Takayama

Takayama is where the rail map thins out. Getting here means either the slow, genuinely scenic limited express up the Hida river gorge from Nagoya, or a bus over the mountains — and getting onward to Kanazawa means a bus, roughly two and a quarter hours through the Shirakawa-go valley. Check that timetable before you commit to the detour, because there are only a handful of departures and they book out in season.

The town itself is small and the point of it is the Sanmachi district: three streets of dark-timbered merchant houses, sake breweries with cedar balls hanging outside their doors, and a river with a morning market along it. All of that is walkable in an hour, which is why the arithmetic favours staying the night rather than passing through. Between about ten and four the buses arrive, the streets fill and the town stops being what you came for.

Winter changes the calculation. The old town under snow is the best version of it, but the mountain roads close, the bus schedules thin and the daylight is short — so the trip becomes about one town rather than a crossing. In summer, Takayama also works as the base for the Kamikochi valley and the alpine route north, both of which need an early start and a weather fallback.