Nagoya and Gero

Sorry! Its been a while, but we`ve been doing so much! Nagoya was a sprawling hub of a city, I believe it is Japans 3rd largest.
It was very very hot, but we managed to take a side-trip to Matsumoto (see Liam`s previous post), which was absolutely stunning, Matsumoto had some kind of frog theme going on and there were little frogs everywhere, there was a shrine with a similar name to the frog thing in supermario...so that must mean something! Anyway, it was incredible picturesque and some of the little alleyways with shops in them were so typically Japanese that they felt like being on a film set. I was very excited about buying a parasol/umberella, its the best thing in the world!

From Nagoya we were due to head to Gifu as I had heard that we could watch cormorant fishing from there, however, I messed up the booking and actually booked a night in Gero (a small spa town in the Gifu prefecture). It was an amazingly happy mistake! In our guide book there is barely a line on Gero, it says that it is a spa town and that old Japanese people go there. The book is so misleading! It was the most beauiful town set on two sides of the Hida river in a valley surrounded by Japans famour green green hills. We were lucky enough to be there on the day of their dragon fireworks festival. The town was full of Japanese people on their holidays (we didn`t see one other western tourist there), they were all dressed in traditional dress, yukatas and kimonos and there was festival food everywhere. There was so many young people and it had such a vibrant happy feel about it. We arrived at our hotel and found that there was a free bus from the station, when we got there we were sure that we still had the wrong place. We found it on `hosteworld.com` and it was down as a budget hotel, and we had paid a pittance for it. We arrived at what looked like a 5 star hotel, with a huge ornate traditional japanese-style lobby with hot spring water fountains which lead into a free footbath with rose petals in it. No one spoke english, so we explained that we were early, but they didnt undertand and were apologetic that they hadn`t prepared our room yet. So instead of the western-style, shared bathroom room we had booked, they really really apologetically lead us to a palace of a Japanese-style room with an ensuite and free tea and traditionally Geroian delicacies free! It was amazing!
After a shocked wander through Geros streets, where we met a lovely lady who ran an art gallery and couldnt speak a word of english but still kep us there and wouldnt stop chatting away and who asked us to paint pictures for her - which we did! We got our Yukatas on and, after readung the instructions again and again, headed to the hotels Onsen.
Men and women are separate, so we parted and got naked! Onsens are like huge baths of hot water which you relax in, its a strange concept because its already 35 degrees outside and then you get into scalding water, but it was great! Liam even went into the male outside one where everyone could see his nakedness! (the womens one was screened off). It was actually an amazing experience and we both enjoyed it loads!
Later on the fireworks started (after we ate some bananas on sticks covered in blue sweet stuff?!), everyone gathered by the banks of the river (there were thousands for such a tiny town!). The fireworks were spectactular and lasted for over an hour!
After that some music started in the street and everyone started dancing the same dance in a circle, we were told it was a summer dance, traditionally done because the heat of summer is so intense that you need some kind of escape in the cooler evenings. It was so beautiful to watch and it lasted well into the night (we could see it from our luxury hotel window).
The next day (after running out of the hotel in excitement because it REALLY was that cheap in the end!), we headed for the bullet train to take us to Shizuoka.