My mom complains that traveling with my sister is a big shopping spree. I’ve found this to be pretty true. She’d rather go shopping than go sightseeing. I like both and today we went up into the mountains to see the old villages of Gokayama and Shirakawa-gou which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

It’s a wonder that people can make a living up there and that’s probably why they charge you every time you turn around. Park in the middle of nowhere? 500 yen. Look inside the house? 1000 yen. There was a walking tunnel several thousand yards long that led to a four story elevator that got you from the parking lot down to the tiny village and someone had to pay for that, too. I know, it was taxes and the public works machine of the Liberal Democratic Party. I’m actually a big fan of public works, so I might as well enjoy them while I can, right?

Here’s a view of the village from above.

It was set in a pretty valley and I had to take some touristy pictures that may end up as my desktop.

Or is this one better?

You had to walk a ways to get down to the village.

And the houses were quite unique with thickly thatched roofs.

The houses are built for the snow, and I think the scaffolding is for snow barriers.

In case you were wondering if the houses looked flammable:

The way there was pretty uninteresting, unless you really like tunnels and the longest one we went through was 11km long (around 7 miles). We also were on the highest point in the Japanese expressway system. It was a lot nicer taking the surface roads that wound around the valleys to access all the dams they built as other parts of the public works projects.

We were able to stop on the narrow road because there was a parking lot for a pay phone.

After that we headed to Takayama in Gifu Prefecture. The old part of town was only about as long as two 100m city blocks (the long blocks in downtown Portland) and were full of tourists. The stores sold a combination of traditional crafts and usual touristy trinkets and I only bought what I could eat. I had several types of rice dumplings, which is probably what I’m going to look like before I get back. We also had some really bad coffee but I figure that’s what you get for drinking coffee in a tourist trap.

There were lots of foreign tourists in Takayama as well, though I couldn’t hear any American accents in the mix. I did hear Italian, German, and – I think – British. I’m wondering if the foreign contingent isn’t there because of the headquarters of Mahikari-kyo, one of the “new” Japanese religions.

We hit the tunnels on the way back as well, but I ended up falling asleep until we got out. As you can see, the mountains were still a little cold, though it is in the 20’s (in Celsius) in town.

The picture is a little funky, but that’s what you get when you take two pictures from a moving car and try to stitch them together.