Takayama - Shirakawa-go - Nara

Takayama is fairly old, dating back to the Jōmon period. Takayama is best known for its background in carpentry. It is believed carpenters from Takayama worked on the Imperial Palace in Kyoto and on many of the temples in Kyoto and Nara. The town and its culture, as they exist today, took shape at the end of the 16th century, when the Kanamori clan built Takayama Castle. About a hundred years later the city came under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate. However, the high altitude and separation from other areas of Japan kept the area fairly isolated, allowing Takayama to develop its own culture over about a 300-year period.
The Historic Village of Shirakawa-gō is one of Japan's UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The site is located in the Shogawa river valley stretching across the border of Gifu and Toyama Prefectures in northern Japan. Shirakawa-gō ("White River Old-District") is located in the village of Shirakawa in Gifu Prefecture. This village is well known for their houses constructed in architectural style known as gasshō-zukuri, "prayer-hands construction", style characterized by a thatched and steeply slanting roof resembling two hands joined in prayer.
Nara was the capital of Japan from 710 to 784, lending its name to the Nara period. The original city, Heijō-kyō, was modelled after the capital of Tang Dynasty China, Chang'an (present-day Xi'an). According to the ancient Japanese book Nihon Shoki, the name "Nara" derived from the Japanese word narashita meaning "made flat". The temples of Nara remained powerful even beyond the move of the political capital to Heian-kyō in 794, thus giving Nara a synonym of Nanto (lit. meaning "South Capital") as opposed to Heian-kyō, situated in the North. (Wikipedia)

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Takayama
• Shirakawa-go
• Nara
• gasshō-zukuri
• Japan

[melvinbrand]

Great photos. Great music too. Very meditative quality to the whole production. Perfect! Gassho!

[jscy77]

Hi! Thanks.

Photos are great! But the music was too slow and boring.

You can dub some exciting Japanese Music with you video.

As a Japanese-American myself, there are many music more elegant and nice.

Good try! :)