The first stop on our excursion was to Takayama a town known for its carpentry, morning markets, and Sarubobo - a faceless doll meant to bring good luck to females in regard to marriage and child bearing.

Sarubobo are on a ton of local products.

If you think the Sarubobo are kind of creepy check out this guy.

Statues like this were also all around the town.

The hotel we stayed at in Takayama had an onsen, Japanese for hot springs, but I wasn't able to find any place where I could get a picture of just the hot spring. What I did take a picture of was one of the other students who was obsessed with Dragon Ball Z getting owned by an arcade game at the hotel.

Right before leaving some of us walked around the town to see if we could find anything interesting and we ran into this beauty. All of the decals, figures, and body pillow in the back seat are to my knowledge from a Japanese video game called Touhou.

As a side note hoping to get Grizzly a hand carved bear as a souvenir I memorized the phrase for "Do you have a bear" - "Kuma ga arimasu ka?" My quest was unsuccessful and I'm pretty sure I saw a carved form of every major animal other than a bear.