Ogi-machi

After a very chic breakfast at the hotel restaurant, we set off for a small visit of the other sites of Gifu prefecture. These included some marvelous little local markets, and a nice natural source footbath.

Then for lunch, we decided to go to another main point of Gifu life: ayu fishing. Now ayu are mainly plant feeders, and so the main fishing method is to tie a live ayu to the fising wire and attach hooks all around it. You then throw the live ayu in the water, where it (hopefully) swims into another ayu's territory and gets attacked, thereby snaring the other ayu on one of the hooks attached around it.

Ayu grilled in salt over coal

Seeing the enormous number of ayu eaten every day in this region alone, it is obvious from the start that traditional ayu fishing cannot be the only way of catching them. And indeed, it isn't. The most used way of catching ayu is a huge bamboo fish trap contraption, in which the river water is diverted and falls quite fast onto a bamboo mesh, stopping the fish from going through, and, I assume, stunning them enough that they cannot jup back into the stream above.

What neither I nor any of the japanese had expected to find while visiting a temporarily closed ayu trap, was the huge giant salamander, quite dead, that had washed up on the bamboo slats. Having only ever seen it in aquariums, it was sad to see the first wild one so totally dead, which kind of punt a damper on the party for a while (it is a "natural monument" in Japan, although everyone agreed the translation was rather odd).

We did eventually find an open ayu farm, but had only ayu from their stock, as the fishing was not good at this time, it having been raining too much. More rain is what we got just as we were finishing lunch, but that, if anything, just made the countryside even more beautiful, filling the valleys with spirals of cloud.

And the rain was really just a shower, so everything had nicely dried up by the time we reached the small village of Ogi, near Shirakawa. This is a UNESCO world heritage site, and well worth the protection. The village is entirely made up of old traditional wooden houses, for the most part with thatch rooves, and what is even more excuisite, is that the village is still inhabitted, and people live and farm there.

It being a high-mountain village, it does look quite similar to the old villages one finds in the Alps, but those hardly ever have japanese ornamental gardens.

And here (an unthinkable thought in the Alps), there is not a geranium in sight. I did not see a single one in the whole village.

And, of course, the thatch is made of rice stalks...

We stayed till closing time, then made our way back through the mountains at dusk, and out into the kansai plains on the other side. An amazing visit.