We cross a few ugly peoples, Impersonal. Japan is repeated on the facades of the single -family chalets, Without large windows, nor balcones that look at the sea or rice terraces. Some neighborhoods like Gion, and Kioto, El Koyasan Buddhist Temples show Kumano Kodo, They make a difference with Japanese architectural boredom.
Another pleasant exception is the city of Takayama. Here we meet yesterday Japan. He has a red bridge with which he welcomes the traveler, A market that opens without hurry, It has callecitas with sewers through which the water runs and people that clean the sidewalks and sake factories that two hundred years ago were already sake factories. They say that since the seventh century, This town has been prolific in the art of carpentry. On just one walk, it is paid with wood and it is almost possible to hear the crunch of some houses with large carved doors, as gallant as ancient.
The city is linked to the legend of the samurais because this was the home of a part of that elite of soldiers. Today you can visit an old samurai house with its swords and armor that have already lost the luster of other times. In Takayama you live more slowly, People ride a bike and even our guide seemed affected by a placid way of understanding life.
It is almost possible to hear the crunch of some houses with large carved doors
Hida was a quiet guy. He was excited to end the day bathing in hot springs. This is a common activity throughout the country. There are public hot springs where people come to relax the stress of the day and all hotels have an aquatic space to immerse yourself in your own thoughts. So we used to finish, naked, Enjoying a hot bath in one of those natural pools. Herda, our guide, He was kind and helpful, But in his answers there was always a bad point. In just five minutes, I counted how I used until 22 times the word "maybe" ("maybe"), so it was difficult to have guarantees of almost nothing. For us Hida was Maybe.
In our second morning in Takayama came to receive us Kyoko. She was a small woman who did not fit her face in her face. He stirred his arms to welcome us and spoke in such an enthusiastic tone that his joy came to start. Maybe and Kyoko proposed to descend Mount Norikura by bicycle. I admit that I have never seduced pedaling slopes, but in this case, If it was just about going downhill, it was different. Addition, To understand the essence of a culture, it is convenient to know its nature. What none of us expected was to meet a severe snowfall at the top of the mountain. Let's warm to combat the freshly opened cold in the month of June. Pablo rode a bicycle, I and Yeray recorded our speed faces during a descent that covered a slope of 1.400 meters. I would have wanted to go down without contemplation, challenge the wind and start the brakes, But when one records a documentary, You have to stop so many times that sometimes the magic is lost that one precisely tries to reflect.
To understand the essence of a culture, it is convenient to know its nature
The hot bath of that afternoon mitigated the sensation of winter that remained in our face after the descent.
Kyoko and Maybe accompanied us to a further region, so little accessible that in the toughest months of the year it is incommunicado. From a viewpoint we saw the first traditional houses of Sirakawa -go, calls gasshos. They have a huge wooden structure, With large pillars and straw roofs they reach the ground, forming triangles. Maybe told us that this triangular form is due, perhaps, to the form of the hands when they are lending to prayer, although on the other hand it is logical to think that the slope avoids snow weight in winter. Many of the gasshos They have more than two centuries of antiquity. Our path placed us however in Gokoyama, A village between the mountains with these homes as of enchanted forest scattered throughout the valleys. Far from the peaks hot, But it was easy to understand what kind of weathering its inhabitants have to endure when autumn says goodbye.
There the culture has been as isolated as the ice paths that those peoples do not reach. Maybe proposed to participate in the manufacture of the traditional noodles of that region. My little culinary skill had to serve as a lunch to my expedition partners, that after being forced to record my folly when cutting the noodles, They had, also, Tell them.
The culture has been as isolated as the ice roads that those peoples do not reach.
In another of the typical houses -there is no reality of another type in Gokoyama- We met a sly man named Shynia. He taught us to make the Washi paper, which is with which windows and shots are covered throughout the country. A resistant paper that the man with hermit pints produced from a compound of rice water, local flowers and bamboo. Shynia also painted the figurines that he created with a patience of those who lives without watches and in the gloom of that study told us between laughter that had samurai blood. The truth is that many samurais ended up fleeing or deserting that region of peasants, changing the sword for the hoe.
Maybe himself explained it to us in English:
-Here, perhaps, Some of the samurai biznietos live. It is not known with certainty but perhaps among these people there are descendants of the samurais. Maybe Gokoyama's culture has remained for being an incommunicado place for many months a year.
Gokoyama has never ceased to be another time, He has never forgotten his samurais flight
And that culture includes, perhaps, Some of Japan's most peculiar dances. A man with a straw hat that covered his face danced while he sounded the crack, A kind of fan of wood that generates a waterfall sound. As, Several older men played the flutes and drums and two young people danced with that Japanese harmony that we already knew. They represented legends, stories that have remained as in a timeless paralysis, Well Gokoyama has never ceased to be another time, He has never forgotten his samurai escape and tourism, If it arrives, He does not do it so hard to change the rhythm of their lives.
After a last bath in municipal hot springs, We stayed in a Gassho For us alone. Kyoko had already prepared dinner, And with maternal gesture he invited us to sit around the fire. We surround the hot pots, arranged in the middle of the stay and realized a delicious vegetable broth. Soon we would return to the routine of chalets without grace and ordered roads
When we said goodbye the next morning, Kyoko stirred his arms again and Maybe shook his hand.
Our guide said, Without too many sentimentalisms:
-I hope to see you again
“Maybe”, I thought.
