Nakahata

We woke up to thunderstorms early this morning, which was promising as it might cool things down a bit. Gayle made us scrambled eggs for breakfast with a good pod coffee.

We headed off in our mighty Nissan highway star, into the mountains east of the city, to Suganuma. It's a world heritage listed site of traditional thatched or grassed roofed buildings. The drive, whilst only less than 60kms, took well over an hour. The roads were quite good but winding and narrow in spots. The scenery was amazing; it's so verdant with thick vegetation over towering mountains with low hanging clouds. It's green for a reason as we got batches of rain showers during the trip. It's a much more pleasant 26c, which was a relief.

It stopped raining just long enough for us to wander around the World Heritage Suganuma Gassho-zukuri Village. Cars arrive at the top of a hill, and there's an elevator that takes you to the bottom of the valley where the village is located (of course, this is Japan, after all). It's a mix of original restored houses with others relocated there for their preservation. There were hardly any tourists there, which was awesome - not an instagram influencer in sight!

The road trip also included some impressive tunnels that burrowed through mountainsides for kilometres, and these were the back roads. Driving in Japan has been surprisingly easy, once you get the hang of the GPS 😄 🤣 The speed limits are low and drivers seem quite courteous so I'd recommend it to others. The best thing was being able to easily get to the hard to get to places!

We could also drive to a Mos Burger for a late lunch, yum.Read more