We spent the day today traveling. We took the first train at 8:12 AM and reached our accomodation at 3:15 PM. So in total, we travelled over 7 hours. It was pretty warm as well with 26° C and a lot of local trains were not air conditioned. So it was an exhausting day and not many pictures were taken.

Check out an interactive Map of the places we visited here. I will update this map as we continue our Journey. This post is about Day 8.

Our destination today were the historic villages of Gokayama. The traditional houses there make up for some pretty unique sights. They are built in a particular style called Gassho-Zukuri. We made the choice to go to this remote location to avoid the big crowds of Golden week in major touristic hotspots.

We took ALL the trains (plus a bus at the end). From the slow local trains that stop everywhere to the Shinkansen that reaches top speeds of over 200 km/h there was a nice variety. The views of the Japanese Alps were pretty spectacular as you can see above.

One thing we learned today: Taking trains during golden week is fine. They can get crowded which can be a bit unpleasant but it is not as bad as I would have thought. Sometimes you have to stand for a couple of minutes before a seat becomes available and that's about the most uncomfotable it gets. When reaching Gokayama, all the phones in the bus were sounding an alarm for an earthquake that would have "strong shaking". The sound of the alarm startled me. I asked myself what I should do with the information to best prepare myself for "strong shaking" but I couldn't think of anything. A couple seconds later, there was a mild shifting back and forth (like a bus usually does anyway ) and that was it. Later that day, there was another alert in the accomodation and this one was a bit more noticeable. But all in all I am pretty excited that after 3 trips in Japan, I finally experienced an earthquake! When we got out at our bus stop, we already saw some Gassho-Zukuri style houses at the entrance of our village that we stayed in for the night.

The following two images show the surroundings of the village. Yeah, it is pretty remote! When we finally arrived at the accomodation, we just laid on the floor for an hour or so. We ate dinner and played some cards and called it a day.