Spectacular Shirakawa-go

Where: Takayama & Shirakawa-go

When: May 18-19, 2008

Info: Shirakawa-go is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Gifu Prefecture. It's a collection of Gassho-zukuri buildings. Gassho-zukuri means 'clasped hands' and that's what the roofs of the homes look like. The thatched buildings are designed this way to allow rain and snow to fall off of it. Most are now minshuku (family run inns) and as Justine wanted to see the Japanese countryside on her trip, I decided that a night in a gassho-zukuri inn would be cool.

We started our adventure by taking an early morning train to Takayama, which is the closest you can get to Shirakawa-go by train. We walked around the old streets and took lots of pictures. 

(The sake arrived in an overflowing masu and was served with some salt)

Takayama has a ton of sake breweries and you can identify them by the big balls of twigs hanging out front of the buildings. Every time I had gone to Takayama I'd wanted to try sake in a masu (little wooden drinking...box/cup?) but either someone had been sick (Elz) or it had been too hot (mom and dad). I knew this was going to be my last time in Takayama so I dragged Elz and Justine into a brewery.
We tried a sweeter sake and to be honest, those little boxes hold much more sake than they look like they can. I had only eaten a breakfast pastry that morning and it pretty much went straight to my head.

(me...soon to be drunk.)

All feeling a little tipsy, we decided that finding some lunch would be smart. We chose a famous ramen restaurant where I had eaten with Aaron and Tiffany. I remembered that the ramen had been delicious and they had played awesome rock/taiko music. Elz asked our waiter if they sold a cd of the music and he said yes. Unfortunately, when we asked him after eating, he said no....boo...

(Super rare beef sushi - OK, but not my favourite)

(Some of the most amazing ramen!)

Our bus to Shirakawa-go didn't leave for a while so we bought some snacks (sembei!) and roamed the stores. Justine got a kick out of the crazy Japanese fashions in one store (I think she could probably pull off that sparkly pink fedora!). When the bus to Shirakawa-go finally left, we found it was almost empty and by about 45 minutes in to the 2 hour ride, we had the bus to ourselves. I wasn't feeling too great (I think I was slightly allergic to the sake) so I slept for a bit and soon we were zooming through the mountains, across rivers and in and out of tunnels. We arrived in Shirakawa-go and discovered that our minshuku for the night, Magoemon was gorgeous.
We relaxed with some tea and sweets and then went out to look around before dinner.

(The gassho-zukuri are famous for their irori (built-in hearth). Part of our dinner was cooked over the fire)

We walked all the way up to the lookout point at the top of a small mountain/hill. We might have entered an area that was closed and roped-off....but sneaking in was worth it...check out those views. You could see the entire village surrounded by rice fields and mountains.




Dinner was amazing. Of course it included my not-so-favourite mountain veggies but everything else was divine. The river fish cooked in the irori was amazing and this area is known for great beef. We were all stuffed by the end of the meal and after baths we rolled into our futons.

The next morning we got up early (due to the very loud, old men in the room beside us), had a great breakfast in front of the hearth and then wandered a bit more around the village. We caught an earlier bus back to Takayama and then a train to Gero, a famous onsen town.

(If you look closely, you can see some old men bathing in the very outside bath...right next to the people playing cricket...uncomfortable)

Elz and I had been to Gero almost a year and a half before and had really enjoyed the foot onsens. As Justine wasn't so interested in a traditional onsen, we thought this would be a good way to experience the relaxing hot springs without getting completely naked. 
We picked up some ramune, a famous summer pop in Japan. The bottle is half the fun. You jam a piece of plastic into the lid and a glass marble shoots down into the liquid. It rolls around in the middle of the bottle and you can spend forever trying to figure out how they make the bottle. Just imagine...it used to be made entirely from glass.

(Corn flakes, soft ice cream and an onsen tamago. Brilliant)

One foot onsen is located inside a store. There, you sit soaking  your feet while watching a tv which plays a constant series of commercials/interviews with celebrities who are eating an ice cream parfait containing an onsen tamago (an egg slowly cooked in the hot onsen water). When Elspeth and I had been here before we had wanted to try it, but it had been 10AM and neither of us were hungry after our ryokan breakfast. This time we had no excuse. And it turned out to be REALLY GOOD.

(The water in this one was a bit hot....)

We walked around the town soaking our feet in the different foot onsens and looking for stamps (there was some stamp rally thing...we ended up finding them all but didn't want to give up our cards to enter some contest...). It was a relaxing afternoon.
Later we caught a train back to Nagoya station where we ate misokatsu (fried pork with a miso sauce, a Nagoya specialty) and of course, took some purikura!

Thanks for coming to Japan, Justine! I had a blast travelling with you!