Gifu Hidden Gems

Gifu runs from the Nobi plain up into the Hida mountains, and the northern half was cut off by snow for long enough each year to develop its own way of building. The gassho farmhouses at Shirakawa-go have roofs pitched at around sixty degrees to shed the load, with attics used for silkworms and floors laid to let smoke through; they are re-thatched by whole-village work parties because no single household can do it. Takayama, over the pass, was placed under direct shogunate control for its timber and kept a merchant townscape of dark wooden fronts that survives street by street. Further south the Nagara River runs clear enough that cormorant fishing has continued on it for 1,300 years under imperial patronage, and Seki has forged blades since the Kamakura period for the same reason — good water, good clay, good charcoal. The plain around Gifu City is hot, flat and industrial.