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
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