Day 64 (June 15, 2017)

Hida Takayama, Gifu → Takane, Gifu

Unlike the Southern European cappuccino and croissant, the Japanese breakfast is a meal eaten at home, and I was overjoyed when, at dawn in the old town of Takayama, I found a restaurant serving it. In the mountains, I’m less of a human than a furnace on an Arctic ship which will consume first the dining table then the walruses, so I ordered the deluxe version, beef on rice, with a bowl of red miso soup. In the dark alleys between the Edo-era machiya townhouses, girls cycled to school in the slanting light, and the white aurora of the Hida Mountains floated in the sky.