A Journey Through the Basin

JR Gifu Station

Arrive at JR Gifu Station. Transfer to your ryokan on the banks of the Nagara. Drop your bags and step out to explore the neighborhood.

Kawaramachi's Historic District

Lunch among three-hundred-year-old merchant houses. For three centuries this is where the paper came ashore — walk the same lanes the paper wholesalers once did, past latticed windows and dark timber facades that are still lived in today.

Gifu Wagasa & Chochin Artisan Tour

Open a Gifu wagasa and soft light passes through layers of washi, revealing the geometry stitched between bamboo ribs. Craft your own miniature umbrella and see chochin lanterns painted by hand, in the same workshops that have made both for generations.

ONSEN Ryokan

Check in and sink into the amber waters of Nagaragawa Onsen.

Cormorant Fishing Cruise

Fires blaze atop wooden boats drifting down the Nagara. Masters in traditional attire command their cormorants to dive for ayu — a ritual unfolding every summer night for over a thousand years. Dinner is served on the water as the flames drift past.

Nagara River Cycling

Ride an electric bike along the river the way people beside it always have. A full day's route: rice paddies, a working sake brewery, and a quiet Zen temple tucked into the hills — the river of daily life, at the speed the landscape deserves.

Inuyama Castle Town Tour

Thirty-five minutes from Gifu, one more river and two National Treasures: Inuyama Castle, one of only twelve original keeps left in Japan, and Jo-an, a tiny 17th-century teahouse ranked among the three finest in existence. Old shopfronts below sell street food and Edo-period parlor games.

ONSEN Ryokan

Dinner at the ryokan.

Transfer

Hotel shuttle or Taxi to JR Gifu Station, then bus upstream to Gujo Hachiman — following the same river, now narrower and quicker, into the mountains.

Lunch @ Shinbashitei

Lunch of Hida beef grilled on a hoba leaf with miso, the first taste of mountain cooking.

Gujo Hachiman Castle Town

Follow the sound of water down Igawa Komichi, where the channel runs wider than the path. Koi swim beside front doors; households still rinse vegetables at communal basins. Climb to the castle above — Japan's oldest wooden reconstructed keep — for a view of the whole water town below.

Transfer to Inn

Shuttle to your inn in the castle town.

Town Walk

On foot through the lanes to Jionzenji Temple and the Tessoen garden, before the day's ride begins.

Train upstream

Board the Nagaragawa Railway with your bicycle, riding into the mountains toward the headwaters of the Nagara.

Nagataki Hakusan Shrine

A formal ceremony at the gateway to Mount Hakusan, worshipped as a mountain of water for 1,300 years.After the ceremony, the cycling begins: freewheel back down the valley.

Lunch along the way

Wood-fired pizza in the open mountain air.

Downhill

A yana fish weir where nets fly to catch ayu on their autumn run, a footbath at the roadside onsen, and a swim beneath Meoto Falls.

Gujo Food Tour

Three hours of small bars and mountain dishes you would never find alone — keichan chicken, local sake, and the dark, deep miso that runs through everything in Gujo.

Gujo Hachiman

A final walk through the water town before checking out — the koi, the channels, the castle one last time from below.

Departure

Transfer to Gujo Hachiman IC and onward, journey's end — or its next chapter.