REEELY OLDE JAPAN: SHIRAKAWA-GO

Breakfast at the hotel then on the bus for the drive to Kanazawa, with a stop in the mountain village of Shirakawa-go, another UNESCO site, famous for its gassho-zukuri-style houses with thatched roofs designed to resemble two hands joined in prayer.  The ride took most of the morning and included a lot of the very long tunnels that we're becoming used to.  One of them today was 7 miles!  Once we arrived, our fearless driver took us on a very narrow, twisty, steep road that Yoshiko says most tours don't go up.  The payoff was a lovely view of the village from a hilltop.

This place gets a LOT of water runoff from the surrounding mountains, and they still cultivate rice in amongst the houses.  Each plot feeds a family of 4-5.  As they are rather isolated here, the rice is for their own consumption.  After everyone got their fill of snapshots, we headed down to a parking area on the right bank of the river you can see at lower right.  To get to the village proper, we had to cross a suspension bridge that was impressively long.  I think it would be a bit more exciting in the rainy season when those rocks below are covered with running water.  Chuck, Alice, & Loni are on there somewhere.

Once in the town, we were free to roam around until the meetup time, a couple of hours later.  The place isn't that big, so we had time to wander and enjoy the old architecture, rice paddies, etc.  This might be a big tourist attraction, but people live their ordinary lives here so you have to respect their private property.  We enjoyed the scarecrows arrayed along this building.  The locals take advantage of the abundant cool, running water.  The sluice in the top right pic holds various canned and bottled drinks for the merchant (out of sight), and a diversion sends the water down over them constantly.  Old roof construction, and a lily pond.

lChuck and Alice at the overlook; rice paddy; tourist store wares.

The houses are 2-300 years old, all built with steep roofs to shed all the snow they get here from storms off the Sea of Japan.  They're put together with posts, beams, and rope!

Most of them have doors on the second story so that they can get in and out when the drifts pile up.  The roofs get re-thatched every 20-40 years, depending on how bad the soot buildup gets on the inside.  The ceiling wood gets black, but apparently the soot dries and preserves the thatch.  When it is time to redo the roof, the whole town turns out, like a barn raising, and the new roof is up and ready in one day! They make quite a pretty picture.

 

 The thatch is, of course, a tremendous fire hazard and there are water stations throughout the town.  The entire village participates in fire drills.  The water nozzles are all gravity powered, and the pressure must be tremendous.  There's a photo in one of the buildings showing a practice run with all of the nozzles in the village going at the same time.

We got to visit the home of a farmer, half of which he lived in which was off limits, and the other half a museum.  This must have been a pretty wealthy guy at one time, as the woods, silkscreens, and carvings were all pretty fine.  Even had a Buddhist shrine.

We had a little time to spare, and we were hot from the walking, so we stopped off for an ice cream.  Japanese ice cream was uniformly good, with interesting flavor choices.  Had to encourage Loni to leave the trinkets behind so we could get back to the bridge and bus to continue on to Kanazawa.

 Kanazawa is the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture, on the eastern coast. It's known for well-preserved Edo-era districts and was the home of the second-most powerful samurai after the shogun.  Before going to the hotel, we did a tour of the Higashi Tea district, home to the geisha center of town.  Although we saw many women walking around in geisha garb, most all were just local teens and young women who were playing dress-up.  There might have been the occasional geisha apprentice, but we couldn't distinguish.  Yoshiko assured us that no self-respecting true geisha would be out at this time of day, and would never permit herself to be photographed.  It takes years of apprenticeship to become a geisha, learning singing, classic dance, tea service, etc.

We didn't bother to view the inside of any of the geisha parlors.  They wanted about $7 just to go in and look around, with no geisha present.  Pass.

After touring this area, we walked over to the samurai district to see the former home of the Nomuras, a wealthy samurai family who served the ruling Maeda family.  Yoshiko termed it a small house, but we thought it was quite large.  Lots of rich wood, painted panels, shrines, mats, and gardens.

Time to walk to our hotel where, we hope, our bags were delivered from the bus while we've been on walkabout.  We're staying at the Kanazawa Tokyu Hotel, quite nicely centrally located and across the street from a huge multi-level mall.  As is the case throughout Japan, these malls house huge food courts ranging from simple take-away to elaborate sitdown.  Collette was providing tonight, but it was at a buffet place that was an absolute madhouse.  It was clear that, in addition to locals, other tours were there as well.  This was not a high point of the tour.  Although the food was quite decent (tempura and sushi available), fighting for a table and then muscling around the various stations to fill your plate was a multi-bump-and-run affair.  We ate, but it was far from a calming evening.  Early crash for us after a very long, interesting day.

WET DAY IN TAKAYAMA

Between the last post and this, many days have passed, as Google, which owns and mishandles Blogger, is no longer playing nice with my blog composing program, Open Live Writer.  The internet is rife with complaints about the problem, so it isn't just me.  Something similar happened a couple years ago, and it took an angel at Google to freestyle a fix.  Hopefully, that will happen again, but can't count on it.  So, I'm reduced to using the vastly inferior Blogger engine to compose the blog.  This means no more easy positioning of photos.  They'll all be left justified.  No more wrap-around text for the photos.  No more lots of stuff.  So, if things look a little different, they are.

Shot from our hotel window. We both slept very well last night. Must be the total blackout shades in the hotel, the Takayama Green Hotel. Breakfast buffet at the Green Door restaurant was more eclectic. Many dim sum choices, German potato salad (?), and the usual rolls and eggs. We boarded the bus in a light rain for a short drive to the center of town where they have artisans’ shops and a farmer’s market. The fine woods used on the houses and shops was disfavored by the shogun at the time, so they were painted black to mimic cheaper wood more suitable for the merchant class. This was the old Japan that Loni was hoping to see.

 

At the farmer’s market, I tried a deep fried marshmallow square. Don’t ask me why. It tasted just like it sounds. I should have tried instead the octopus croquettes that the gal below was making. The Yen at this time was roughly 100 or so to the dollar, so these were three for about $2.

After wandering about the shops, we went off to visit one of the oldest administrative buildings in Japan, the Jinya government building. Another shoes off affair; I really should have brought along a pair of those complimentary slippers they hand out in the hotels. The rooms are all laid with tatami mats, the borders of which represent the class level of the occupants or allowed visitors. Everything was quite hierarchical in the 17th century, with separate entrances for the different classes, men and women, and rooms each was restricted to. Samurai from Edo, the capital, got a better entranceway than did the local warriors. Rank was also designated by how many tatami mats long and wide your space was. Note the blue borders on the mats below. Those were for higher ranks than mere black borders. The fish-on-a-stick was a method of adjusting the height of the kettle over the fire. The officials lived in this structure as well as administered from it.

 

The peasant-supplicants who had to deal with the bureaucracy had to stay down on the unpaved floor, while the officials sat up above on the mats. The roofs were a marvel of shingle layering. Count the number of layers on this eave. Stacks of shingles await repair work that was underway.

 

After finishing the tour, we had the afternoon free. Yoshiko gave us a few suggestions, one of which was to visit the museum for the town’s festival floats, the Takayama Matsuri Yatai Kaikan (whew!), a UNESCO site. That sounded pretty good to us, but only one other couple decided to go that way, so we set off with Bob and Noreen with Yoshiko leading us part of the way.

The Takayama Festival, held in spring (April 14 and 15) and autumn (October 9 and 10), is ranked as one of Japan's three most beautiful festivals (the other two are Kyoto's Gion Matsuri and the Chichibu Matsuri).

Four of the autumn festival's eleven floats (yatai) are exhibited at the museum, a hall next to Sakurayama Hachiman Shrine. The elaborately decorated floats are several hundred years old. We certainly were wowed. One of them had no wheels, weighed 2.5 tons, and would be carted around by 80 men under two long poles. It no longer appears in the parade, as they can’t find 80 suitable volunteers of equal height.

 

In an adjacent building was the Nikkokan, a display of 1/10 scale models of the different parts of Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, one of the most ornate and celebrated shrines in the country. As a former model train enthusiast, these creations were mind blowing. This is the Yomei-mon Gate, also called the Twilight Gate to imply that one could enjoy looking at its architecture all day until sunset.

 

This structure is the Honchido, where the Yakushi Buddha is stored:

 

A procession carrying one of the festival floats, and other views.

 

We really enjoyed this stuff and, along with Bob & Noreen, had the place to ourselves. I think the rest of the group really missed out on something special but, who knows what they found. After this, we were hungry, but we stepped outside to an absolute deluge. We tried to wait it out, but it didn’t seem like it was going to let up, so we sloshed off in search of a local place to eat, something authentic. We sure found it. B&N were at first reluctant, especially Bob: “Are you desperate or just really hungry?,” but we convinced them to take a chance. Turned out to be a one-woman operation, and she spoke absolutely no English. Ordering was comical and uncertain. We had no idea what would actually appear. The whole place consisted of two tables and three stools, and once the lone guy at the bar left, we were it. The back wall beyond Loni is only 18 inches away, altho it looks farther. The food came one dish at a time as she had to cook everything individually. As usual, I, as the slowest eater, was served last. It turned out to be a bunch of stuff on top of fried udon noodles which then was placed atop fried eggs. Looks dubious, but to these wet travelers it was manna from heaven. It was quite good. It cost 650 Yen, so just under $6. This really was a place that catered to locals, not tourists, so we were happy. And yes, so was Bob! He even had to get the owner to pose for a picture.

 

After this we split up as I wanted to find a 7-11 to use the ATM for some more yen. The rain had eased, so we could walk leisurely back to the hotel where we met a bunch of others from the group who all wanted to don kimonos for a group picture. I generally loath these things, but Loni really wanted to join the fun. We went upstairs and unwrapped our supplied kimonos and, feeling thoroughly embarrassed, trekked downstairs. Much confusion and order-giving, but we finally managed to get the shots taken. Some Japanese hotel patron wandered by as we were shooting away and asked if he could join in. Why not? He’s the ringer front center in the gals’ photo below.

 

The guy in the dark flowered kimono in the first row seated was our oldster whom we helped around once in a while. He was a funny guy, traveling solo, named Gwendell Hohensee. What a monicker! I give him full props for getting out there and doing it. We ate a later dinner in the hotel, fully expecting to get ripped off. What a surprise. Excellent food, very reasonably priced, in a nice dining room. Nice going Takayama Green Hotel!