In the Heart of the Shokawa Valley

My route for today brought me across the Hirugano Highlands. Initially, I thought the climbing would be very tough, but luckily, the increase in altitude came gradually over 30km so the incline wasn`t that steep. But this meant the road up to Hirugano Highlands was a constant climb!

This area is a popular ski region during the winter and along the way I passed by numerous advertisements for ski resorts. Most of these resorts converted to golf courses in the summer.

Start of the road to Hirugano Highlands

The Shokawa Valley and the surrounding Hirugano Highlands

The roads leading through the Japanese countryside are usually populated by `Michi-no-Eki` such as the one below. These road-side rest stations are meant for long distance truck drivers, bus tours and tourists driving their own cars to take a short restroom and snack break at. Such rest stations are the only place with restrooms in the countryside!

Below is the origin point of the Nagara River. It flows from north to south, starting from this spot all the way to Gifu City where I stayed 2 days ago.

From the Hirugano Highlands, it was a 20km downhill coast all the way to the little village of Shokawa. It was only afternoon and I could easily have done the next 30km to Shirakawa-go, but I had already booked accomodation in Shokawa so I thought I`d take this opportunity to have a good rest.

I lounged in my room for most of the afternoon since the village was a very quiet place with not much to see. In the evening, went out to check out the streets and to have my dinner.

A watermill used to produce soba - Shokawa village`s specialty product

Dinner was a rather interesting one at a small eatery 5 minutes from my ryokan. The first course was a small bowl of soya bean milk. It did look similar to what we have in Singapore, but tasted totally different! Instead of being sweet, this soya bean milk tasted of miso and was much thinner than the soya bean milk I was used to.

Japanese `Dou Jiang`

I ordered the set meal which included a serving of the local specialty soba. The soba was delicious and the fish was yummy too! Apparently, they cooked the fish for four hours till it was soft enough to be completely consumed - head, tail and all.

Notice the small green stalk at the bottom of my tray. That`s actually a stick of fresh wasabi! They served it on a porcelain grater so you grated it yourself and add it into the soya sauce to eat with your soba. Interesting huh!