Sunday had us leaving the hotel bright and early to head to Gokayama. Gokayama is a World Heritage Site with around twenty gassho style houses that are hundreds of years old (the oldest is said to have been built some 400 years ago) and built using no nails. Architecturally, Gassho houses were built with steep roofs to allow snow to easily roll off them. Our first stop in Gokayama was the washi no sato center. Washi is Japanese style paper. The process itself is fairly interesting to learn about but the coolest part was that we got to make our own postcards!
Video explanation of how to make washi paper.
Here Xue and I making our postcards.
My postcards!
This is what they look like before the water gets suctioned out and they placed in a steamer.
This is all of our postcards drying on the steamer.
After that we explored the village for a little while until our guide hustled us off on an unplanned side trip to see a local tradition dance being performed. It reminded me a lot of the owara kaze no bon dances which makes sense because part of the meaning behind both was about having a good harvest. Here was another time where we got treated like celebrities. We arrived mid performance but as soon as there was a break one of the announcers welcomed us and Akeem was called forward to do some on the spot introductions of us and translation of what the speakers said in front of the crowd. Then afterwards we, "the foreign population," as Akeem called us, were invited to come forward and take pictures with the dancers. Considering the size of some of the cameras that were snapping photos of us I'm sure we ended up in another local paper.
This is one of the oldest houses (and me!)
We hiked up to get a view of the whole village, some of which you can see over my shoulder.
I thought this dance was actually pretty cool.
Akeem acting as translator.
The following videos are of the three types of dancers we saw:
Akeem, Sheila, David, me, Xue, Martyn with the dancers.
Sheila, Xue, and I posed with two of the dancers and some of their props. I wanted to keep that jacket :D
Lunch was a cute little local place where we all ordered soba or udon and ate onigiri that our guide had specially made for us with mushrooms from the mountain. We then departed to Tonami to go to the Tulip Gallery. The Gallery had some fascinating information and history about tulips in Japan and the indoor greenhouse was beautiful. I definitely want to go back to see the area in the spring.
The awesome wooden table at the restaurant we ate at.
Hot soba noodles, tofu, and dancing fish flakes = delicious!
2 comments:
I counldn't understand why you took a video of your soup, until I watched it. I am not sure if you should eat something that is moving as you try to eat it! keep posting - I enjoy reading your adventures. Love Mom
Interesting that your mother would make that comment about the soup moving given the fact some of her meals were also moving after being served! Keep trying new things.
Love, Dad
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