lets see....today is the sixth day of my Japan trip! so fast and its gonna be one week already. ok today is the day we went to Shirakawa-go! its a village that is under the protection of the UNESCO world heritage.

started the day off by packing 2 bags stuffed to the max! we had to travel light as we are still returning to takayama again, which means our baggage were all left in the hotel.

lol ate the same Hokkaido bun again....


hmm ate at the Daily Yamazaki!! its a convenience store?


then we nearly missed the bus as bro ate like 2 servings of instant noodles??

oo this is the inside of the bus and its climbing uphill! bus ride is about an hour or so up to the mountain village.

i took this picture of the tunnel! its so dark>?

ok after that going through of tons of tunnels of which i lost count as i fell alseep even though it was still early in the morning.

oo after the bus boosted out of the tunnel, we were greeted by snowflakes and white mist! the whole place was so beautiful!

tralala look at the snow~! love snow!

see the mist behind? its like heaven?

hmm this is the stairs to heaven.....okok this stairs lead to this really narrow bridge, big enough to allow 2 persons to walk side by side. anyway the bridge was really thin as in the amount of concrete used for the thickness of the bridge is like super thin? shuks dont know how to describe.

as we were walking to the minshoku, i took lots of pictures, enjoy! :D




oo you notice that plot of land with water, thats for farming! oh shuks forgot to explain. well Shirakawa-go is a village during the medieval times and they are self-sufficient! which means they dont need to buy food, they grow whatever they eat, they also tap from the mountain springs!

this place also has an average temperature of about minus 2-3 degrees in the afternoon. the people do farming and although its cold on any other day, you dont get snow except during the winter season.

lol thats my bro.

anyway we soon reached our minshoku, which was located ALL THE WAY AT THE BACK OF THE VILLAGE. which meant we had to walk the longest, much longer than anyone else. behind our minshoku is forest. ok here are the pics of our minshoku!

thats the place, all made of wood and straw, no metal.

lol as it was snowing so lovely and our previous hotel actually lents us umbrellas, take a look at em.

nice eh? all just snow. stand there through the night and you get a snowman. not get, you become.

this is the inside of the minshoku....its the few minshokus left that provides hotsprings! oh yeah they actually provide snacks?

oh sorry this is not a snack. this is a matchbox!

oh this is a biscuit!!

hmm slippers to wear...not to wear out

this is just outside our minshoku!

hehe we saw boots and we asked whether we could have them. the person actually ran out of the house with like slippers to another shed quite far away and brought us 4 pairs of boots? and after trying some could not fit so they actually ran back and took more?? service level here is good....



hmm walked and walked to look for our dinner! on the way i just keep taking breath taking photographs!!




ok finally, found a place to eat, just that my parents dont know whether to eat a light meal or a heavy one, so while they were debating, my bro and i went to make snowballs!!


lol took a close up pic of the snowball. he was actually trying to make a 'pao' which is a chinese bun.

after choosing to go for light food, they looked at the menu and couldnt decide, so i just kept shoving snow together.

at last! they made an option and that was to eat a heavy lunch. oh great. the time they took to decide was the time needed for me to make the snowpile below....

see the size difference.....lols.

parents took a long time to decide while i anyhow ordered and i got a kids meal....then we were laughing away!


the food was just so-so, not say that good or what, just normal food, i would have chosen chicken rice instead if they had.

after eating, we proceeded to the museum of Shirakawa-go where they tell you about how the people live and build the houses as well as survive. here are the pics! we didnt go in as we only had barely half an hour to walk around in the inside before it was going to close.





took these pics of the close up in the model house!

the doorway....

first floor!

second floor...

this is third floor! its rather big man!

fourth floor! this isnt really counted...

purposely took picture of the icicles!!!

hehe see how deep the snow is man! its usually ankle-deep.

it was snowing so heavily!! T.T now you know why the picture is so blur....

halfway crossing the bridge, the scenery was too beautiful for me to continue walking! so i took a picture!

as it was snowing, the cars got covered in snow! see? oh yeah the entire village is accessible by car....


oo i went to play around with my footsteps!! kept on twirling round and round and walking....the footsteps that seems to go out of line from the rest is mine!


back at the minshoku, i took out everything that i bought!


it was 7pm and its dinner time! the minshoku has provided us our dinner! we had to move to another room and all the guests sat around in a horseshoe formation as they served our dinner! rice was self service....

Dinner time!!

this is cold soba, a kind of japanese noodle that doesnt taste nice no matter how. udon is still best...

the red coloured meat in the middle is Hida beef!!

this fish was caught from the river!

thats mountain vegie!! bleh it didnt taste nice. was like eating herbs without the bitter taste.

this is just some kinda vegetable....that tasted OK!

obviously this is tofu.

and lastly LEAF TEMPURA! i was 'you gotta be kidding man....'

well we spent the night playing PSP and dad was busy playing with my phone's galatic attack, that ancient game.... i can say today wasnt that boring, lots of pictures were taken!!

Labels: 21 days, folk village, Holiday 2008, Japan, Shirakawa-go, sixth day, takayama