Open Air Museum of Old Japanese Farm Houses

This guide to the Open Air Museum of Old Japanese Farm Houses in Osaka traces a 1950s rescue mission, when a dam project in Gifu Prefecture threatened to flood the village of Shirakawa, and a team led by Kansai University professor Katsugoro Uosumi dismantled a three-story gassho-zukuri farmhouse, held together only by rope and pegs, to save it. It follows the hunt for other threatened farmhouses across Japan, from Iwate to Amami Oshima. Look up at the steep thatched roof as you pass beneath it.