Got up early this morning to go with a small group of people to Shirakawa. This is the world heritage site of a very old (though mostly replaced) Japanese village. I say mostly replaced because the building design of the time involved making everything that could possibly be flammable, flammable. Apparently this doesn't make for long lasting buildings. Who knew.
On the way there I was impressed by the Japanese philosophy on road building. If they want a road connecting two places there is little that will stand in their way. We passed through many tunnels dug into the mountain to get to our destination, including one 11km long. It took ten minutes to drive through.
I wandered around with Dan, Abby and Adrian; travellers from New Zealand, New Zealand and Mexico respectively. Dan and Abby have been in Japan for eight months teaching English to a company... while learning startlingly little Japanese in return. Their excuse is laziness.
When I got back to Takayama I went to for lunch with another random group of people, the most interesting of whom was one who is hitch hiking around Japan. This is very safe here and he has made it a considerable distance with some excellent experiences along the way. I don't think I'd have the patience, however.
Later in the afternoon I caught the Hida train again where I found myself surounded by middle aged Japanese women, none of whom spoke English. Finally got to have a fairly lengthy conversation in Japanese with Marui san. Learned some new kanji out of it too.
At the next station I was struck once more by how polite and helpful people are here, as the moment I showed hesitation as to which platform I was heading to an old fellow walker over and started explaining the boards to me. I really like it here.
When I arrived at my hostel for my stay in Kanazawa (may have forgotten to mention where I was going earlier...) I found that I was one of only two guests there at the moment. It is a very small hostel holding at most 12 people. The building it occupies used to be a kimmono shop.
The owner, Masaki san, is extraordinarily helpful and my plans for tomorrow are all sorted. He then took Scott (the other guest) and myself to an old, though very modern and impressive, onsen. I'm pretty sure this place doesn't usually get foreigners, or indeed backpackers. It was a very good first onsen experience. There are many more ways to be too hot using water than I had previously realized. Only I could submerse myself in the freezing water afterwards though. Benefit of being Scottish I guess.
An aside. I have yet to run into any Japanese people who play go (igo as they call it) so have taken to teaching anyone in reach how to play. I hope I find someone who plays it before I leave...
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