DAY 11, Apr 22 Mon 2024:

Kyoto-Nagoya shinkansen, Nagoya-Takayama limited express, Day trip to Shirakawa-go

Checked out

In the morning, our train was at 6:14, so we vacated our apartment, took pictures as usual,

walked to the train station and boarded our train. For the electronic ticket the turn stile would provide real tickets once you scan the qr code

Kyoto to Takayama Logistics

SHINKANSEN KYOTO to NAGOYA

we took a shinkansen train up to Nagoya, we had already booked the tickets before landing in Japan.

1st leg: Kyoto To Nagoya [33 min] 6.14—6.48 NOZOMI.

LOCAL TRAIN, BUS COMBO PLANNED: Nagoya-Gifu train, Gifu-Takayama bus

We had planned to take a local train to Gifu from Nagoya which will take 20 minutes and then go to the bus station and take a bus for two hours to Takayama. There were three or four options for that local train to Gifu but the bus was at 7:40 to Takayama from Gifu bus station. if we missed that, the next bus was only at 10:30, we felt this was a tight stressful transfer.

CHANGED THE PLAN TO DIRECT LIMITED EXPRESS TRAIN... NAGOYA TO TAKAYAMA

In the Nagoya Station when we were looking for the Gifu train on the electronic board, we saw a direct train limited express going to Takayama starting at 8:00 AM, we decided it'll be easier to take that though there will be half an hour delay reaching Takayama than if we took the bus train combo.

Mistake in the ticketing

This was basically a good plan but we made a mistake in the ticketing. If we had taken the local train we could have used our ic card PASMO passport. For Limited Express, we have to buy a ticket. We did not understand that and we swiped our IC card for entering the platform from where the limited express would come and depart to Takayama.

We had a relatively long wait and son went down and recharged the ic card with more cash so that we'll have enough money for the ticket to swipe when we reached Takayama.

The Limited Express chugged into the station, we saw all the coaches were marked reserved.. We asked the staff where we can buy a ticket and he told us to go down again. son went down but the staff there asked him for our shinkansen tickets so he ran up again, got the tickets from me and went down again to get the limited express tickets.

I was anxiously waiting with our bags near the limited express, thankfully son came up with the tickets and we boarded the train.

MISTAKE THAT BECAME AN ISSUE LATER

[Remember we had swiped our IC card for the entry, so this would have been registered on our tickets and it will become an issue later when we try to use it in Tokyo because there was no exit for that particular trip. We had already bought the limited express tickets. Anyway we will handle that when we reached Tokyo and used our ic card again. Thankfully the staff there was also kind and believed our word and re energised our card. It is very important to understand and follow the rules otherwise the ic card will become invalid.]

TAKAYAMA

it was a scenic journey through meadows and alpine scenery and we reached Takayama before 10:00 AM.

Shirakawa-go

Obviously our apartment would be ready only by 3 PM, so we put our bags in the locker for 700 yen and walked to the bus station, just adjacent to the train station. We bought bus tickets for Shirakawa go which is 50 minutes away and we were on our way

White Japanese iris...

Shirakawa-go (Shirakawa Village, Shirakawa (“white river”) ) is a Japanese mountain settlement in what was once a wild and unexplored region. The area was named after the river that flows here

Because of the area’s natural environment, with high mountains and heavy snowfall, interaction with neighboring regions was limited. However, this also created the conditions for the development of unique cultural practices and lifestyles. Now the village is registered as a World Cultural Heritage site.

when people say "Shirakawa-go", they actually refer to the largest village of Ogimachi. There are also other villages within Shirakawa-go area, but Ogimachi is the main one that people visit.

Gassho style houses

Shirakawa-go Ogimachi is the largest hamlet of gassho-zukuri style houses in Japan.

The name gassho-zukuri literally means "like praying hands." The distinctive large roofed gassho style houses resembling hands joined in prayer, are a characteristic feature of Shirakawa-go today.

Each house is a masterpiece of carpentry. They are built without nails—every beam slots neatly into the next.

Early prototypes were built from 1700, as silk and gunpowder production in the village flourished during the Edo era. The current design seen around the village is from 1800.

Gassho style houses are residences built from wooden beams that support their steeply sloped, thatched roofs, that meet at a high peak, and resemble hands meeting in prayer. They are a form of thatched gabled roofs known as “sasu” structure.

The Wada House

The Wada house is the largest traditional gassho-style farmhouse in Shirakawa-go. We visited it first.

Built late in the Edo period (1603–1867), the house reflects the wealth and status of the Wada family, which for centuries was the largest landowner in the village of Ogimachi and whose members held the hereditary position of village headman (nanushi).

The family made its fortune in the production and trading of saltpeter (potassium nitrate, an essential ingredient in gunpowder) and, from the latter half of the 1800s, in silk production. From the late 1700s to the end of the Edo period, the Wada were overseeing a government checkpoint that regulated the flow of people and goods into and out of Shirakawa-go.

Parts of the three-story Wada House are still used as a residence, but most of the rooms and the spacious attic are open to the public.

Though the building has been renovated to some extent, we get a sense of how an affluent family lived when Shirakawa-go was at the height of its prosperity.

Facing the front of the house, one notices two entrances: The smaller one on the right was for residents, while the large doors on the left, which lead up to two tatami-mat rooms, were only opened for important guests such as government officials. The Wada House is the only building in Shirakawa-go with such an entrance, which speaks to the family’s high standing.

In addition to the house, which is designated an Important Cultural Property, the Wada estate includes an adjacent garden and pond, a notably large outhouse (lavatory), and a fire-resistant storehouse (kura) in the back.

The first floor of the residence centers on a traditional irori fireplace and displays items used in daily life such as tableware and kitchen utensils.

Nice fusuma[sliding door] with paintings

LOVELY WOOD CARVING IN THE PARTITION BETWEEN ROOMS

Close-up look at the wood carvings...

There is a large, ornate Buddhist family altar.

Hon-minoshi Paper...The highest-quality handmade paper used in this house in the partitions as that behind this board...

Nice paintings...

ATTIC:

we went up the ladder to the attic

In the multi-level attic, displays of tools and equipment illustrate how the roof of the house is thatched, we can also get a close look at the inside of the roof structure, which is secured using only straw rope and bindings (neso) made of witch hazel saplings.

Lovely View from the attic... great ventilation too!! this white paper is the highest quality mentioned above

we had enjoyed our visit.

we then walked along the stream

As we can see in the pic below, the attics are distinct in these houses.

One of the ways in which gassho style houses differ from other traditional Japanese houses is that the attics are employed as work spaces. From the Edo to the early-Showa era, sericulture (silk production) was the foundation industry supporting the people of the village. The large attic spaces under the eaves were usually divided into 2 to 4 layers and used in the rearing of silkworm.

Another feature is the design of the sasu-kozo style thatched, gabled, roofs. The roofs of Japan’s tradition thatched roofed house often employ a gambrel or hipped roof design (supported an internal wooden frame), but the gassho style design features gabled roofs with long, individual, beams defining and supporting roofline. This creates a large space through which light and the breeze can travel, producing ideal environment for the breeding of silk-worms

While similar buildings are seen in other provinces, in Shirakawa-go this style of building known as “gabled gassho style”, with its triangular shaped eaves resembling an open book propped up on its covers, is ideally adapted to great weights of snow deposited during heavy snowfalls in Shirakawa-go.

Additionally, the structures face to the north and south, taking Shirakawa-go’s predominant wind direction into account and minimizing wind resistance, while controlling the amount of sunlight hitting the roof, to provide cool summers and warmer winters.

It was a scenic walk along the gushing river

Tulips...

Rustic seat and table...

lovely wood statue

Even the restroom blended with the surroundings built in the same fashion, and they had this miniature there!! How cool is that!

traditional stone lanterns in front of a shrine...

Gasshozukuri Minkaen Outdoor Museum Area and Deai Bridge/Ogimachi Suspension Bridge

We walked across the bridge to the open air museum area.

The parking and museum zone is connected to central Ogimachi by the Deai Bridge, a 107-meter pedestrian suspension bridge across the Sho River built in 1993. Serving as one of the entrances to the village, the bridge is relatively narrow and unpainted, as it was designed to blend in with its surroundings.

we bought the tickets and enjoyed the outdoor museum

the open-air Gasshozukuri Minkaen Outdoor Museum consists of 25 structures, including several gassho-style farmhouses, storehouses, and sheds moved to the site to be preserved and displayed.

FIREPLACE/HEARTH

The irori fireplace is the warm heart of the gassho-style house. Besides being used for everyday chores such as preparing food and boiling water, the irori traditionally served a social purpose: Both the inhabitants of the house and guests would gather around it to eat, converse, and simply spend time with each other.

Furthermore, gassho-style houses were built to benefit from the smoke and heat rising constantly from the fireplace and passing through the lattice ceiling into the attic. Over time, soot from the smoke sticks to every part of the house’s interior, coloring it black and improving the wood’s resistance to moisture and pests.

The heat that reaches the attic helps keep the thatched roof dry, preventing rot and premature decay. The same heat contributes to keeping the temperature in the attic fairly constant, which was important when this part of the gassho-style house was used for sericulture or silkworm raising, , which flourished from the eighteenth century to the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Lastly, the irori also supported another local industry: Holes were dug under the fireplaces to make saltpeter, an essential ingredient in gunpowder, the production of which involves a fermentation process that relies on a stable supply of heat.

Hiama

Every gassho-style house in Shirakawa-go has an irori fireplace, above which hangs a wooden board suspended from the main crossbeams of the house and colored black by soot from the fire underneath. This board, or hiama, traditionally had many uses. Tools could be stored on top of it, or food could be hung from it to be smoked.

The hiama’s primary function, however, was to extinguish sparks rising from the fire before they reached the ceiling, walls or, worse, the thatched roof, starting a blaze that could threaten the entire village.

The hiama also helped dissipate smoke throughout the house while preventing heat from dispersing, keeping the area around the irori warm even in the dead of winter.

altar

model of the thatch roof...Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (Cladium mariscus), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. In Japan, Thatched roofs are made of japanese silver grass, reeds, rice straws, wheat straw, etc., all of which are readily available.

How is a thatched roof constructed?

A typical thatched roof starts with an underlying structure constructed with timber rafters and battens spanning those rafters. The thatcher fastens the first layer of thatch to the battens and rafters using a variety of fasteners.

The type of grass used to thatch the roofs of gassho-style houses in most of Shirakawa-go was traditionally a variety of miscanthus called kariyasu. The grass was grown on the hillsides of the Sho river valley, usually at high altitudes where sunlight was abundant and the soil suitable. Each family had its own field, which was tended to during the summer and harvested from late October to the end of November, before the snowy season. The harvest had to be completed before the first snowfall and was very labor-intensive: An experienced worker could reap 60 to 100 bundles of grass in a day, whereas some 10,000 bundles were needed to thatch an average roof. The harvested grass was initially dried and stored on the hillside in large cylindrical stacks called nyu. When a roof needed to be thatched, the nyu was disassembled. The bundles of dry grass were tied together and either pushed down the hill or, while there was still snow on the ground, slid into the valley like a giant sled “driven” by a villager.

Nowadays, miscanthus for thatching is cultivated only in fields reachable by car and dried down in the villages, where the dry grass is stored in sheds. The kariyasu grass itself has become a rarity, replaced by a faster-growing and more common miscanthus variety called susuki. Population decline from the 1970s onward has made maintaining the traditional grass fields difficult, and much of the susuki used in Shirakawa-go today is grown near Mt. Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture. The switch from kariyasu, which has hollow stems, to susuki, whose stems are distinguished by thick fuzz on the inside, has increased the time it takes for a thatched roof to dry after rain or snow. Roofs thatched with susuki therefore decay relatively quickly and must be replaced every 20 to 30 years, while a kariyasu roof can last decades longer.