Looks cold, but it was warming up. This is the sign for the village that was near the Ryokan that we stayed at, Sabaishi-gawa is the name of the river Takayanagi is the town on that river.

They get a lot of snow in this area, and walking about the countryside, sometimes it's hard to see the place, as the snow is as high as my head on either side of the road.

The locals are very friendly, we bumped into a woman walking about and she happily chatted to us for a while, and filled us in with the local gossip, and stories, and complaints about the local council.

If you don't speak Japanese well though, forget it, as noone speaks anything else.

Beautiful place, isn't it

As is typical in many rural (Inaka) places, the building are mainly the old style, and the construction is mostly from local materials. This one is more modern, as it's got glass windows. Walls are all of wood shingles, and look like a thin (like 1cm) version of "weather board" construction from back in Australia.

Between the outside wall and inside wall, there is a layer of woven grass and mud.
I poked my head into the entry of the house above, and you can see the plain wood construction more closely, and the insulation layer. Very INAKA desu yo!

So lets go further up the street

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