Roving Japan

Day 71 Photoset

Had a lot of fun with Kazuhiko today. He took us to the Masamura family grave at the local temple, a couple of history museums, and a town that is famous for its Taisho era architecture. All in all, a pretty interesting day.

The Masamura grave was pretty big. There were 5 different stones, and the graves dated back to Risa’s great-great grandfather. Just like with the grave we visited with Yousuke, we washed these grave stones, and grave a little prayer before leaving.

From the grave site, Kazuhiko took us to an area that has a couple of history museums. The first museum he took us to was focused on dinosaur bones and fossils found in the Mizunami area. Mizunami used to be a lake bed, so there are lots of fossilized shells and other sea creatures. The feature display was this big pig/hippo thing that once lived along the lake shore. It was an interesting museum, although pretty small. A great place for kids to visit on the weekends though.

The second museum we went too was a little cooler. It was built into a hill side and made to feel like a cave. On the cave walls were signs and information, and it was made to make you feel like you were walking through time. It was completely designed for little kids, but it was still pretty cool, especially the dinosaurs and the movie theater at the end that showed a movie about plate tectonics and the history of Japan.

When we were done with the museums, Kazuhiko wanted to take us to Taishomura, or Taisho Town. This town banks on the fact that it has some old buildings from the Taisho era. They also have a bunch of museums where you can look at artifacts from the Taisho era of Japan.

Just one… tiny… problem. Most of the stuff in the museums were NOT Taisho era. And they had a ton of random stuff in there. One exhibit room was all about accordions. Another was all about the Olympics. It didn’t really have anything to do with Japan, and it certainly wasn’t Taisho era Japan (between WW1 and WW2).

Besides the fact that the exhibits were totally random, it was still interesting. There was one section that was all about old Japanese movies and actors. Kazuhiko took this opportunity to act out one of his favorite scenes in a movie he used to watch all the time. I have to say, after seeing his performance, I think he missed his calling. It was pretty good.

Risa was fascinated with the Taishomura mayor. This lady dressed in a bright pink dress with pink hat and pink umbrella. She obviously loved herself, because there were pictures of her everywhere. She even had her own section in the museum devoted to her life and career in the theater. It was a little strange, especially the life-sized replica of her in her dress that was in a glass case in the museum lobby.

We spent a good amount of time at Taishomura, but we eventually had to leave to go meet our new host, Risa’s uncle, and Yousuke’s little brother, Yasunobu.

Yasunobu lives in Nagoya, but he was at his cabin in the countryside near Mizunami. It was a little scary getting there, as it started to rain like crazy and Kazuhiko’s car didn’t have a navigation system. I had to bust out the iPhone and hold it on the dash as a poormans navi. It actually worked pretty well, as we didn’t get lost.

When we got to Yasunobu’s cabin, we said our goodbyes to Kazuhiko, and then started exploring the awesome property that Yasunobu owns out here. The property has lots of trees, flowers, and berry bushes. It’s incredibly peaceful. But the land itself takes second place to the awesome cabins that he has built here. He designed them himself and built them with wood imported from Finland. The original cabin is a small, one room hut with a wood stove and small kitchen, but it’s very nice. The main cabin is much larger, with a big kitchen, bathroom, and a bedroom on the second level. However, the main attraction is the bath house that he built. He even did the tile work and painting! It’s great stuff.

We were originally going to stay at the cabin tonight, but it was really humid and Yasunobu forgot to bring a futon. So, rather than stay in the hot cabin, we drove back to his apartment in Nagoya.

Yasunobu speaks really good English, so the drive to Nagoya was really fun for me. It’s nice to finally be able to communicate with one of Risa’s relatives in more than broken Japanese!

Day 70 Photoset

The plan for today was to go to Shirakawa-go. A famous mountain village in central Honshu. It’s actually really close to Takayama, the city that Yousuke took us too a few days ago. So for the 2nd time in a week, we will be driving into the mountains on one of Japans toll highways.

We started out a bit on the wrong foot. Kazuhiko took the wrong on-ramp to get on the highway and we ended up going about 20min in the wrong direction. In America this is no big deal, but in Japan, the highway toll system punished us by charging something like $5 (each way).

Since we’ve been doing so much highway traveling the last few days, I think its interesting to note some differences between Japanese and American highways. The first thing I noticed is that most of the toll highways are elevated and have tall walls on each side. It gives you the impression that you are driving in a concrete trench. Also, since Japan is so mountainous, they don’t bother following the mountain sides, instead the highways tunnel right through the mountains and span the ravines on extremely tall bridges. It makes a trip through the mountains a lot less “mountainy” than on the roads we chose to drive in Shikoku, or any highways in the states. Especially since we spent seemingly half the time in a tunnel. Don’t try holding your breath in these tunnels either. We are talking 1km – 10km long tunnels.

Another stark contrast on the highways are the speed limits. Here, the posted limit is 80kph (50mph). Most people drive 100kph (60mph) – 120kph (75mph) when they can, but occasionally you hit single lane sections with slow drivers and/or 60kph (40mph) sections. That means we were sometimes on the HIGHWAY going as slow as 40mph. I’d normally let it slide, but to add insult to injury, you have to consider the tolls. The toll to drive the 163km (about 100mi) from Mizunami to Shirakawa was $50!! The slow speeds made the drive almost 3hours! Unbelievable! If you’re going to charge that kind of money, I’d hope you would be like Germany or Italy and have no speed limit. Make it worth it! Imagine a drive from Eugene to Portland taking 3 hours and costing $60 each way. Would you bother?

Regardless of the highway headaches, our arrival in Shirakawa-go made it all worth it. This mountain village definitely deserves it’s title as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s absolutely gorgeous. The village is known for it’s unique thatched roof houses with the distinctive a-frame architecture and the serine mountain setting. We were lucky today because it had recently rained and the green mountains and fields looked extra green.

Our first impression of the town was from a high lookout point before you enter the valley. It was quite the, “Whoa!” moment for us. When we first saw the village below it felt like we were looking into the past.

Shirakawa-go was beautiful in the summer, but the town is actually more famous for its winters. Apparently this valley is usually covered in as much as 15ft of snow. The houses have multiple levels because in the heavy snows you have to use level 2 or 3 as the “ground floor”. Also, the houses are HUGE, and would usually house between 6 and 20 people consisting of the main family and all their workers. “Workers?” you might ask? Well, these houses weren’t just houses. The bottom floor was a residence, but the 2nd floor was essentially a factory. These homes were totally self sufficient. They made their own silk, clothing, tools, food, you name it. Of course, this required a lot of labor, so these big residences usually housed many people who all lived and worked together.

Risa loved Shirakawa-go. In her mind, this has been one of the best experiences we’ve had on the trip. We’ve been to so many cool places, so it’s hard to say it’s #1… but it’s definitely top 5, maybe top 3.

On our way home from Shirakawa-go we decided to stop at Gujou, a small city that is known for it’s castle and its summer dance festival. We had past by Gujou when we were with Yousuke, but the dancing festival hadn’t started yet. Since it was now going on, and Kazuhiko and Yukiko have never been to the festival, we decided to go check it out.

We arrived in Gujou too late to get in the castle, but too early to see the dancing. So we just walked around the outside of the castle, and Kazuhiko and I tried our ninja skills on the outer wall of the keep. I think we would have been pretty successful.

After the castle we grabbed some local Soba noodles for dinner, and then checked out a cool plastic food store. If you aren’t familiar with the Japanese art of plastic food, let me explain. When you go to a restaurant in Japan, you can usually find most of the dishes on display in a glass case near the entrance. These dishes look almost exactly like the real thing, but they are all made out of plastic. It’s actually really cool when they accurately represent the real deal… but it can be disappointing when the real food doesn’t live up to the image you saw in the window (see: Kobe hamburger from a few weeks ago). We bought a keychain with a chunk of plastic chocolate bar. I tied it on my bag so when Risa is walking behind me, she has some motivation to keep going!

Finally, around 7pm the festival got going. We walked to the main town square and found the throng of people engaged in a massive group dance. The people dancing made a circle around an elevated stage in the center. The dance was predetermined by the music, and each dance had about 10 steps which repeated for the duration of the song. It was pretty clear who had done this before and who was new. The pro’s were in the first couple of “rings” closest to the stage, while all the newbies sort of stumbled their way through the dance on the outside. Lucky for us, the dances were fairly simple, so after watching for a few minutes we each gave it a shot.

This festival goes on for an entire month, with dances every day.