Gero is one of Japan's three most celebrated hot spring towns, which means most visitors come for the baths and leave without crossing the river to the Gassho Village. This is a small error. Ten thatched-roof farmhouses have been relocated here from the mountain villages of Gifu, each one built without nails, each one centered on an irori hearth that still burns. The gassho-zukuri style — steep thatched roofs designed to shed the heavy snowfall of the Hida mountains — produces interiors that are immediately comprehensible as places where people lived seriously through serious winters. The smoke from the hearth rises through the rafters the way it has for centuries. The smell is the same. The darkness under the roof is the same. Shirakawa-go, a few hours north, is more famous and considerably more crowded. The Gero gassho village is quieter, smaller, and in some ways easier to spend time in — a place to sit with a cup of tea by a fire and think about what winters were like before the alternatives existed. The hot spring is five minutes away.