I could sit in one place all month in Japan and remain just as pleased. But I decided: if you are going to travel, then you need to plan everything so that the trip is the most diverse. Therefore, Takayama ended up on my route: firstly, these are mountains, and secondly, these are Gassno's houses. There were a few other places you could go from Takayama, like the famous village of Shirakawago and the world's largest cable car, but the bus routes were refreshingly expensive. Of course, I was aware of Japanese train prices, they are scary, but there are ways to save money, but there are no ways to save money on buses. A round-trip ticket for the route, which lasts only an hour, costs 5,000 yen. For the sake of the cable car, or rather for the view that opens from it, I would have paid so much plus about so much for tickets for the road itself, but it was closed for the annual technical inspection for exactly the 5 days that I was in Takayama, literally the same day.
Therefore, I had to be content with walking around Takayama itself and the local village of Gassno, or rather the museum, which was made based on its motives, collecting all the old houses on one territory. The name "gassno" comes from the word for hands folded in prayer. Those. in Nepalese, you can say that this is the village of Namaste =) The reasons for choosing this form are not religious, it’s just that in this region of Japan there is a lot of snow in winter.
All of these houses were built during the Edo period, meaning they could be between 400 and 150 years old. Wow! Something, of course, was restored, but it's still hard to believe that a simple tree could stand for so long.
Spring, icicles on the roof.
Each house belonged to a family, and so it is called by name. You can wander inside and visit different rooms.
It's mostly very dark in there, and my camera doesn't have a flash, so there's only one photo.
You can wander among the trees and feel like you are in ancient Japan. I additionally catch flashbacks of Indonesia and Batak houses on Lake Toba. I traveled all these mountains in Southeast Asia and collected in my mind a collection of what I like most in each country. And then she came to Japan and found all this here. Even my favorite houses improved for winter! There is also a lake, but it is small.
The pure truth about a lot of snow. Outside mid-April, and still how much!
Thatched roofs.
And again icicles on the roofs.
How beautiful it is here!
The structure of the Japanese village is completely preserved. There is a temple at the very top, and old statues of Buddhas in aprons.
And other religious buildings.
There are vegetable gardens.
Wood shed.
Mill.
And a cast-iron kettle ripens on the coals.
If it were not for the lack of people, museum displays and signs on every corner, one could really imagine that he was in the distant past.
You can take a picture in clothes near the cart, and for free, but it’s probably no longer possible to wander around the village in a suit.
Puppet Museum. These dolls were exhibited at the entrance to houses in which there were children-girls, so that they would grow well and be healthy. The doll was supposed to be not one, but a whole set. Dolls for this museum were donated by local residents.
Sudden retro hi-tech. Something souvenir for tourists.
Today I will completely overwhelm you with beauty, because. right after the village, I climbed to the top of the mountain. Up the neat steps.
Okay, I won't exaggerate. And along the road, littered with snow, I had to make my way, and along the forest path.
But in the most dangerous and difficult places there were steps and railings anyway. This is Japanese concern for others and love for details.
Beautiful. And there is a bench to admire this beauty.
Something like this.
Or without extra objects in the frame.
I could still walk along various small tracks to get to a few more temples, but the snow blockages on the road and the total emptiness caused certain doubts in me. Yes, and my sneakers are already wet, despite all the Japanese concern for the neighbor.
I would love to come back here with good shoes, a bike and plenty of time to wander around and ride a lot. The mountains in Japan are no worse than the Himalayas.
The problem of the outflow of people from small villages to cities is relevant not only for Russia, but also for many other countries, including Japan. To solve this problem, local authorities sometimes introduce various subsidies for those who move to live in their settlement.
This is what they did in the Japanese village of Mishima, which is located on three islands in Kagoshima Prefecture in the southwest of Kyushu. You can get here by ferry. At the moment, about four hundred people live in the village, and therefore extra hands here will obviously not be superfluous. In particular, workers are needed to help in agriculture.
First, you will be reimbursed for your travel expenses, up to 100,000 yen. In addition, local authorities promise to pay 85,000 yen per month (43,000 rubles) if the new resident is single, and if he is with his wife, the fee will be 100,000 yen (51,000 rubles). If you have a child, then up to 10,000 yen per person is added, and if there are two children, then 20,000 yen. Financial support is also provided in case of childbirth, and for the education of children.
In addition, a new family is given a cow. In principle, you can refuse a cow, taking instead a one-time payment of 500,000 yen (256,000 rubles).
Housing will have to be paid out of pocket, since it is inexpensive here - renting a three-room house will cost from 15,000 to 23,000 yen per month (7,700-11,700 rubles).
If you are single, the local authorities will try to help you arrange your personal life. There is even a special project for this.
Now about the requirements for new settlers. First, you must be no more than 55 years old. Secondly, parasites are not expected here - you should plan to start a family (if not already), and also get a job in agricultural or fishing jobs. In addition, self-employment is possible. In any case, the last word remains with the headman of the village, it will be he who will decide whether to accept a new resident into a friendly Japanese community.
It is generally accepted that Japan is the richest country of the winning hi-tech and the whole life of a Japanese consists of cool gadgets, erotic comics and anime cartoons. I had the opportunity to spend a day in a traditional Japanese house in a remote (by local standards) village 50 km from the city of Osaka. Around rice fields, wooded hills, peasant houses and an electric train running every 15 minutes. In such places, life seems to have stopped in the seventies: young people do not want to live in the countryside and move to the city, and the old people are gradually dying. Agriculture has long become unprofitable against the backdrop of a rapidly developing science-intensive industry, a couple of decades will pass and what I will talk about next will turn into the property of history. So, listen and see how ordinary Japanese live in an ordinary village -
The station is located about a kilometer from the house of our friends, where I am on my way. As a child, when my grandfather had a garden near Sverdlovsk, I also stomped from the train to the house as a kid. Unless in the Soviet village they didn’t know what asphalt and sewerage were, but here everything is civilized -
For the most part, solid rural houses -
A small palm-sized venomous monster called a phalanx has been spotted -
Pay attention to the fire hatch -
The house of our Japanese friends and an unexpected telescope at the entrance -
Do you know what these carp flags at the entrance mean? In Japan, there is a holiday, Boys' Day, in honor of which flags are hung in every house where there are boys. The idea is that the carp is strong and knows how to swim against the current, achieving its goal at any cost -
There are traces of a recent earthquake on the wall -
At the entrance, the Japanese take off their shoes. I remember the stupid habit in the same Israel to enter the house from the street without taking off your shoes. And no one cares that there may be children in the house, they crawl on the floor and collect all the dirt and infections on themselves.
The kitchen, she is the living room -
The unit above the tap is just titanium that warms the water. Nearby, on the left, a rice cooker is a must-have gadget in any Japanese home, because rice is the main ingredient in any Japanese meal.
On the fridge is a map of shelters, where to run in case of earthquakes, or floods -
A whole hell of a scheme on how to properly throw away garbage. For example, if you have a pet, some cat and he died - you can't go and bury him in the forest. You must call the sanitary service, which will take the lifeless body and dispose of it to prevent the spread of infections, and it will cost you 3,000 yen (about $ 30), the corresponding picture in the lower right corner is
Schedule, when and what kind of garbage to throw out. For example, you can’t just drag old furniture to the trash can, you have to call the mayor’s office and they will come specially and pick up bulky garbage. Also, not every day you can throw away glass containers, but only 1-2 days a week. Break the rules - you will be fined, and the neighbors will certainly inform you that this gaijin (foreigner) threw the glass containers into the paper trash on the wrong day.
Do you know what that ancient gadget is downstairs?
Living room, here they sit on the floor, as you understand -
The whole house is one common space with sliding doors. If you push everything as far as possible, then you find yourself in one large room. But in the evening the house returns to its original three-room state. Pay attention to the children's railway -
In winter, the Japanese warm themselves from a kerosene (!) heater. The temperatures in these places drop to zero degrees and one cannot live without heating, and there is no centralized heat supply -
Attic where rabbits live -
By the way, rabbits are not for food at all, they are family favorites here -
Do you know what that plaque is on the wall? Who can guess?
A traditional bathroom and the sad traces of a recent earthquake -
Well, respectively, the restroom -
Storage room with washing machines and dryers
Also, on the street there is again a kerosene water heater for the shower, and the fuel tank is slightly to the right at the bottom -
Little backyard garden
Right next to the house, literally five meters away is the train. But you know what? There is noise, but minimal, in Japan these things are strict. Nevertheless, in the morning I heard a train rushing through my dream. The locals have long been accustomed to and do not worry about this -
An hour later, I take one of these trains and leave for Kansai Airport in Osaka, Taiwan is waiting for me -
Well, lunch on the road and go -
This is what an average Japanese village looks like. Somewhere people live a little richer, somewhere poorer, this is a kind of average level. You probably imagined Japanese life a little differently, but remember the saying "do not confuse tourism with emigration." For example, in the villages there are many empty houses, whose owners have died and they have no heirs. So they stand abandoned for years and decades, no one needs real estate in such places. Here is a neighboring house, whose owners have long been dead -
Old letters in the mailbox
Moss-covered beer bottles
There are a lot of their own problems here, which the Japanese simply do not like to take out of their society, unlike you and me, who are sick of the whole world complaining about our hard life.
p.s. Do you know why I ended up in Korea and Japan? But thanks to these guys.
p.s. 2 Since not all readers have a Livejournal account, I duplicate all my articles about life and travel on social networks, so join:
Twitter
: After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of borders, a stream of Russians poured into Japan, both tourists and businessmen transporting old cars. In just a couple of years, the number of Russians living near the port cities of the east coast has increased hundreds of times. In this regard, and to popularize the Russian life in 1993, a theme amusement park called the Russian Village was opened near the city of Niigata, in which a church, a hotel, museums, restaurants, a circus and much more were built. The village existed for 10 years, after which the bank financing the project went bankrupt, and with it the village. Currently, what has been preserved on the territory is available for inspection, in particular the Suzdal Cathedral, the Trans-Siberian Museum, stuffed mammoths, books, costumes, postcards, photographs ... There are many different equipment in the office premises - from old computers and color copiers to studio audio hardware...
(Total 62 photos)
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1. The village is located a few kilometers from the railway, so people used to get there by car. Immediately after the parking lot, a copy of the Suzdal Cathedral, ticket offices and an attached hotel building, made in a classical architectural style, open up to your eyes.
2.
3.
4.
5. The hotel is called small, and three years ago it burned a little, set on fire by some hooligans. As a result, the main tower and most of the rooms of the right wing burned out, in which melted TVs look very colorful.
6.
7.
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9.
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13. On the ground floor there were administrative offices with now "leaky" racks of audio broadcasts, computer servers and boxes of various pieces of paper, in particular licensed software from Microsoft. Disks and serial networks - everything is in place.
14.
15.
16. Peter the Great, together with his horse, silently looks at what is happening, and we climb the stairs to the surviving rooms - both the usual suite and the wedding suite. In a regular suite, I had the honor to spend the night before exploring the village and I can say with full confidence that the room turned out to be more than worthy!
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21. Somewhere nearby is a restaurant and a kitchen, but this is not as interesting as the Suzdal Cathedral. Built and painted in 1993, even after almost 20 years, it has not lost the brightness of its colors.
22.
23. And even Taiga skis, God knows how they got there, do not spoil the impression.
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28. From the outside, the cathedral is no less beautiful, especially on a good sunny day.
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31. From the cathedral and the hotel there is a covered gallery to the entertainment part of the park. Inside the gallery there are photographs with views of Russia from Chaliapin's House to Lake Baikal.
32.
33.
34. The gallery goes to the first floor of the museum, where visitors were invited to get acquainted with the geography of Russia, its nature and climate. Maps on the walls, layouts on the tables - they were not spared by time and vandals, but there is still something to see.
35.
36.
37. Leaving the museum, we get to a large square, around which there are various buildings - a restaurant, a Forest Workshop, the Afanasyev Theater, etc ...
38.
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41. Desolation reigns in the restaurant, the menu is gathering dust on the floor, in the corner, delicious sausages have been smoked for fifteen years already.
42. Judging by the text of the menu, they fed well - dumplings, borscht, pies, but the images of the dishes are very strange.
43.
44. There are no spectators in the theater, they are replaced by a mountain of chairs in front of the stage, and sound equipment looking lonely through the eyes of the speakers.
45. And on the second floor there is an office that looks like after a sudden search. Books, floppy disks, photographs are scattered mixed with color copiers, laser printers and monitors.
46.
47.
48. In the next room, posters and costumes of dubious nationality. Looks like Russians.
49.
50. A little to the side, behind the bushes, you can see an amazing mixture of an Easter egg and Orthodox Disneyland, but in fact this is a museum of the Trans-Siberian Railway - the longest railway in the world.
51. The Japanese, for all their love of trains, still have a hard time imagining what it means to travel by train for a week. However, this is not surprising, because their Sinskansen would have passed from Moscow to Vladivostok in just a day and a half, not counting the time of stops.
52. On the walls of the museum there are posters describing all the seven days of the journey and the meeting cities, in the center there is a model of the train itself. The locomotive has been gone for a long time, but three cars have been preserved, which is called “in section”, where you can see the internal structure.
53.
55. And in order to finally destroy the confidence of the Japanese in the impossibility of a weekly life in the car, in the neighboring rooms there are real compartments, a water boiler and other elements of the interior of the car, and not copies, but real ones.
56.
57. On the side of the Trans-Siberian Museum is a small, empty inside, circus and another building, much more interesting.
58. Entering it, we immediately stumble upon the skeleton of a mammoth - the ribs are under the ceiling, the skull is in the corner.
59. And behind the wall is a real adult stuffed mammoth, on a scale of 100 percent of the original.
60. And a small (two meters at the withers) mammoth, which you can climb and ride.
61. The last building in the village is a remake - there are devices for throwing balls, as it is written for golf, but too large for it.
62. Zhura-zhura-crane!
He flew over a hundred lands.
Flew, circled
Wings, legs worked hard.
We asked the crane:
Where is the best land?
He answered, flying:
There is no better native land!
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the borders, a stream of Russians poured into Japan - both tourists and businessmen ferrying old cars. In just a couple of years, the number of Russians living near the port cities of the east coast has increased hundreds of times. In this regard, and to popularize the Russian life in 1993, a theme amusement park called the Russian Village was opened near the city of Niigata, in which a church, a hotel, museums, restaurants, a circus and much more were built. The village existed for 10 years, after which the bank financing the project went bankrupt, and with it the village. Currently, what has been preserved on the territory is available for inspection, in particular the Suzdal Cathedral, the Trans-Siberian Museum, stuffed mammoths, books, costumes, postcards, photographs ... audio equipment... The village is located a few kilometers from the railway, so people used to get there by car. Immediately after the parking lot, a copy of the Suzdal Cathedral, ticket offices and an attached hotel building, made in a classical architectural style, open up to your eyes. 
The hotel is called small, and three years ago it burned a little, set on fire by some hooligans. As a result, the main tower and most of the rooms of the right wing burned out, in which melted TVs look very colorful. 
On the first floor there were administrative offices with now "leaky" racks of audio broadcasts, computer servers and boxes of various pieces of paper, in particular, licensed software from Microsoft. Disks and serial networks - everything is in place. 
Peter the Great, together with his horse, silently looks at what is happening, and we climb the stairs to the surviving rooms - both the usual suite and the wedding suite. In a regular suite, I had the honor to spend the night before exploring the village and I can say with full confidence that the room turned out to be more than worthy! 
Somewhere nearby is a restaurant and a kitchen, but it is not as interesting as the Suzdal Cathedral. Built and painted in 1993, even after almost 20 years, it has not lost the brightness of its colors. And even Taiga skis, not God knows how they got there, do not spoil the impression. 
Outside, the cathedral is no less beautiful, especially in good sunny weather. 
From the cathedral and the hotel there is a covered gallery to the entertainment part of the park. Inside the gallery there are photographs with views of Russia from Chaliapin's house to Lake Baikal. 
The gallery opens onto the first floor of the museum, where visitors were invited to get acquainted with the geography of Russia, its nature and climate. Maps on the walls, layouts on the tables - time and vandals did not spare them, but there is still something to see. 
Leaving the museum, we get to a large square, around which there are various buildings - a restaurant, a forestry workshop, the Afanasyev Theater, etc... 
Desolation reigns in the restaurant, the menu is gathering dust on the floor, in the corner, delicious sausages have been smoked for fifteen years already. Judging by the text of the menu, the food was good - dumplings, borsch, pies, but the images of the dishes are very strange. 
There are no spectators in the theater, they are replaced by a mountain of chairs in front of the stage, and sound equipment looking lonely through the eyes of the speakers. 
And on the second floor there is an office that looks like after a sudden search. Books, floppy disks, photographs are scattered mixed with color copiers, laser printers and monitors. 
In the next room - posters and costumes of dubious nationality. Apparently Russians. 
A little to the side, behind the bushes, you can see an amazing mixture of an Easter egg and Orthodox Disneyland, but in fact this is a museum of the Trans-Siberian Railway - the longest railway in the world. The Japanese, for all their love of trains, still have a hard time imagining what it means to travel by train for a week. However, this is not surprising, because their Sinskansen would have passed from Moscow to Vladivostok in just a day and a half, not counting the time of stops. 
On the walls of the museum there are posters describing all the seven days of the journey and the cities that meet, in the center there is a model of the train itself. The locomotive has been gone for a long time, but three cars have been preserved, which is called "in the section", where you can see the internal structure. 
And in order to finally destroy the confidence of the Japanese in the impossibility of a week-long life in the car, in the neighboring rooms there are real compartments, a water boiler and other elements of the interior of the car, and not copies, but real ones. 
To the side of the Trans-Siberian Museum is a small, empty inside, circus and another building, much more interesting. Entering it, we immediately stumble upon the skeleton of a mammoth - the ribs under the ceiling, the skull in the corner. 
And behind the wall hides a real adult stuffed mammoth, on a scale of 100 percent of the original and a small (two meters at the withers) mammoth, which you can climb and ride. 
The last building in the village is a remake - there are ball throwers, as written for golf, but too large for them. 
Zhura-zhura-crane! He flew over a hundred lands. He flew around, went around, Wings, worked his legs. We asked the crane: Where is the best land? He answered, flying: There is no better native land! 