They say you shouldn't meet your hero's, because it's bound to end in disappointment. On the last trip we visited a hamburger restaurant in Takayama, called Center 4 Hamburgers. It was, without a doubt, the best burger I'd ever had. Risking tainting that memory, we decided to go back there today to see whether it really was as good as I remembered it, or whether it was going to ruin the memory forever.

But before I get to that, onto the events of this morning. Takayama is a fairly ordinary town once you've seen it once or twice. Undoubtedly a very pretty old city, which has deliberately retained a lot of it's ye olde Japanese charm and heritage, largely for tourism reasons, but it is a sleepy little town that thrives on slow pace, scenic and mostly closely located attractions, and does its best to give visitors a glimpse at bits of Japan from days long gone.

Sumiyoshi ryokan appears to have adopted a stray cat. The cat, who I'm told is named Moo, or Maw, or Mah, or something, is the fattest, best fed stray cat I've ever seen. Unfortunately for Moo, if he sits on the verandah at 4am tomorrow morning meowing loudly like he did today, I will endevour to find out whether he can swim, using the river 25 feet away from the verandah to conduct my experiment.

Down at 8am for what was a nice, but largely unremarkable breakfast. Isabelle, Angela and I had the western style breakfast, which consisted of toast, some packet jams and butters banana and apple, and a side salad of some cold scrambled egg, ham and lettuce. Charlotte and Veronica had the Japanese style breakfast, which although it came with an assortment of unidentifiable picked things, it came with rice, fruit, a poached egg and miso paste grilling on a giant hoba leaf. As we've learned on previous trips to Takayama, hoba miso is a specialty of this region, and is insanely salty, but fantastic with rice. I'm not sure if grilling it on a giant hoba leaf makes any difference, but it looks cool at the table.

With breakfast done, we were told by the lady that runs the place in very broken English that instead of Hida beef tonight, we'd be getting pork with our dinner. Fantastic. The good people of Sumiyoshi ryokan just lost their 5 star Tripadvisor rating in my pending review.

Putting that annoyance out of my mind, we checked the weather report, and found something else to get annoyed about. 10 degrees Celsius, and heavy rain. Superb. We sat in the warmth of our room for around an hour while the heaviest rain passed, which gave me a chance to catch up on the blog entries. Yesterday's entry was posted after breakfast this morning, because I kind of fell asleep while writing it, so I aborted the mission and moved from the patch of floor I was sitting on to use the computer, to the different patch of floor at the other end of the room which is where my floor bed is.

I'm so damn tired of doing stuff on the floor.

So after the heaviest rain had passed, almost out of spite we got dressed, and decided to go for a walk, with the eventual goal of getting to Center 4 hamburgers by around lunchtime.

Dressed warmly, with umbrellas in hand we set off, and as we were no more than 10 feet from the front door of the ryokan, the raindrops changed into massive drops of crushed ice. Half snow, half hail, we christened this phenomenon Snail, and it turned out to be a lot more fun than just a walk in the rain.

Normal snowflakes just fall to earth softly, and settle gently onto whatever they land on. Raindrops are generally only fairly small. The snail that was falling as we were walking around were large balls, probably around a tablespoon in volume of each ball, of crushed ice, falling rapidly to earth, very un-snow like.
Walking through the streets became like walking through a 2 inch deep snowcone, and it became difficult to differentiate between solid ground, and deep puddles, because it all just looked like crushed ice. As a result, most of us ended up finding these deep puddles, and before too long were walking around with very wet socks.

We did however successfully navigate the snail, and finally came across the Center 4 restaurant. Appearance wise, It was precisely as forgettable as I remember it to be. Unless you were looking for it specifically, you wouldn't even realise it was there.

Leaving our ice encrusted umbrellas at the door, we made our way through the dark hallway of the antique shop, with breakable artifacts balanced precariously along the walkway in precisely the right locations to make them easiest to knock over, but luckily avoiding expensive breakages, we entered the restaurant, only to find it completely full. This wasn't entirely surprising however, since there is only 3 tables and 4 bar seats in the entire restaurant. As luck would have it, a large table of customers were just finishing up, so after a short 5 minute wait we were seated.

The menu had not changed one bit since I was there last. There is a hida beef burger on the menu, which is mighty tempting, and by all accounts I've read, absolutely delicious, but it looks fairly plain, and at 2100 yen, or around $22 it is almost double the price of their other burgers.

In my opinion the pick of the burgers is the quattro burger which comes with the usual toppings of meat, lettuce, tomato and onion, as well as bacon, cheese, egg and avocado. It is pretty much my ideal burger. Veronica and I ordered quattro burgers, Angela ordered a bacon and cheese burger, and Charlotte ordered the bacon and cheese burger with an egg. Side dishes of chips and drinks all round, and Charlotte and Angela opted for a cookies and cream thickshake.

After a short wait, the burgers were bought out, and they looked every bit as good as I remembered them to be. So far so good. Burgers aren't my favourite food, but these are as close to perfection as I can imagine a burger being. Well seasoned, juicy and full of flavour, fresh ingredients, just the right amount of sauces, etc. It's hard to explain in a blog, but they just get everything right. I cannot think of a way to improve it, other than to have a second burger.

It was a similar impression all around the table. Charlotte described it as the best burger she's ever had. Veronica, who I think was a little puzzled as to why I wanted to go back to a burger restaurant in the Japanese mountains, left the table agreeing that we'd made an excellent choice for lunch. On leaving we were bid a warm farewell from the staff of the restaurant, and the girls were all given a hamburger lollipop as a parting gift, which Charlotte and Angela later tell me was horrible, but Isabelle seemed to love it.

So pretty full, we ventured back out into the weather. At this point the crushed ice had stopped falling, and it had just turned back into old fashioned rain. Instead of walking through the historical house preservation area like we did on the way to the restaurant dodging tourists and recklessly driven mini-cars, we returned via the main streets, which are all blessed with covered walkways. The only obstacles were once again dodging the sometimes deceptively deep pools of water and crushed ice on the footpaths.

Back at the ryokan, Veronica and Isabelle returned to the room while Charlotte, Angela and I went down to the riverbank to play in the fresh covering of ice and snow. Isabelle, on the way into the ryokan met with the old lady who appears to do 99% of the work to keep the place running, as she was outside with a snow shovel clearing the pathways, so naturally Isabelle grabbed a shovel and helped.

With the snow shoveling and playing by the river in the fresh snow all done, we returned to the room to thaw out, and before too long it was time for the bathroom to open, so we again went downstairs to be the first ones to claim the onsen to ourselves for the day.
I'm now entirely convinced that Onsens are overrated. There is a romantic notion of relaxing in a huge tub which makes it really easy to make it look great in photographs and promotional pamphlets, but in reality all an onsen is is a large, usually wooden, usually too hot bath that you usually have to take with strangers. This ryokan was a little different because we were able to have a private onsen, but it was also not a great example of an onsen bathroom either. It wasn't as good as either of the previous ryokans we've stayed in.

So having changed from freezing outside to being slowly boiled to a well done consistency in the bath, there is no surprises that all of us are suffering from the flu.
In an attempt to make that worse, with around 90 minutes before dinner remaining, Charlotte and I ventured out into the streets again, this time as it was starting to get dark, to get some nighttime shots, since we'll be leaving Takayama in the morning.

By now the rain, snow and snail had stopped falling, and it was pleasant, but very very cold. I have to admit, even though this is our third visit, Takayama remains a very pretty city. And as we walked around the city finding interesting things to photograph. With some dusk and nighttime shots done, and time for dinner approaching, we stopped briefly at a convenience store (a Daily Mart I believe. They're all starting to look the same now) before returning to the ryokan.

Down for dinner in the dining room, and I was expecting the worst for dinner, having been informed of the impending beef-lessness of tonight's meal. It all looked good though. The usual hot pot, set over a naked flame containing pork, mushrooms, onions, stock and that fantastic hoba miso paste that Charlotte and Veronica had with breakfast. The sashimi plate, which we again put into our hotpot to cook, a tempura plate, which tonight contained fantastic tempura squid, some average tempura vegetables, and the always confusing tempura leaf.

Instead of the wonderful lobster tails we got last night, we instead got a pot of spinach, topped with some gold leaf, and I think this had slivers of lobster disbursed through it. If it did, it was wasted because you couldn't taste it.

2 new dishes on tonight's menu was a bowl of raw, purple teeny tiny whole squids, no more than an inch long each, and a dish of chawanmushi, which is a hot savory gelatinous egg custard, which usually has stuff embedded in it. Tonight for our pleasure there was eel, some kind of mussel, and some strangely mummified vegetables sitting in it. I suspect they ceased being vegetables long ago.

These really were as bad as they sounded.

The freshly deadened squid, and the bowls of chawanmushi returned to the kitchen almost untouched. Veronica was brave enough to try the chawanmushi, and immediately regretted it. The rest of us learned from her mistake and left it alone.

With all the edible bits of dinner done, I must admit that it wasn't bad. The miso pork hot-pot was fantastic, and aside from the absence of hida beef, which was a let down as we expected. Veronica and I thought the flavours of tonight's meal was generally better than last night.

Last night our old lady hostess was very attentive, coming back many times to make sure we were content and had everything we needed. She also came back halfway through the meal to bring desert, which was 5 plates of delicious strawberries. Tonight this woman was simply missing. The ryokan had more people in it for the second night, so I suspect that they have trouble handling the load when their establishment was full. We finished the meal, and waited...and waited. Assuming she wasn't coming back, we walked out of the dining room, briefly searched for her, or anyone, to thank, and when we failed we went upstairs to prepare for bed.

Around an hour later the girls were in bed and I was sitting (on the floor, because there is nowhere else to sit) in my underwear writing the night's blog entry, when the lady knocks on our door (which has no lock, and is nothing more than paper and some timber). Announcing something loudly in Japanese she bursts in carrying fruit. Loads and loads of fruit on a giant tray. Veronica tried several different phrases to indicate that we didn't want the fruit, and eventually the message got through that we didn't want the desert, so she left us in peace.

Tomorrow we pack our bags and head for Kyoto, our favorite city in Japan. This ryokan has offered up an interesting mix of pleasantries, frustrating aspects, and at times just rage inducing stupidity, so I'm not entirely sad we're leaving.
Sumiyoshi ryokan has absolutely glowing reviews on Tripadvisor, but they won't be getting one from me. They've been good, but not great. From my limited ryokan experience they've only been average, but perhaps I'm just getting harder to please in my old age.