Rokudaime

Rain and cold yesterday...Totally different from the warm and sunny weather from the first day. So we changed our plans for the day a bit, and went to Osaka, where we among other things went to a park with tame but freely roaming deer. We could feed them and pet them. The rest of the day was pretty boring to be honest, because of the weather, with lots of walking inside shopping malls and such. Yesterday was amazing though. It was cold, but the weather was better. So we went to the Shirakawa village (and Takayama before that), which is a Unesco world heritage site. It's the basis for the fictional Hinamizawa village of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, for those who have seen that anime (the depiction in the anime is very accurate). The journey there is long (3 hours by train from Kyoto to Takayama, and then another hour by bus to the village), since the village is way out in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains, but it was worth it, not just because of the village itself, but also because of all the amazing scenery on the way there. We kept constantly turning our heads in both directions during the train ride to see all the valleys, mountains, forests, rivers, nice houses etc. Admittedly the village itself would have been nicer to go to during the summer (especially what with with all the green rice fields and such), since it was cold and snowing there right now, but oh well.