Shirakawa-go or no-go?
This writeup is from a series of writeups I did about our March 2026 trip to Japan. If you haven’t read the preceding posts, links are below:
A number of travel guides rave about Shirakawa-go, and in fact the bus from Kanazawa to Takayama goes through the village so we thought we’d absolutely stop in!
Paul was very excited that the bus had seat belts.
While this town is absolutely picturesque in winter and summer, it was just ‘okay’ during the snow-melty, overcast March day that we were there. I budgeted five hours between buses, and that was probably three hours too many. I’d recommend a stop over, just not too long as I think Kanazawa and Takayama have more exciting things to offer.
I loved the straw-thatch roofs, which are constructed at a 60 degree incline to prevent significant snow build up, as the snow in the area is very moist and therefore heavy. There were photos of their construction, which showed tens of people on the roof and more helping below, allowing them to complete the roof over the course of one day.
While some of the buildings are permanent museums, many others had people still living there and farming the land.
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One of the museum builds we entered had a number of farm implements on display, from the 1950s, as well as examples of all of the things families would make out of straw, including some very uncomfortable-looking shoes. However, historically the top several floors were used for silkworm farming. Here’s a photo of the fourth floor, note the slatted floor boards, which Paul did not enjoy walking on!
On the first floor of the same builds, this room had a constant fire going, both for cooking but also to fumigate all of the floors above. This helped prolong the life of the roof (these days, without the fire going, they have to replace it every 25 years, as opposed to 40–50).
The 250-year old hanging board helps extinguish embers and guide the smoke around. Paul hit his head on it, which made me wonder how many hundreds of other bonks it’s delivered over the years!
Part of the reason I gave us five hours in Shirakawa-go is so that we could enjoy a lunch without feeling rushed. That we did, though our legs were protesting the tatami mat setup.
We were entering beef country, and it was absolutely delicious!
No lunch is complete without a dessert, and there was a very cool looking machine being used to produce these multi-layer pastries.
Finally, there’s an overlook at the top of a small hill — about 5 minutes walk — from which you can see the entirety of the village below.
After this, we hopped on the bus and continued to Takayama! This was my favourite city from our entire trip, and we spent a total of three days there so I’m excited to write about it next! Thanks for reading :)
