Tsuma-go & Magome-go

Main attractions:

• famous hike between Magome and Tsumago
• walk in both towns

Accomodation:
Shimosagaya Minsuku - booked through http://www.japaneseguesthouses.com/
8715 per person - Breakfast and Dinner included 
- found the place very expensive for what they offered - the food wasn't that great compared to other Minsuku we've stayed at and the owners were not friendly at all - or maybe they just didn't speak English very well and avoided any type of conversation with us.


Tips: 

• stay in Magome if you can - it is much much nicer than Tsumago
• take your time and do the hike between the 2 towns 
• good place to buy interesting souvenirs at reasonable prices

Took the train from Matsumoto straight to Nagiso station - and then finally got to tsumago - barely caught the bus from Nagiso station. Got there early in the morning so the town was nice and quiet… took us a while to find the minshuku but with the help of a local we were able to find it. Left the backpacks there and the we headed to the famous hike from Tsumago to Magome and return. I've read everywhere that the hike will take 3 hrs but it only took us 2hrs with breaks for photos and a beer :). Didn't find it very hard- i would say a moderate hike not too challenging but not too boring either. We've passed 3 other small villages (i am not sure even village is the proper term - a group of maybe 10 houses together in the same area) which was very interesting to see - their everyday life - most of it is farming around the house…
I found Magome to be a lot more picturesque than Tsumago and I wished we would have stayed there and not Tsumago but maybe next time- who knows?… We walked all the way down to the bus station did some shopping (they had very interesting stuff - I've noticed wooden souvenirs are their strongest point :) ) and then we stopped for lunch. I am not sure what the name of the restaurant was but i have a photo and maybe someone can translate the name for me :). The menu was pretty much the same at all restaurants in Magome (Which are not many - I've counted only 4 restaurants) set menu with trout , buckwheat noodles soup, pickles rice and a strange dessert which i did not figure out what it was (a frozen apple with something in it… ). It was not anything special but it was interesting for a change. I personally thought that was too much for me so i settled for a mushrooms buckwheat noodles soup which was very tasty :). The people in Tsumago and Magome i found them to be very cold… maybe they are sick and tired of tourists i don't know… The owners of this minshuku were also very cold- almost rude i would say - i'm comparing to the people from other places we have stayed at ( 2 other minshuku and 2 ryokan). The place itself was not too bad - the room was pretty spacious and the doors were closing properly :) i know it sounds weird but most doors don't close properly- some at all :). I found it interesting the fact that they don' close doors when they leave the house… during the day - i am not sure about night time… The food was nothing special -trout, rice, pickles, soup, buckwheat noodles salad (something new) and …. fried crickets - yes you read it well - fried crispy sweet crickets. There were a bunch of them on the plate but i've only ate 3 of them to see how they are - enough for me to realize that i don't like them - could pass the fact that they were crickets… The taste was not too bad- actually they were crunchy and tasted very sweet from the sauce - very common sauce that unfortunately i don't know the name of it… 

Shirakawa-go

Main attractions :

• Outdoor town museum
• Local onsen
• Walk around town

Accomodation :

 Minshuku Hisamatsu - booked it through the local information center: info@shirakawa-go.gr.jp
Address on the map : http://www.shirakawa-go.gr.jp/othercontents/file/pdf/map_english.pdf
Literally every house is either a traditional inn or gift shop so there are lots to choose from. We chose this one because from another review we found out that the owner spoke English and she did - not very well but better than we spoke Japanese - that's for sure.


Tips: 

• get the package with breakfast and dinner included because at 6 pm everything is closed
• If you go in winter/spring make sure you bring warm clothes cause it is pretty cold (and buy a bottle of sake - it will be very welcomed after the sunset when it gets really cold)
• wear warm socks when you visit the outdoor town museum - the floors are very cold and if you want to go inside the houses shoes must remain outside. 
• enjoy the evening at the local onsen - it's a great place to relax after a long day.

Traditional experience all right. Took the bus from Takayama to Shirakawa-go - very interesting ride - it's amazing what Japanese people have done into the mountains - most of our ride was in tunnels in the mountains. It was not too hard to find our minshuku because it was very close to the bus station and Shirakawa-go village is not very big (10 min walk from one end to another). Left our luggage and went exploring. As i said it was not too much to do - walked around the houses- took lots of photos, went to the view point - not very picturesque as i imagined it would be- because the timing was not very good and the weather was very dump. But in spite all that we tried to make the most of it and i think we did. At 3 PM we went and got our room (check in time was 3 pm) drank some hot tea cause it was very cold and changed our clothes cause it was getting colder. Took all our winter gear (gloves, tuque, winter jacket, boots) and went exploring some more - checked out the souvenirs shops - there is not much else to do in the village - not knowing japanese it was hard for us to go into museums because they were all in japanese - well most of them anyways.(i'll get to that later). 6 PM dinner time - Yay finally we got to experience a real japanese dinner in a traditional old setting. The fire pit in the middle of the room and the dinner tables around it. The beauty of this dinner room is that they have a fire pit inside but no chimney so guess where the smoke goes? Inside the room and eventually into the walls and roof… We were 5 guests at the dinner table(us 2, one japanese couple with a small 2 year old daughter and one girl from thailand) and we all started crying within 15 minutes- it was so much smoke in the room it was unbelievable… The japanese couple spoke little english so we talked to them for a while and after we finished our dinner we rushed out of the room to get some fresh air. Needless to say that all our clothes smelled like smoke and had to be washed. The dinner was very good- nothing too fancy- fish, rice, pickles, soba soup, and hida beef - steamed with other veggies.
At night, there was not much to do - all stores close at 6 pm so after 6 the village is dead so we've decided to try out the small onsen in the village. It was a nice way to finish our busy day. The onsen itself is nothing special (compared to Hirayunomori or other traditional onsens that we've visited) but it certainly did the job. We also had a discount coupon from our hostess that gave us an entrance discount. Noticed that the other people from the minshuku were there too so it must have been a very popular evening spot for the ones who decided to spend the night in Shiragawa- go. There is not a lot of socializing in Japan so when we got back from the onsen everyone went to their room and kind of stayed there. The night was pretty interesting - why? because outside it was probably a little bit below 0 degrees and the paper doors were the only ones between us and the cold… and that is not all  - on several spots the paper was ripped so we could see the rice plantations from our room:) - isn't that great? The only thing that we had to heat the room up was a small gas heater and 2 blankets. I can honestly say that was the coldest night of my life… inside a house (not considering the camping cold nights :) - that is a different story). Of course the heater went off in the middle of the night and we were left alone with only 2 blankets. I woke up in the morning around 5 am to turn on the heater cause it was getting too cold for me. Checked the temperature in the room after i turned on the heater and it was below 10 degrees Celcius… 
Finally the morning comes. Breakfast at 7 am - soup - rice, egg, pickles, tofu - all veggies  for this meal - very light but very filling (wasn't hungry until lunch at all- usually i have a snack in between breakfast and lunch but not with this the japanese breakfast). I am starting to like the japanese food - although at first it was very weird to eat soup and rice with eggs at breakfast now i am looking forward to it.  After breakfast packed everything and went to see the outdoor town museum which was awesome. 12 traditional houses kept as a small village and open to the public was showing us how people used to live more than 100 years ago (and it's in English too so that is a big bonus). It is worth every penny and the photos are amazing :) - one friendly advice - wear very very thick socks cause if you want to go inside the houses you have to take your shoes off and the floors are freezing cold… 

Japan 2011

Our trip was after the major earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 so we tried to avoid the northern part of Japan so we focused on Central Japan. I have to say i was impressed with the Japanese people because in spite of all the losses and sufferings they stayed together and helped each other to go through this tragedy. What was shocking for me was the fact that in several hotels where we stayed japanese travelers were thanking us for visiting Japan which i found very unusual.While we were there we also felt a few after shocks from the major earthquake which were pretty scary (considering the fact that we come from an area with no earthquakes) but more about that later on in the Tokyo page :)

Our 25 days itinerary was:

Tokyo (3 nights) - Hirayu Onsen (1night) - Takayama (3 nights) - Shirakawa-go (1night) - Kanazawa (2 nights) - Matsumoto (2 nights) - Tsumago (1 night) - Kyoto (4 nights) - Uji (1 night) - Mt Koya (1 night) - Osaka (2 nights) - Hiroshima (2 nights) - Tokyo (1 night).

This was a very relaxed itinerary with plenty of time to see everything but if you don't have enough time you can easily cut off at least 6 days from the following towns:

• Takayama - 1 1/2 days should be enough - the only reason we stayed so long was because of the Spring Takayama Festival which is ranked top 3 in Japan so we didn't want to miss that
• Kanazawa - 1 full day is enough to visit everything in the town
• Matsumoto - 1 day is enough to visit the castle and go around town
• Uji is pretty close to Kyoto so there is no need to sleep there for one night - a half a day (4 hrs) trip from Kyoto is more than enough to go around Uji and try all the different tea types in the town
• Mt Koya is a very expensive place to get to (because you can't use the Japan Rail Pass) and being there already i think it's not worth the time or the money.