CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
192 km from Takayama to Takayama, about 2 h 44 of riding. It goes by way of Ogimachi Village, Ogimachi Village 2, Ainokura Village and Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Goka. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Takayama sits in the Hida mountains in the centre of Honshu, a small city of about sixty-five thousand surrounded by peaks of the Northern Alps. For centuries it was cut off by snow, and its carpenters became famous across Japan, so skilled that they were sent to build temples and palaces in Kyoto and Edo. That heritage is visible in the old town, where dark wooden merchants' houses with latticed fronts line the narrow streets of Sanmachi Suji, and sake breweries mark themselves with cedar balls hanging over the doors.
Read the complete Takayama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Takayama is where the day begins. Next is Ogimachi Village.
Ogimachi is the largest village in Shirakawa-go, a deep valley in the mountains of Gifu where the houses wear steep thatched roofs like hands pressed together in prayer. The style is called gassho-zukuri, praying hands, and the angle of about sixty degrees is a response to heavy snow, which can pile up for months. The roofs are made of thatch more than a metre thick, and the villagers once re-thatched them together in a communal effort, a custom still observed.
Read the complete Ogimachi Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ogimachi Village comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ogimachi Village 2.
Ogimachi is the largest of the gassho villages and the one most people picture when they think of Shirakawa-go, a cluster of steep thatched farmhouses in a valley of the Sho river in Gifu prefecture. Some sixty houses survive here, dark with age, their roofs angled at about sixty degrees so that deep snow slides off. Families once lived on the ground floor, kept silkworms in the attic spaces, and shared the work of rethatching in a communal effort called yui, in which the whole village turned out to rebuild a roof in a day or two. The practice carries on in a smaller form, and a roof is replaced every few decades. The village shares its UNESCO listing with Gokayama, 1995.
Read the complete Ogimachi Village 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 59 km into the recorded legs you reach Ogimachi Village 2. Next is Ainokura Village.
Ainokura is the smaller, quieter sibling to Shirakawa-go, tucked at the head of a side valley in the Gokayama district of Toyama prefecture. About twenty houses stand in the steep thatched gassho style, a name that means hands pressed in prayer and describes the roofs, which are steeply pitched to shed heavy snow. Inside, big wooden frames are lashed together with rope and not nails, and the top floors were built for silk and, famously, for making gunpowder ingredients. The remote location mattered. The Kaga domain, which ruled the area, valued the saltpetre, and the valley was a quiet place where people could make it out of sight. The village forms part of the UNESCO listing with Ogimachi, which is the bigger one.
Read the complete Ainokura Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ainokura Village, about halfway. Next is Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Goka.
Shirakawa-go and Gokayama together form one of the most photographed rural landscapes in Japan, and for once the photographs are not misleading. Across the border between Gifu and Toyama prefectures, in the deep valley of the Sho River, farming families built houses with huge triangular thatched roofs, some of them three or four storeys high, angled at sixty degrees to shed the heavy winter snow. The roofs are made of reeds without a single nail, and they need rethatching every few decades, a task the village does collectively, in a tradition called yui, with the whole community turning out to help.
Read the complete Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Goka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Goka sits at 78 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ainokura Village.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ainokura Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ainokura Village comes up about 106 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Ogimachi Village 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ogimachi Village 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 134 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Ogimachi Village 2. Next is back through Ogimachi Village.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ogimachi Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ogimachi Village, late in the day. Next is Takayama.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Takayama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 192 km.
Takayama → Ogimachi Village is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ogimachi Village 2 → Ainokura Village is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ainokura Village → Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Goka is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Goka → back through Ainokura Village is 12 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ainokura Village → back through Ogimachi Village 2 is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ogimachi Village → Takayama is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.