The takeaway

Takayama has two morning markets and they are both very old. Miyagawa runs along the east bank of the river at the edge of the old town; Jinya-mae sets up in the square in front of the Edo government house. They started in the 1600s as rice and silkworm markets and became farmers’ markets in the Meiji period, and they have been going more or less every morning since.

They open around seven – six in summer – and they are finished by noon. That is the part people get wrong: they come down at eleven, find half the stalls packing up, and conclude it was overrated.

Go at seven, and the whole thing opens up. The light is coming down the valley, the river is loud, and there is nobody about but the people setting up and a few residents doing their actual shopping. That is the market, and it is lovely. By nine it is visitors; by ten it is winding down.

What is actually on the stalls: mountain vegetables, a lot of pickles, miso in wooden tubs, apples and chestnuts in autumn, dried persimmons, and the local sweets. Then the craft end – sarubobo, the faceless red cloth monkeys that a Hida grandmother would make for a daughter expecting a baby, and small pieces of yew carving and lacquer.

How to be a good customer. Ask before photographing a stallholder, and most will say yes and then want to talk to you. Cash. Do not haggle – that is not a thing here. And buy something small from the person you photographed; it is the right thing to do and it costs about three hundred yen.

Then go straight to Sanmachi. The old merchant streets are five minutes away and at half past eight they are empty, because the first coach from Nagoya has not arrived. You get the market and the old town both to yourself in the same morning, and you are done before most people have had breakfast.