Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 18 - Up into the mountains (again)

I slept for almost 10 hours and woke up feeling almost healthy. My plan for tomorrow is to wake up cured.

We left Kanazawa bright and early on the 8:45 bus. We arrived in Shirokawago about an hour later. We wandered the village a bit, 

climbed to the viewpoint, 

And then went into one of the gassho-zukuri houses. It is called the Wada House after the name of the family that lived (lives?) there. Yaemon Wada was made the first mayor of Shirokawago over 100 years ago,and his house is considered one of the most important in the village. There wasn't a whole lot in it though. 

This is not the Wada house, since I forgot to get a picture, but it looks a lot like it. Below is the inside of the Wada house.

After that we wandered outside of the tourist part of town in search of a post office for cash (which were almost out of and needed for our next hotel). After finding one and regaining the peace of mind money brings, we returned to Shirakawago proper and got lunch at a little restraunt.

Then we wandered towards Hachiman shrine, which had a little museum next to it dedicated to the Doburoku Festival, which is a sake festival. I paid the 300 yen entry fee while the others waited outside. The museum consisted of a little 12 minute movie explaining the festival (in Japanese, no subtitles) and then some wax figures of the festival performers or whatever they were. 

On the second floor there was a little museum with some old sake stuff, the dragon masks, and a festival shrine. When I went to leave, the lady at the desk offered me a sample of the unrefined sake. After one little sip, I called Mom and Rich over to try some so I wouldn't have to drink it all myself. The lady then informed us it was a little over 15% alcohol. None of us liked it, but we managed to finish the cup smiling and then hurry off.

We just barely returned to the bus station in time to catch the bus to Takayama. The ride included a stretch through quite possibly the longest tunnel I have ever been through. I had totally forgotten how many tunnels were involved in the ride and was very dissapointed. 

Again the bus ride was about a hour long. After which it was a 7 minute walk to our hotel, which is actually a temple that runs a youth hostel. There was only employee available, a lady named Yukina, and she was busy with another guest when we arrived. She had us wait in a little lounge while she gave the other guy a really long tour. Then it came our turn for the really long tour, which included the baggae storage, the kitchen, the computers, the showers, then our rooms and another shower. We are on the top floor, which only has one bedroom (seems like it is really two, so Rich gets his own room again), and a bathroom and shower.

The reason we came to Takayama was for the Takayama Festival, which is held twice a year and is considered one three most beautiful festivals in Japan. Sadly it was canceled today due to rain. We hope it is better tomorrow. Since there was no festival, we first found this foot onsen:

The we wandered through the old part of town:

And then went for dinner. This area is famous for its Hida beef, which apparently beat Kobe beef one time in the Japanese beef rankings. So we decided to try that. We used tripadvisor to find a restaurant and made our way there. We actually had to wait for a table, as it was very crowded and not very big:

When we were seated, it was at a large table where we were joined by a Japnese lady and a British couple. It ended up being very interesting. Soon after we got our food the Japanese lady started to ask questions. Her English was decent enough to converse and we soon found out that she actually was from Fukui (the city near Sabae) and she was friends with the daughter of the owner of UFO (the company Myra works at). Once the British couple heard us talking with her, eventually they chimed in and we started an interesting conversation with them. Japan is their last stop in a three month Asian tour for their honeymoon. It was a very enjoyable conversation. The food wasn't very interesting (though Rich really enjoyed his dish). 

After that we headed back towards our hotel and found that while the ceremonies may have been canceled, the festival lived in the form of little food stalls all along the river. Sadly, we were all quite full at that point, but I did get a chocolate covered banana with sprinkles. It tasted like a banana with sprinkles.

It still didn't occur to me until we were back at our hotel that the shrine would probably be worth visiting anyway. At that point no one was interested in going back out. So we didn't.