Houshi Ryokan, 22.04.24

 Houshi Ryokan, 22.04.24

It was very quiet during the night and we had a good sleep. Breakfast was ordered for 9 o'clock and right on time our lady arrived and started to place the food on the table. It was an enormous amount of food. Rice again, fish, miso soup, tofu and various other things. Far too much for us and we had to leave most of it. How can the Japanese eat such huge breakfasts?! 

We were out the door at a reasonable time. Amazingly our shoes were all aligned at the threshold of the entrance lobby facing outside! Off we went direction of a craft village which was not too far from the hotel and within easy walking distance. We found it alright and paid an entrance fee. 

It turned out to be one of those tourist developments attracting busloads of visitors all keen on buying something. But we enjoyed it. There were various shops selling souvenirs and one especially was quite interesting selling wooden bowls, boards, vases, plates and various other things. The artist must have been quite famous as these items were very expensive to buy. There was also pottery on display and one shop did paper making courses, another did soba noodle making. All very interesting and so different. We treated ourselves to an ice cream too. 

  

The proverbial tourists flying off to somewhere! Magic!

Back in the village we treated ourselves to a nice coffee and an even nicer cheesecake in a brand new cafe called 'Smile'. It was such an odd and unexpected place in the middle of this very traditional village. 

For the afternoon we had planned to visit a local moss garden called Koke no Sata, a very small moss village where the residents look after the moss and live among tall cedar trees in a mountainous area of Ishikawa. 

There was a bit of information on the garden: 

"Thank you for visiting Hiyo-Machi. We are proud of our Hiyo cedar moss garden and old houses which are inherited from our ancestors. However lately it has become a major issue for us to maintain our natural resources, scenery and culture just by ourselves. This seems to be a common problem not only with us but also among international communities. Therefore, we have decided to start up the project 'Forest of Wisdom' to investigate sustainable usage and management ways with regards to natural resources, scenery and culture, by sharing a variety of wisdom throughout the international community. Our aim is to pass on these wonderful natural resources, scenery and culture to the next generation throughout the project 'Forest of Wisdom'. Wisdom, compassion, courage - pursuing wisdom with courage and compassion towards the future". The Promotion Committee

A lesson for all of us to treat our resources with compassion, courage and wisdom to pass it all on to future generations. It is just mindboggling that such an appeal has to be made in the deepest Japanese countryside where one would believe everything to be fine. 

It was a beautiful hour we spent among the trees and the mosses covering all the ground in between. They look after it all very well and even have a nursery for more mosses to replace some that might die off. There was very little information available on the track and a guide would have been nice, but they only speak Japanese! 

We slowly walked back along the country road past rice paddies in different stages of cultivation, past shrines and a few farmhouses before getting back into our village and the hotel. I would have loved to go to the bar and have a glass of wine but no luck. Dinner loomed again and right on time our lady attendant turned up with trays of food arranged in similar fashion as the day before. The same kind of food but this time we cooked the sashimi on a little grill they provided. Maybe sacrilege but it made eating it all so much easier.