Day 10: Shirakawago

*back dated entry*

today we woke up early in the morning to catch the bus tour from nohi bus service for shirakawago & ainokura... they provide english speaking guide though you cant expect excellent english...

shirakawago bus tour, photo taken from here....

so the tour will comprise of 2 locations, ainokura & shirakawago but latter is the main attraction.... during our time we only have the day tour, but i think end of jan there will be night lighting in shirakawago so i think there will be some night tour.... the price is abit steep but consider you have a relatively nice lunch & a guide, i think the $ is still well spent....

snowy morning

family mart to get your breakfast

bus ticket

different bus timing

ainokura town

snow buried building

so white!!!!

snow trail

snow ball

cute doggie

look at the amount of snow

snow covered town

human height snow!!!

snow covered trees

so our first stop was ainokura, a pretty small town so we only stopped by for a short while... i dont think there were many people still staying in this town.... we were really shock to see the amount of snow!!! if nobody cleared the path, one step & you would be sunk in.... hubby is 1.7m tall & the snow piled up even higher than him!!!! next, we went to have our lunch at a restaurant in shirakawago....

lunch

simple lunch but the miso fish was really tasty.... the restaurant was situated at the shirakawago viewing point so lots of people in the area.... the guide said there is a walking trail up to viewing point but the route would be closed when snowing, so can only access by car....

view from viewing point

apparently the day we went to shirakawago happened to have heavy snow so everything was exceptionally white... it was constantly snowing, sometimes pretty heavy.... when my lab mate went last year dec, he said it wasnt so heavy.... haha... so dont know were we lucky or what... but we definitely experienced enough snow + cold in the same day....

shirakawago map, photo taken from here.....

so you can see shirakawago is actually pretty small town... since it's a UNESCO world heritage site, lots of buildings were preserved and very few villages still stayed in the area.... so the coach will stopped at the bus stop & to enter the village, the only route is to walk across the pedestrian bridge.... the bridge wasnt very wide so do pack light if you intend to stay overnight in the gassho houses....

bridge to shirakawago

gassho houses

icicles

so you can see from the maps that there were several houses like wada & kanda houses... those were made into museums for tourists & you can enter them.... i think we went inside wada house which was the biggest house in the area according to our guide...

inside wada house

ancient fire place

staircase to roof

exhibits

exhibits

close up of gassho house roof

gassho roof

the unique thing about the gassho houses lie in the way the roof were made... during the ride to shirakawago, the guide showed us a video of how the villagers changed the roof... i think they were like stacking layers of hay/straws onto the roof & it can be done within a day when all the villagers participate.... so after visiting the wada house, we continued to walk around the area...

pretty plants outisde the stores

pedestrain bridge

look at the amount of snow

 so for the bus tour if you want to walk around the area longer, you can tell the guide & she will pass you bus tickets for a later timing bus... but seriously the place was so cold that you will want to hide in the bus to keep warm instead of bracing through the cold wind....

for dinner, we tried this home style restaurant near the hostel since we couldnt find much stores opened....

home style restaurant

hubby dinner

my dinner

cant you see the prawn!?!?! so HUGE!!! my dinner set was pretty humble but i really love the side dishes, all tasted so nice!!!! oh, another 2 famous thing in the area were hida milk & sarubobo

hida milk

sarubobo

sarubobo means baby monkey, is this red thing in the picture.... it's supposed to be a good luck charm in the hida region... they come in different colours for different purposes like for money, love, study, etc.... pretty cute i guess.... with that, we finished our 2 night stay in takayama.... i think the place is pretty nice, more for relaxing... & i think the place will be even nicer during spring/autumn whereby you can see different colours instead of white everywhere =)