Shirakawa-go, UNESCO World Heritage Site

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For our honeymoon, Ma-kun and I took a short five-day trip out to several areas that I had never visited before but were on my 'to-do' list before we leave Japan for good. One of those places was Shirakawa-go, the UNESCO World Heritage site, a traditional village with old, thatched-roof houses called 合掌造り (gassho-zukuri). Ma-kun got us a reservation to stay in one of the houses converted into a 民宿 (minshuku, a guesthouse that serves meals, not unlike a bed & breakfast). When we arrived at Shirakawa-go by bus, everything was brown and there was no snow at all, but when we woke up the next morning, the entire village was covered in a blanket of white! It was very cool to see the village both with and without the beautiful snow cover, and we got up extra early to head out before sunrise in order to get the best photos.

Staying in the minshuku was very nice, although the other travelers staying in our lodging were very rude and boisterously loud until 2:15 AM. They were also Japanese, which is somewhat surprising, but I've found that Japanese sometimes make for very poor tourists despite complaining about all other tourists here and how rude they are. We didn't get much sleep at all that night, which was pretty awful, but at least the snow the next morning made up for it.

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