Genuine Imitations, Takayama, June 18

Alex carefully tends a rice plant in a rice-paddy near the Hida Folk Village in Takayama.  It's not yet harvesting season, so Alex is just making sure that the plants are properly watered and not infested with bugs.

Steve makes a wish and with a mighty swing, rings the gong in the Hida Folk Village.

IMMEDIATELY IT COMES TRUE!!!! (That's why Alex went to tend the rice paddy alone.)
Later, Steve, concerned about open flames in the Gassho-zukuri, tries to play the hero and put out the fires.
Alex fancies the thatched roofs of the houses would make a lovely hat.  The steep sides of the roofs are designed so that snow in this mountainous region will fall right off (I wonder if that means more works shoveling snow for the kids...)

We visited the Hida Folk Village in Takayama.  The quaint village-life of the Hida region has been recreated by gathering the few remaining actual homes from the Hida region, and assembling them in an outdoor museum.  The damming of the Sho-kawa River in the 1960's, as well as migration of young people to the cities, led the community to a desperate effort to preserve their culture.  However, that's a costly a business: to thatch a roof costs upwards of Y20,000,000.  So in the 1970's the Japanese government began to subsidize the preservation of the village (and two others like it).  The government may actually be making a profit on the matter, as the area is swamped with (literally) millions of tourists a year.  Hida Folk-Everything can be acquired, including, yes, you guessed it, Steve's favorite little character...

Rice-crackers are everywhere in Hida: you can even buy them raw and toast them yourself.  Steve actually resisted the purchase of these...

I'm not sure about the authenticity, but the local cuisine is earthy, tasty, and full of mountain vegetables.  This is a sansai ryori.  We liked it so much, we had it twice.  If you look at me with my chopsticks, you can see the hoba miso (miso with mushrooms) cooked on a magnolia leaf, over a charcoal brazier.  Alex indulged in a local, hand-crafted beer (partly to make brother Pete jealous that he's had a beer he can't enjoy).  The local craft-beer movement that is so pervasive in the US has come to Japan, and so it's worth noting that the "villagers" have figured out that they can market those craft beers at quite a premium (Y800) to the tourists (of course, it's still a good deal relative to coffee.)