🇯🇵 'When Japan reopened its doors to independent travellers three months ago, I joined the surge of visitors'
experience was at Daihachi, an inn where I took my place at a low table surrounded by floor cushions in the dining room. Dishes arrived in small decorative bowls set on a tray: sweet ayu fish and juicy hida beef, vegetables, salad and soup.
From Gujo Hachiman I climbed further into the hills, exploring narrow Machiya merchant houses in Iwamura with harmonious garden courtyards and sampling sake at Iwamura Brewery, which dates back to the Edo era some 250 years ago.Light-headed, I ascended higher to the Nakasendo Trail at Magome-juku, an ancient pathway connecting Edo with Kyoto. Above the town, the smoky blues of the Kiso Range opened out, while the autumn colour of the lower slopes seemed brighter, more vivid than home.
Three sets of slippers were provided for the bathroom, balcony and the rest of the hotel with its indoor and outdoor baths and Japanese gardens. The nakai – maid – ceremoniously welcomed me with green tea. After a long relaxing soak in my room’s bath, I slipped into a yukato – a cotton kimono for dinner. Back in my room, I discovered that the nakai had laid out a futon. Deeply relaxed, I fell into an easy sleep.
To experience how rural Japanese lives in harmony with nature and each other, I took a bike tour through countryside on the outskirts of Hida City. I cycled through rice-fields, visited a shrine and peered into a multi-generational farm.In remote Shirakawa-go, west of Hida City, harmony has earned the mountain village Unesco World Heritage status. Here the entire village comes together to re-thatch the triangular-shaped gassho-style houses .
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