Rosie was a little stiff after her futon experience last night so we were up early and on the road by seven to Shirakawa-go, one and a half hours up into the mountains. This remote area is best known for its ancient farmhouses with the thatched roofs called gassho-zukuri.
This UNESCO site has the largest concentration of these houses in one area and Rosie was keen on beating the tour buses as usual. It is a National Holiday in Japan today ‘Childrens Day’ and the last day of Golden Week so it was bound to be busy.
After driving for an hour, we arrived at the lookout point over the village at 0800….there were a few people there already but no probs for Rosie to get the pics she was after. The houses are lovely and rustic looking, perched in a grouping on the valley floor with the mountain ridges rising around it looked very much like a story book village. A few people were already wandering the streets of the village below and that was where we were headed next.
But wait! Pull the car over Operator…can it be? Rosie thought she had missed all of the sakura this season, but here on this mountain road amongst the cooler temperatures which no doubt had preserved these flowers, was a tree in full blossom. What a sight to see…there were a few more around in this cool clime, the very last of the season.
Rosie can never understand why someone would buy a house in a tourist village that gets thousands of visitors wandering past your door a day….real people were living in this village, their washing was hanging up outside.
The rice paddies and gardens in front of their houses were being tended, life was going on as normal for these people and here we were, hundreds of tourists taking pictures of them doing their daily mundane chores and then taking pics of the outside of their homes.
These houses are in a high snowfall area and the snow sits for a long time in winter. The farmhouses have high steep roofs to help the snow slip off and stop it being crushed and collapsing. The shape of the roof looks like praying hands hence the word ‘gassho’ which means, to join ones hands together in prayer.
Back in the day this village was renowned for silk worm farming, as a cash supplement over winter. The silkworms were farmed in the roof space of these houses.
All of the houses in the village face west and east to get as much sunlight as possible to keep the roofs dry so they last longer and to let the maximum sun in.
This direction also lets the wind off the Sho river blow through the house, to stop them blowing over in high seasonal winds and combat damp. Its these two factors, sunlight and wind which were also important in the growth of silkworms.
We were in and out out of the village just as the bulk of the visitors were flooding in,traffic was backed up for about 5km coming into the car park as we were going out. Excellent work Operator.
We carried on driving right into the Japanese Mountains, destination Shin Hotaka one of the many little hotspring/spa resorts dotted around the mountains. With Japan being a volcanic country natural hotsprings are everywhere, around these springs, resorts have dotted up in the modern times that offer the healing, recuperative, relaxing tranquility of mineral hot water baths.
To get there we followed a winding mountain road with tall red marker poles every 20 metres or so, reminders on the roadside on how deep the snow gets during winter. The scrapped ,banged and buckled road barriers were also a reminder of how hairy these roads could get too.
Nearly there and we came up to a bridge where about 20 people had stopped and were looking over the side. This looks interesting said The Operator, we will stop too and have a nosy.
Below us was a raging river, to the side was a small, steaming, calm hotpool, nestled amongst the rocks. Inside the hotpool, naked as the day they were born were about 8 men and one woman, relaxed and enjoying the warmth of the pool with the frigid air around them.
Rosie wasnt to keen for this to be her first foray into Japanese public bathing, and mixed at that…..we will pass, but it would have been awesome in the cool mountain air.
Our hotel was quite small for the amount of rooms in it, but it sure made up for it with the space inside the rooms.
Rosie and The Operator have only stayed in places to date where we haven’t been able to swing a cat…what a luxury this was.
The beautiful mountain top views were an added bonus as was the private continuous flow mineral bath on our deck.The temperature in the mountains had dropped to 15c and Rosie was straight into that bath which was a beautiful 40c, it sure warmed you to the core.
That night we had a buffet meal in the dining room with the other guests. The view from the dining room was incredible and we thoroughly enjoyed our dinner featuring the local delicacy Hida Beef. A couple of more baths later and it was time to check out, but not before a sumptuous Japanese breakfast. That lovely bit of lazy luxury came and went all to quick.
Tomorrow we are driving to Kiso, one of the checkpoint towns on the Nakasendo Way….the ancient royal road that went from the capital Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo).
