Takayama sits in a valley in the Japan Alps at about five hundred and seventy metres, ringed by mountains, and until the railway arrived it was effectively cut off for months at a time every winter. That isolation is exactly why you should go: the town kept its Edo-period merchant streets intact, kept its own carpentry tradition, kept its own food, and still feels wonderfully like somewhere that does not need you.

It sits in the old province of Hida, which is a word worth knowing – Hida beef, Hida carpenters, Hida farmhouses. Those carpenters were so good that for centuries the region paid its taxes to the imperial court in labour rather than rice, sending craftsmen down to Kyoto and Nara to build the temples you will have already admired.

Most people come for a day from Tokyo or Kanazawa, and that is the one thing I would change – a day gets you the old street and a bowl of noodles. Two nights gets you the mornings, the onsen, the farmhouses and the mountains, and it is the part of a Japan trip people end up loving most.