just for fun

This is something I wrote last year when we were still living in Japan. It's been hanging out in my drafts box, and I thought that I might as well post it. :) Here it is...

Jesse and I took a little trip for Christmas this year, since we had a couple weeks off and there was a place we really wanted to see before we left. A couple things weren't what we expected...

It was supposed to be a winter wonderland. That's what all the pictures showed. It should have looked like this:


But it didn't. It was brown. And raining. And cold. It was so cold, it should have been snowing. But it wasn't...it was raining.

Then we stayed at this really cool place there where we were supposed to eat a super-cool dinner at a fireside hearth. It should have looked like this, plus a fire underneath and fish being grilled on sticks:But it didn't. They cheated and put a wood stove in the hearth, so there was no visible fire or smoke. Cheaters.

But, all in all, it was a great trip, and we're happy we got to see this part of Japan. We went to two places and both were picturesque. The first was Takayama, a charming old town that has preserved many of its old homes and buildings. This was a great place to just walk around and enjoy the town. Which we did a lot. Here are some pictures of Takayama:

A nice street.

An old merchant's home (as in, an old home previously owned by a merchant :)

Asaichi, or morning market. These ladies are out selling their goods every morning no matter the weather.

Another old home.

Then we took a bus a couple hours away to Shirakawa-go, the village shown in the snowy picture above. This was a great little village. Actually a World Heritage Sight. Very small, very charming, yet very real. There are a number of gassho zukuri, or traditional thatched roof farmhouses. At first, I felt a little disturbed by the sight of cars, plastic tarps, and souvenir shops, as signs of modern life. But after a day of walking around, I came to appreciate that this village is a very real place, with residents always trying to balance the historical significance of the place with continuing to live "normal" life. Although we missed the snow, I liked the way the raindrops dripped down the straw on the thatched roofs and seeing colorful umbrellas all over the town. The dinner at our inn, although there was no smoke and no fire, was still great. We even got to have mountain vegetables with miso paste cooked on a magnolia leaf, one of the area's specialties.

We debated about staying a little longer the next day in case it snowed and got beautiful, but we were pretty ready to get home. We hadn't been on the bus back more than 10 minutes before it started snowing. We looked on a live webcam today and, wow, it looks beautiful. :) Oh well.