes. The girl has expensive taste. Again after dinner we dialed 9, and our hostess came and cleared away the dinner table, and made our futon beds for the night. Tomorrow we leave Takayama to head for Kyoto, our final destination on this trip. It will be a little sad to enter the final city, but also it will be a relief, because after 5 weeks of sleeping in hotels and eating take-away, we are ready to come home. Even Charlotte, who said she wanted to live in Japan at the start of the trip, now wants to go home and to sleep in her own bed. But before we leave in the morning Charlotte and I are heading down to the Takayama morning market, which is held on the river bank daily from 6am. This means I'm going to have to get up in about 5 hours time, so I had better get some sleep.