Chubu, Japan · Town / small city
A UNESCO World Heritage village of traditional gassho-zukuri houses with steep thatched roofs.
Bus — Bus from Takayama or Kanazawa; no train station of its own
A panoramic view of the village's gassho-zukuri thatched roofs from Shiroyama Hill.
Traditional houses with steeply pitched thatched roofs, some of which are open to the public.
Once the coaches leave, the village falls silent: a handful of beds are spread among family houses, with dinner around the irori hearth. Book far ahead.
The other two villages in the same World Heritage listing, half an hour away by bus, far smaller and with almost no visitors.
On a few winter nights the snow-covered village is lit up — advance reservation required.
Next to the shrine: the festival floats and a tasting of doburoku, the cloudy unfiltered sake that under a legal exception may only be brewed here.
More than 25 traditional houses relocated to a single site for preservation.
Alternatives to the Wada house: the Kanda has four floors open to visitors and a gallery over the hearth smoke, and the Nagase preserves the instruments of a family of country doctors.
River trout skewered and grilled by the fire, wild seasonal shoots and soba from local wheat: what is served for dinner in the village houses.
A Buddhist temple with gassho-zukuri architecture converted into a museum, showing what traditional daily life was like under its great thatched roof.
The spiritual heart of the village, in a cedar forest; here the doburoku is offered to the gods before anyone drinks it.
The only hot spring bath inside the village, with a rotenburo above the Shokawa river and entry for non-guests as well.
The largest gassho-zukuri house in Ogimachi, the former residence of a wealthy family and designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan.
A peaceful walk through the village and its surrounding farmland.
Every thatched roof is redone every 30 or 40 years in a single day, with the entire village up on the frame; it is the custom that has kept these houses alive and the work can be watched in spring and autumn.
One of Japan's three sacred mountains, along with Fuji and Tateyama; the climb takes about four hours from the south of the municipality, through beech woods.
A pedestrian suspension bridge over the Shogawa River, connecting the village to the trail up to the Ogimachi Viewpoint.
A harvest festival held in October at Ogimachi's Hachiman Shrine, with dances and servings of doburoku, the cloudy unfiltered sake brewed in the village itself.
Thirty-three kilometres of toll road through gorges and beech woods that turn red in October; closed from November to May.
Strongly alkaline waters in the south of the municipality, deep in the forest, far quieter than those in the village.
A 72-meter drop and an emerald lake at 1,300 metres: these were the area's attraction before the thatched-roof houses were.
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