Correction, the trains on the Takayama line are only *2 cars* long (previous line was 4 cars).
Our hotel in Gero had photos of the train passing by the hotel over the years from the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s
The hotel (Bōsenkan) also had its old brochures all the way back to 1936 (aka Shōwa 11, the blue and green one) with the type running horizontally from right to left.
The 1950s an 1960s ones are great too
Exploring the town of Gero on my #LocalTrainTrip
The Gasshomura folk village at the top of the hill has amazing old-style grass roofs like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie. At traditional shop was cooking locally caught river fish on skewers over charcoal. And there was a nice local shrine with stone tori (gate). Super quiet a peaceful, just off the main tourist street. There was also an art festival happening with interesting organic lettering on their banners that caught my eye
The main part of Gero town runs along a stream that feeds into a wide, rocky river at the bottom.
The buildings have some nice old signage. And one shop along the stream had a nice looking self-serve vegetable stand where you just put your money in a box and take a bag tomatoes, about $2 a bag
The next big town over is Takayama, 1hr via 2-car #LocalTrainTrip . Original plan was to stop over in between at a smaller town. But as it turns out, the train only runs every 2.5 hrs or so and we missed the earlier train. We tried to research and pick one of the towns, but all of the shops seemed to be closed on weekdays and would be hard to justify 2.5hrs there when Takayama had sooo many thing we wanted to see, so no stopover, all 5hrs spent at Takayama.
One stop was the retro museum:
I got a new goshūin calligraphy written in my book at the amazing Hie shrine in Takayama. It had this amazing 1,000 year old tree. And the Japanese Maple trees were just starting to show their red fall colors
More interesting signage in Takayama
Two robots, two frogs, and a couple made out of beer cans, all from different locations along the way
