Chapter 7: CHAPTER SEVEN

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CHAPTER SEVEN

WELCOME TO SHIRAKAWA AND GASSHO-ZUKURI VILLAGE greeted the sign.

And my heart sank.

Parked behind that friendly sign were the three tour buses that had almost fumed me off the road and four others that must have come from the opposite direction. Yet their drivers were either slumped in their driver's seats taking a nap or were outside talking to other drivers, their buses totally empty. No bullhorn toting petite tour guides. No swarming hordes of tourists.

But as soon as I parked my cub just off the road and killed the engine I could hear the faint blaring of bullhorns all right, somewhere out of sight ahead of me. I let my eyes wander up the highway that seemed to form the main drag of the village. Farm houses. Lots of them. Scattered everywhere. But not like any I had ever seen before. Most of the ones I'd seen along the way had been low and wide with lots of space between them, most one story some with a loft above and a very few with a second story, their thatched roofs slanting out from the tops but not too far down beyond their walls. Even the smallest of these farmhouses had at least three stories, many four and a few as many as five, the spaces between them almost nonexistent, their thatch roofs slanting sharply down over them on both sides almost all the way to the ground squeezing them tighter and tighter so that the highest floor had only one window. So these were the ‘hands-joined-in-prayer’ as my guidebook had told me ‘gassho’ implied.

I left the cub where it was and wandered around on foot, exploring the village and searching for a place to stay the night. Many of those farmhouses had a “Minshuku” sign by their entranceway.

But with all the hordes of tourists those buses had brought in, I didn't think I could find any with vacancies. Still, as I walked among them I didn't see any “No Vacancy” signs. But I didn't see any “Vacancy” signs, either.

I wandered to the far end of the village, doubled back and decided to ask at the biggest, five story minshuku I'd seen if they had any rooms left. But I wasn't very optimistic.

“Of course we have rooms!” the proprietress assured me breaking into a large smile.

“You do? But what about all those people that came here on those tour buses?”

She laughed. “Oh them! They'll all be gone by four o'clock when the Gassho-Zukuri Park closes. They just spend an hour or so here taking in the park and then go on to Takayama or Kanazawa to spend the night. The people who stay with us are people like you who come by themselves or families in their own cars or small groups of five or six. Come in, let me show you the rooms we have.”

Not believing my luck I followed her through the genkan entranceway into the large main area of the house, the prevailing odor of wood-smoke pleasant in a homey sort of way, the floor made of hard-packed dirt fitting in perfectly with the long-ago-forgotten atmosphere of everything I had seen of Shirakawa so far. In the middle of that large open area was a raised wooden rectangular platform with tatami-mats on top of it. But in the center of that platform instead of tatami-mats was a sunken area half filled with ashes where a wood fire smoldered, a large cauldron hovering over it held in place by a long hook attached to a thick wooden rafter above, wisps of smoke from the fire curling ever upward through the open middle areas of the upper floors all the way up to where the two sides of the roof came together way, way above us. Low tables with zabuton cushions surrounded that square fireplace.

“This area in the middle is called the irori and is the main part of the house,” the proprietress explained. “This is where we have our meals.” She led me around the earthen floor surrounding the irori to the far wall and slid aside a paper shoji wall panel. “This is our room for one person. Is it big enough for you?”

It was only three mats plus a closet for the sleeping futons, but these mats seemed larger than the ones I had in my four-and-a-half-mat apartment back in Kyoto. “It looks fine. Uh, how much is it?”

She named me a price that wasn't too much more than that first minshuku I had stayed at.

“Does that include meals?”

“Of course!”

I smiled. “Well then I'll take it!”

By the time I'd gone back to get my cub and driven it to the minshuku, I found a huge motorcycle parked in front with two helmets locked onto it. Apparently I was going to have company tonight. And the bike's license plate had "Kyoto" stamped on it. I walked in through the entranceway and saw a young man and woman talking to the proprietress -- or as they kept calling her, “Okusan." I was slowly getting used to calling the proprietresses of these minshuku “wife” as well, though it still felt kind of strange.

She called to me. “Oh David-san, why don't take your ofuro bath now while I show these two their room.”

"Great, I need one. But where is it?”

She pointed to a sliding wooden door with a large window pane in it. “Just down at the end that corridor. The water should be nice and hot by now.”

It was.

And I found soaking in that deep bathtub large enough for four people much more relaxing than when I took my ofuro at the nearby public sento bath I always used back in Kyoto, the hot water coming all the way up to my neck and taking all the kinks out of my body. Biking all day makes the Japanese-style bath feel all that much better it seemed. I smiled when I imagined how much more that young couple was going to enjoy taking theirs together.

After soaking in the ofuro for more than half an hour, I put back on the thin cotton yukata robe the Okusan had supplied me with, stepped into the wooden clogs she’d also given me and clip-clopped my way back up the corridor made out of corrugated metal and lined on one side with a long metal sink, five spigots sprouting over it with mirrors to form a communal wash basin. This whole part of the house including the two communal toilets next to the ofuro bathroom had obviously been attached to the house many years after the house itself had been built. When I got back to my room I just let my body flop down and spread out on the tatami mats feeling more physically tired than I had thought I was but much more mentally relaxed and contented than I had felt in a long time.

“David-san? Dinner is ready! Come out here to the irori”

Having half rested/half slept in my room for more than an hour, I found myself really hungry and quickly changed out of my yukata into my clothes.

When I slid the shoji to my room aside, I found the all the zabuton cushions and low wooden tables surrounding the irori taken except for the one nearest my room, two by the young couple I had seen before my ofuro, one by a middle-aged man I took to be the husband and one for the Okusan herself.

The young couple were looking at me a bit anxiously. But after I said, “Konbanwa” to them and sort of introduced myself they relaxed a bit. This gaijin speaks Japanese! And they introduced themselves as Kenji and Keiko Nakagawa -- not that I believed for a for single second they were actually married.

“I'll bring you your rice,” the Okusan said getting up and walking over to another door panel, slid it aside and went into the kitchen that had obviously been attached to the house at a much later period, too. The fire in the irori had been built up and something that smelled delicious was boiling in the cauldron. The Okusan brought me a tray with a filled rice bowl and a dish with a broiled fish on it. Then she dipped a large spoon into the boiling pot and drew out a mixture of boiled vegetables and other things I wasn’t sure of and put it in the large empty ceramic bowl on my tray.

“In the old days they used to just throw everything they had to eat into the pot and boil it there including the rice,” the husband explained -- or Dannasan as the couple kept calling him. “They didn't have much time for cooking with all the other things they had to do. It was a lot simpler.”

As we began eating, I got the usual well-meant but by now somewhat annoying compliments about how well I could use my chopsticks. The food was delicious. As we ate the conversation at the beginning was just pleasantries about the weather, how nice the house was and how good the food was. Then I happened to mention I came from Kyoto, too.

Kenji looked at me. “Really? How did you get here?”

I smiled. “Same as you two. By motorcycle.”

“But I didn't see any other bikes parked outside. Just an old cub”

“That is my motorcycle.”

That seemed to shock both of them. “But how did you get up from Ono to the pass?”

“Slowly. Very slowly”

They both laughed and that seemed to break the ice. And the rest of the evening went on amiably talking about the highways we'd driven on, last night's storm, the lack of gas stations and the Dannasan telling us about the old days like how they would dig deep holes under the house for making gunpowder.

“Gunpowder?” Keiko exclaimed.

The Dannasan laughed. “Well, the saltpeter for it anyway . They couldn't grow enough crops in this narrow valley so they had to make other things to trade with, like gunpowder and silkworms. But you'll learn all about that when you go to visit the Gassho Zukuri village tomorrow.”

Submitted: December 02, 2018

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s