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.
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