Travel around Japan enough and you soon notice how so many places like to imagine themselves as somewhere else. Aomori Prefecture is proud of its "Mount Fuji," Mount Iwake; Kawagoe likes being called "Little Edo"; and there are so many "Ginzas" in the land that if you put them all together you'd have a whole new metropolis.
But the place that other places would most like to be is Kyoto, because it has a cachet like nowhere else. And of the provincial towns that happily call themselves "Little Kyoto," the one that comes closest to the ideal -- in some respects arguably surpassing the original -- is Takayama.
Set deep within the Hida Mountains, Takayama is one of the best-preserved towns in Japan, and its isolation plays no small part in the retention of its traditional character. This town in northern Gifu Prefecture is one of those places whose story of rags-to-riches-to-comfortable-obscurity always draws tourists' fond regard.
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