Thatched roof house with harvested rice

A typical scene on a beautiful, blue-sky day at Shirakawa-go. The Shirakawa-go area has been inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List at the "Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama" World Heritage Site. The houses you see are known as "gassho-zukuri" houses. The name refers to the similarity of the shape of the steeply-pitched roofs to the shape of hands folded in prayer ("gassho"). Here, in the village of Ogimachi, silkworms were once raised under the rafters.