May 17th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
by brad (Japan, Travel)
If you are ever in Tokyo and you want to visit Shirakawago, make sure you understand just what a pain in the ass it is to get there and back. Our trip from Kyoto via Kanazawa the previous day was great (check out the post below if you missed it), and we had no idea getting to Tokyo would be simply brutal. Overall it was worth it, but we were mentally unprepared for what was to come.
Breakfast at Yokichi was an assortment of rice, banana, soup, veggies, and some strong miso stuff cooked in little pot. We also got a whole egg with our meal, and we couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it. Were we supposed to crack it over the rice to cook it? Do we put it with the miso over the fire? We kept peeking at our hosts, but we couldn’t get a good view. What to do? When we finally got up the courage to ask and stumbled through the language barrier, we discovered that the egg was already cooked – just a hard boiled egg.
After breakfast we returned to our rooms and heard people screaming into megaphones outside. Several cars drove by, full of people dressed up, waving, and yelling something. Our host said they were just there to say thank you, but we were pretty sure this was some sort of political thing, possibly an election (this was later confirmed in Tokyo). I’m not sure why the host would want to hide this, but maybe she didn’t want us worrying about local politics.
After our onsen adventure the previous night, Elise and Sage decided to go while we watched Riley. We were worried that she would get nervous without her parents around, but as usual she was a champ. She played with her toys, talked to us (usually “more”), and she actually ate food and took milk from me.
Unfortunately we didn’t have time to make any stops on our way out of town; we had to catch our two hour bus ride to Takayama. We wanted to spend a few hours in Takayama before catching the train back to Tokyo. That wasn’t going to happen. On the bus, we spoke to a nice Japanese couple who spoke very good English and found out the trip from Takayama to Tokyo takes two train rides and a minimum of five hours, and that didn’t include the subway from Tokyo station to Shin-Urayasu. Takayama was still the best route to take, but we canceled our plans to look around.
We barely caught the train in Takayama (George was in the bathroom and the train was leaving in about 30 seconds). It was a long, slow train to Nagoya, and to make matters worse the train was crowded and Riley didn’t have much room. She was not happy, but no one could blame her.
Once in Nagoya, we got bullet train reservations on a Hikari, but took the earlier Kodama (more stops than Hikari) instead. Riley was so excited to be off the trian that she lost it when we got right back on another one. Poor Riley. We discovered later that the Hikari we skipped passed us along the way, but at least it only beat us by 20 minutes or so. The one highlight of the journey was lunch – more bento boxes.
Back in Tokyo, we took yet another train to Shin-Urayasu. The entire day was spent traveling, and everyone was exhausted, dirty, and spent. Sage, Elise, and Riley went to sleep, but George and I were determined to make some good of the day. The whole trip started because our friends RT and Kari were living in Tokyo on a Disney contract, so we wanted to spend some time with them. They took us to a local bar where a Japanese guy sang a perfect impressions of What a Wonderful World, so long as you ignored a slight Japanese accent. By this time, George’s cold was really kicking in, so we headed back to the apartment to sleep.
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May 16th, 2007 at 11:32 am
by bradandgeorge (Japan, Travel)
After our fantastic breakfast at Tamahan, we headed back to Kyoto station on a bus. We were excited for our next stop: Shirakawago.
At the station we quickly purchased 2 bento boxes for lunch. Unlike our last trip to Japan, we hadn’t had much chance to sample the different types of bento boxes, so we were excited to try these out. We boarded the shinkansen bound for Kanazawa – our first stop on the long trip to Shirakawago.
Along the way we spotted this amazing (and very large) statue. Things like this abound in Japan. They seem to put a lot of effort into making their cities visually appealing.
We only had a couple of hours in Kanazawa, and although the train station was nice, we decided to squeeze in a little sightseeing.
We visited the tourist center at the station where a lovely lady told us to take a taxi to a garden called Kenrokuen. She said if we only saw one thing in Kanazawa, this should be it. Not wanting to waste any time, we took a taxi straight there.
We are so glad the woman in the station told us to head here, because it turned out to be one of the best things we’ve seen in Japan. It was an amazing garden with many cherry blossoms still in bloom, and the weather was gorgeous.
We strolled around for an hour and enjoyed the beautiful landscape.
We returned back to Kanazawa station where we ate our bento box that we bought earlier in the day. This was the best bento box of our trip; it was so good that we forgot to take a picture!
The bus to ride Shirakawago took us out of the city and into the countryside. The view out the bus windows was kind of depressing, and I was getting worried that it wouldn’t be very nice. In some ways it reminded me of long drives on the back roads of the Western US: isolated and run-down looking towns with old buildings and broken cars. At one point we drove through a tunnel that literally went on for miles. It was completely straight, yet we couldn’t see the entrance behind us or the exit in front of us. Eventually we came to a more mountainous region with far nicer scenery.
There was no need to worry; Shirakawago turned out to be quite pleasant – kind of like a ski town. The bus dropped us off in a small parking lot where a long bridge led us to the town itself. The bridge, despite having a concrete walkway, swayed and undulated, which George found quite unsettling.
Shirakawago was an old farming village, famous for its large farmhouses with steeply sloped roofs (to deal with the huge amounts of snow in winter).
Now it’s a world heritage site, and the residents make most of their money through tourism. We stayed in a farmhouse named Yokichi, which we found after getting only a little lost. After dropping off our stuff, we went for a walk while it was still light. George has somehow gone through life without seeing many windsocks, and they are quite popular around here. These were the first of dozens of windsocks we saw over the next few days.
Our first stop was Nagase house, one of the larger houses in the village. It has been converted into a museum, the upper floors housing a huge collection of old construction tools, farming implements, and antiques.
Silk production used to be a big part of life here, and all the farmhouses were built to hold silkworms on the top floor. In order to keep the worms warm and the ceilings dry, the floors were built with plenty of spaces between the slats. This space allowed smoke from the cooking fires to rise up. It sounds great on paper, but it’s a little unsettling when you’re walking on several hundred year old wood floors with a clear view of the space down below.
It can be hard to get a sense of scaling when looking at pictures of these farmhouses, but some of them are huge.
The village is surrounded by hills, which provide an excellent viewpoint. We had to hurry up the walkway to get some pictures before the shadow of the mountain covered the town.
On the way home we stopped at a convenience store, where we purchased some local Takayama beer and unfiltered sake. We also picked up a magnet for our collection (our fridge is overflowing with magnets from our travels). We resisted the temptation to buy the jug-o-Asahi.
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Dinner at the farmhouse was simply amazing – probably the best dinner we had in Japan. It was Kaiseki, similar in style to the Tamahan meal, but the flavors were more intense. Highlights included a whole salted and fried fish, tempura, noodles, and some amazing Japanese beef (something akin to Kobe but with a different name) cooked in a paper cup over fire.
Back in our rooms, Sage and Elise noticed that the guest book was filled with positive comments about the local onsen. We’re not big on public nudity (for ourselves anyway), but they convinced us to give it a shot. We walked right past it at first, but that gave us plenty of time to realize just how cold it was – perfect preparation for what is basically a giant hot tub. It was hot but fun in a novel kind of way.
Our beds were the usual futon on tatami – something we were getting quite accustomed to. They closed the outer walls of the house, which blocked most of the cold. It was still chilly, but not too bad.
Tons more pictures here and here.
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