Where we went....

As I have mentioned before, my girlfriend and I travelled to central Japan during the winterholidays.
We started in Hida-Takayama, the capital of Gifu prefecture, famous for its quater of dark wooden buildings dating from the Edo period and also its beef, which in fact is delicious, but somewhat expensive. You eat it together with cold soba noodles. Takayama is rather small and very calm so its perfect for just walking around. And i spotted snow for the first time, since i came to Japan!
We stayed overnight at a youth hostel adjunct to Tenshoji one in a row of buddhist temples at the east end of the city. A great place! Overall there seem to be much more temples than Shrines in Central Japan, just opposite to eastern part.

Further up north is Shirakawago a narrow valley beneath a reservoir. Ogimachi is its largest village consisting mainly of old farmhouses (gasshotsukuri), with their triangle shaped roofs, beneath which silkworms where bred in former times. The silkworm waste then was buried in the ground under the living space, where it transformed into a base material for gunpowder, and remained the main source for it for several hundred years. We stayed in one of these old houses. Otherwise than stated on their homepage they didnt serve dinner at the fireplace, where a small stove directly is put on the ground. So unfortunately we missed that experience.

Finally we arrived in Kyoto, the must-see-town of Japan. There we got a glance of Kansai-livestyle. People seem to be much more relaxed over there, walk slower, talk louder and laugh more. Kyoto is the spiritual center of Japan. As a tourist you experience that as a decent sightseeing tour threatens to turn into a temple-marathon. We tried to avoid this, but had a somewhat hard time doing so, as non spiritual facilites where practically all closed down for the Year End period. Nevertheless the temples are impressive, not least because of vast meditational gardens surrounding them. Personally i liked Touji the most, because of the magnificent groups of buddhas and boddhisavatwas inside the lecture hall.
Our base there was Shimaya, just between towncenter and the station, the atmosphere there was one of the best i witnessed in Japan so far!