五箇山、富山県 (Gokayama, Toyama-ken)

As a sort of way of congratulating us for surviving our mid-term exams, on Thursday we went on a trip to Gokayama, area of the city of Nanto (南砺市) in Toyama prefecture. It was a brief trip, we spent more time in total on the bus than in Gokayama itself, but if it meant: a) having no classes; b) spending some time with our Japanese foster families; and c) seeing something interesting, the every minute there was worth it.

Gokayama is known for thatched-roof houses that remained there since the Edo period (1603-1868) – they are even on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List, along with similar houses in the nearby Shirakawa-gō, in Gifu prefecture (白川郷、岐阜県).

And, believe it or not, that’s it really. Sure, upon paying Y300 you can enter one of the houses and see what life in a village like that was like or what tools they were using – in this case mainly spinning-wheels to make silk (entrance was not allowed to the very top floor where silkworms where kept), farming and making saltpetre – but one would have to be very keen spinning-wheel enthusiast or very passionate about history to spend there more than a few minutes tops.

For me the landscapes were a lot more interesting. The handful of houses, five tops, were at the bottom of the valley surrounded by high mountains and a river on one side. If anyone feels like escaping the civilisation or needs some fresh air, then Gokayama in the middle of the week, when there aren’t many tourists (apart from us there was only a small group of pensioners that arrived later) seems the perfect place for that. And from the pictures in leaflets I gather that in winter, once proper snow falls down, it’s even more gorgeous: white all around and with such a fluffy coat the thatched-roof houses literally look like taken from Christmas cards.