23 May 2009

I woke-up at 6:30am this morning since we had to meet at 8am in order to safely catch the 8:20am Hakutaka train to Takaoka. I packed up all of my stuff and enjoyed the complimentary breakfast for one last time at the Toyoko Inn. It is somewhat sad to think this was my last time staying at one for the rest of my trip. I wanted to photograph Kanazawa Station before leaving today as well, so Norio and I left at 7:45am to allow adequate time to photograph. Luckily, it wasn’t raining, but the weather was still very overcast. As a group, we successfully caught the 8:20am train, then transferred to a local train line at 9am. We rode the local train for almost an hour, then had an hour layover to wait for the local bus in Takaoka to take us to Gokayama. Since Gokayama is such a rural town, we only had a minimal number of opportunities to actually make it to the city. During the downtime while waiting for the bus, I walked to the closest Lawson convenience store to stock up on some snacks during our stay in Gokayama. No one knew what types of facilities the small town would have, so I figured it would be better to be safe than sorry. I bought a pack of peanut butter sandwiches and a couple potato veggie stick snacks.
We boarded the bus at 10:47am as scheduled, and it took about 20 minutes to arrive in Gokayama. Once in Gokayama, I was completely surprised by the appearance of the town. Almost all of the structures are Gassho Style Houses, which are basically a steep peaked roof made of dried grasses and plants. They give the town a very historic aesthetic, but surprisingly, the town had great facilities, and I even had perfect internet connectivity on my Blackberry. I never would’ve guessed that my Blackberry would be able to connect to the 3G network while I was in the mountainous town of Gokayama. It was a pleasant surprise. We wandered around upon our arrival, then took the bus to two neighboring villages still composing Gokayama. These two similar villages had all Gassho Style Houses as well, so it was very relaxing to walk around in such a natural environment. We took the bus between cities, but we made the 30 minute walk back from the last village to the village we were staying in.
Once arriving back at our village, the two groups went to their respective houses for dinner. For dinner, they were cooking whole fish skewed around a fire. The skewer went through the tail and out the mouth. It was really really scary, and I definitely knew I wasn’t going to be able to eat it. Derrick had already requested that he didn’t get any fish since he is allergic to seafood, but Don asked about my dinner as well. When I ended up getting my dinner, they somewhat misunderstood what Don requested, so they still served me fish, except without the head and tail. The mid section of the body was still completely intact, fins and all, so I was still scared of my dinner. Luckily, there were a million other items served with the fish. It took me 30 minutes to even touch the piece of fish in order to flip it over so I didn’t have to look at the fins. It was so sad. I decided I would eat everything else on my tray first, then I would try to eat the fish. I wanted to make sure that my phobia of fish didn’t make me sick before having a chance to enjoying the rest of the good food. I ended up eating everything and even most of the meat on the inside of the fish. It was a very filling meal.
After dinner, Norio, Derrick, Seth, Blake, Jeff, Shae, and I made the 5 minute hike up the hillside in order to photograph the village at night. Most of the Gassho Style Houses were illuminated from the inside, so we got a few good night shots from above. It was pretty scary being out in the wild when it was pitch black, and even some of the guys were getting creped out. It was funny now that I look back on it. The rest of the evening we hung out and talked. The room that Shae, Karen, Katie, and I were sharing was the largest, so our whole group hung out in there. The sound insulation is non-existent in the Gassho Style Houses however, so we called it an early night and went to bed by 11pm.