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Today we started the day early with a bike exploration tour of the old-town, compared with a visit to a museum of the so-called "floats". These floats are big, more or less portable shrines that are used during the city festivals.
These floats are so elaborately decorated that they can weigh as much as 2,5 tonnes, requiring up to 80 persons to carry them around town! A local speciality is the use of puppets on these floats. These marionets are controlled by some 36 stings, and after seeing a demonstration it is simply astonishing how they managed to develop this stuff years ago, while we were still playing with old socks. It also more or less explains why Japan is so big in robotics at the moment.
After this we went for some sake-tasting, as Takayama is a famous sake producing city. It was really, really good, even though it was only 11:00!
The local delicacy tasting and buying was a big feast, especially Luke, our tour leader is addicted to these snacks.
In the afternoon I went to a open-air museum where a number of old houses and farms are conserved and a very informative audio-tour is available.
Dinner was tempura and sashimi, which we took at a small family restaurant and as the other dinners it was also very good!
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