For New Years 2018-2019, Michi and I made a small trip to Shirakawa-go, which is a village in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. From Tokyo, you're looking at a two-hour plus ride by bullet train, followed by about an hour and a half or two-hour bus ride. The reason you might want to travel to this out of the way area is because of the buildings. Shirakawa-go is home to dozens of traditionally constructed Japanese buildings, although the construction techniques and designs are somewhat unique to that area.
If you can ignore the lovely lady in the foreground, in the background you'll see a steeply peaked roof made of mats of woven grass. The walls are simple slats of wood, and the windows are made of rice paper. Yes, even in a place that gets several meters of snow each winter and regularly reaches temperatures of -10 C (that's 14 F for you non-metric folks), they have designed their houses to allow for maximum air flow.
Anyway. The buildings were fun to see, and you can pay a small fee to walk around inside them, where they also have tea and videos explaining the construction techniques. We spent the night at the wonderful Toyota Eco-Institute, which is a kind of research center that also provides accommodation for scientists who wish to study the Shirakawa-go buildings, although they also allow normal people to stay there. Dinner and breakfast were well-prepared and lovely, and the hotel offers a lot of different activities you can easily sign up for. Michi and I decided to take a snow shoe tour through the woods surrounding the hotel, and it was delightful. At one point the guide asked everyone to gather around a "special" tree so he could explain something about it, whereupon he shook the tree, dumping snow on everyone's heads. It was quite funny. Later, he invited those crazy enough to jump off the trail and into the snow, which was about 4 feet deep.
We also visited a couple of restaurants and locations in Takayama. Now, since the early 2000s it seems like Kobe beef has been a known item among foodies in the US. This is a kind of beef that is very tender, and has high levels of marbleization, due to the cows being forced not to move around, being given massages, and yes sometimes being force-fed beer. In recent years, another kind of beef has been gaining in prominence in Japan: Hida beef, which is beef from cows raised in the certain areas around Takayama in Gifu. So, whenever you visit here make sure you try some Hida beef and you will not be disappointed.
Although it was just a month ago that we made the trip, it really drove home how much I miss snow. The Kanto area of Japan has a little in common with Amsterdam, in terms of weather patterns. One is the overall mildness of the winters here, and the lack of snow.
I highly recommend checking out Shirakawa-go. Thanks for reading!
