Shimoguri no Sato

Shimoguri is a working hamlet, not a museum village. Houses, tea bushes and potato fields sit on a mountainside in the Toyama valley (Toyama-go) of southern Iida, between about 800 and 1,100 meters, on slopes of up to 38 degrees. Guidebooks call it Japan's Tyrol, and in 2009 it was picked as one of Japan's 100 villages (Nihon no Sato 100-sen). The view everyone comes for is from the Tenku no Sato viewpoint, a simple wooden platform at the end of a footpath about 20 minutes' walk from the car park. Local volunteers keep the path up. It is narrow, mostly level, and drops toward the end; after rain it is slippery, so wear shoes with grip. The local tourism association also maps two longer walks from the car park: about 2 km and 80 minutes, or 4.4 km and 120 minutes through the hamlet itself. The potatoes are the other reason to come. Shimoguri imo is a small, starchy potato of European type, grown here since the Edo period and often harvested twice a year. Skewered, brushed with egoma miso and grilled over charcoal, it becomes imo dengaku, a dish Nagano lists as an intangible folk cultural property. Hanba-tei at the car park serves it from mid-April to the end of November. If you come in December, the Shimotsuki Matsuri at the hamlet's Jugosha Daimyojin shrine runs through the night of December 13, with boiling water flung from iron cauldrons. Remember that people farm and live here: stay on the path and out of the fields.