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dinner including hida beef 飛騨牛 
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Minshuku Otaya 合掌簡宿 大田屋 is a pretty basic minshuku with a few rooms that serves simple, decent food at 5:30 pm and 7:30 am, along with a short traditional dance/song. The 2.5 hour bus ride from Meitetsu Bus Center in Nagoya by Nana-chan turned into a 5-hour drive with Golden Week traffic, which gave us 3 hours, just enough time to wander around and go to the view point - 4 or 5 hours would've been better though. You can pay a couple hundred yen each to go inside some of the other farmhouses.
It's a very short walk from the bus station, uphill - on the other side of all the other houses. Shared bathroom and showers/bath - there is a hot spring a few minutes down the road overlooking the turquoise river that's 500 yen with the hotel coupon (otherwise 700 yen, from 7 am until 9 pm). Free, fast wifi. Daily Yamazaki convenience store is down the road, in the other direction from the farm houses. Not quite the hyped up "must-do" farmhouse stay experience I imagined since you can't go up and see the thatched roof so it's just pretty basic tatami rooms, like a regular Japanese house, even though it's 174 years old - no soundproofing or lock from the outside since it's just sliding doors. Shirakawago is quite developed and packed with tourists so probably unlike what one might imagine of a quiet traditional farming village. At night when all the tourists are gone, the town becomes very peaceful and atmospheric so staying the night is worth it in that regard. |
onsen nearby, overlooking the river |
map of the area |
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from the viewpoint |
mandatory zoom-in-shot |
