Base of a new religion in Japan inTakayama
We
left Takayama at 8:00 am to insure that we arrived at Shirakawa early enough so
that the bus could take us up to a high point where we would be able to view
the Shirakawa complex. The trip was
reasonably pleasant in that the weather cooperated. I am continually surprised at the large
number of tunnels that are used to take us through the mountains.
Shirakawa
is a world heritage site based upon the way the houses in the village are
built. It is called GASSHO-ZUKURI or
joined hands. It involves using
triangles in the roof similar to the way the 59th Street Bridge is
built. Our guide took us on a walk
passing the Shinto Temple. The
Shinto-ism of the village was quite different than the state Shinto-ism which
evolved later. It involved village
festivals to celebrate holidays related to the rice planting and
harvesting. After the “official” tour,
we wandered around on our own. There
were many shops catering to tourists many of whom were Japanese or at least
appeared to me to be Japanese. I bought
a key chain.
Note carp in family pond
We
loaded up in the bus and drove into Kanazawa.
We stopped at the train station which is a big shopping center as well
as train station to have lunch. Roz,
Emily and I went to a conveyor belt Sushi restaurant. Basically they have a conveyor belt with the
different types of sushi they have. You
take what you want off the conveyor belt and they pay based upon the number and
color of the dishes that you have. The
color of the dish indicates the price of the particular item. Prices ranged from 105 Yen to about 600 Yen
for each individual dish.
We
loaded back on the bus after lunch and headed for the KENROKU-EN Garden and
associated craft museum. The gardens are lovely and we wandered around. The gardens were built for strolling. After a while, I got tired. I had woken up with my hop hurting and it
decided to act up a little again. I hope
I got some decent pictures.
 | ||
| Another nice looking house in Shirakawa |
 | ||
| Lunch at a conveyor belt Sushi Restaurant in Kanazawa |
Our
next and final stop for the day was at a place where we were lead through the
production of a box with a gold leaf design.
Gold leaf is extremely fragile and fortunately the ladies there are
skilled at patching up the errors of tourists.
Doing this gave me an appreciation of the skill it takes to create a
good design in this medium. The boxes
that we worked on are typical Japanese lunch boxes.
Gold leaf work
We
were then dropped off at our hotel. I
was shocked when I entered my room to find that my suitcase had preceded
me! Roz asked me to walk with her over
to the train station because she had heard that there was a Starbucks there
with Wifi. We got separated and I headed
back to the hotel. Roz came back to the
hotel to learn that she could get Wifi here.
At
about 6:30, we went out to dinner. I had
elected the Western style restaurant because both Japanese and Chinese
restaurants offered meals that consisted principally of pork and shell fish.
I
wound up back in my room at about 8:00 pm.
We are leaving in the morning for Kyoto.
No comments:
Post a Comment