Every morning, farmers come down from the mountain villages and set up their stalls in front of a government house that has stood since the Edo period. The Takayama Jinya is the only surviving example of a Edo-era magistrate's office still in use in Japan. Its stone-paved courtyard becomes a market for a few hours each morning, seven days a week, every day of the year. Spring brings fiddlehead ferns and mountain herbs. Summer brings tomatoes and cucumbers. Autumn, apples and persimmons. Winter, hand-pounded mochi and pickled vegetables. The sellers are mostly local farm women — called kaka-sa in the Hida dialect — who will tell you how to cook what you're holding, if you ask. The market traces its roots to the early nineteenth century, when silk farmers gathered near the Takayama Betsuin temple to sell mulberry leaves. By 1894, it had become a vegetable market; eventually it settled into its current location in front of the Jinya. The Miyagawa Morning Market is a ten-minute walk away, along the river. The two markets share the same produce and the same dialect, but feel entirely different — one framed by water, the other by history. One of Japan's three great morning markets. Open every day of the year.