[ Mar.2016 ] Next morning, we visited the Ogimachi Village in Shirakawago in Gifu, Japan, which is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site.
We wore everything we had thinking it would be cold, but in fact it was a fine day and very warm during the day.
We left our luggage at the tourist information office and headed to the observatory to look over the village, climbing the dodgy steps.
It was a lovely view with the houses with the traditional large steep thatched roofs called Gassho, but at the same time I noticed there were many ordinary houses, too.
According to the booklet I bought, Gassho houses are 114 and non-Gassho are 329.
More than 600 people live in the village.
They help each other for rice harvest and changing the roof and so on.
Apparently changing the roof thatch is a big job.
They take three days to remove the old roof and one day to build the new roof.
The village itself is like a museum.
There were many tourists when we were there, probably half of them were non-Japanese people.
I thought that it must be hard for the villagers to keep living their own ordinary everyday life among so many tourists.
