Takayama, Shirakawa and Ainokura
Japan, Life, Travel Comments (0)
Day 6-7 (Monday & Tuesday): Monday morning was early, rousting us all up and out at 6 a.m. to catch the bus to Takayama (photos here). What should have been a five-hour drive stretched to seven due to the rain, which closed the usual road into the mountain-locked town and sent us on a more roundabout, albeit scenic, route. After we finally got out into the mountains, the scenery turned vivid green, and rain clouds caught in the mountains made the landscape look like nothing more than one of those traditional ukiyo-e scrolls you see in museums! At any moment I expected to see Edo-period peasants shouldering water pails or branches as they clambered down steep mountain paths….
Takayama (“High Mountain”) is a small town that does its best to preserve its history, although not to the point of becoming a museum site like the villages we’ll be visiting tomorrow. It’s known for its fine sake, and the entire region for its beef. We are staying in another traditional hotel — no shoes inside the hotel, tatami mats and futons unfolded every night, although this one has a shower in the room that Akiko and I are sharing as well as a communal bath. We visited the Takayama Jinya, or branch office of the Edo government from 1692 to 1868 — it is a great wooden, shojo-screened, tatami-matted building exactly of the sort you’ve seen in countless samurai movies and the only surviving building of its kind in Japan. It was fun to pad through it in sock feet, exploring what is quite a large, spreading estate. Then we strolled down one of the preserved streets window-shopping and had a chance to taste a sweet and a dry sake from a local sake maker and miso soup from a local miso maker. The rain was pouring all day; in Japan, one leaves one’s umbrella outside when shopping or entering a restaurant or hotel. Usually it’s safe, but one student lost hers! Be sure to buy a distinctive umbrella if you visit Japan, to prevent others mistaking it for their own….
Dinner at the hotel was also traditional, with all of us seated around a long, low table. It was the first time since coming to Japan that I’ve had to kneel through an entire meal. Well, I tried to kneel through the entire meal; after about an hour one of my feet fell asleep, so I shifted to sitting cross-legged. Still, at least all that kneeling as a kid in judo is finally paying off…. The meal was a sort of shabu-shabu, with an odd iron device in the center of the table that combines a Korean barbecue with a pot of boiling water so that you can boil the very thin slices of beef and grill the veggies and thick slices of beef. Sometimes it was a bit tricky with chopsticks; I’m pretty good with them, but every some things are harder to pick up and manipulate than others! One of the sides was a whole fish, another chopstick challenge; Akiko said that if one can leave behind nothing but the head and bones at the end, one has truly mastered using chopstick. Hai, sensei! I’m still a lowly apprentice in the art of the chopstick.
On Tuesday, we had another huge meal that involved one little pot grilling mushrooms and veggies in miso, another pot boiling water in which to drop chunks of tofu before dipping them in sauce for eating, a variety of cold vegetables and a pickeled plum, a green salad, miso soup, rice, green tea, a little glass of apple juice, and probably more that I’ve forgotten. You’d think we’d get fat on this trip, but the meals are relatively low-calorie, and we do a lot of walking… After breakfast we took an hour-long bus ride to the UNESCO World Heritage site villages of Shirakawa and Ainokura. The rain was on and off all day; we enjoyed some very exciting claps of thunder later in the afternoon!
These villages are known for their old-fashioned gassho-style houses, with no-nail wooden construction and thick thatched roofs slated at a 60-degree angle. The houses are 100-200 years old; the oldest was said to have been built 400 years ago. Many of the houses are still being lived in, especially in Shirakawa, the smaller of the two villages. Ainokura, the larger and more commercial of the two villages, had both “exhibition” houses you could walk through and private residences that were off-limits to enter. The villages were surrounded by rice paddies and steep mountains and absolutely beautiful! As you might guess, I’m only choosing a few photos from each day to post on the albums; I’ve taken hundreds so far!
Upon our return to Takayama, we had two hours to wander before the streets roll up at 5 p.m. Brad and I took a photographing tour of the city’s historical district and one of its shrines and also did a little sake-tasting. Everyone split up for dinner; Akiko, another student and I chose to have a bowl of ramen. I’m trying to learn to slurp noodles correctly; it’s a bit of an effort, really! Now I’m sipping the hotel-provided green tea and using its wireless internet (who knew?!) to update this.
Tomorrow we’re going to the morning market before breakfast, and after breakfast we’ll be taking a couple trains to Kyoto. I’m looking forward to getting there!
drupagliassotti @ May 25, 2010