Hinoki Village is a popular tourist attraction in Chiayi County, Taiwan. It is a village made out of last few remaining Japanese heritage buildings that were built during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Many of these buildings were built from the giant cypress trees that were cut down in Taiwan. This was the reason this place was named Hinoki as it meant cypress tree in Japanese. The Hinoki Village is now being preserved as a heritage site showing the history of the Japanese occupation era of Taiwan and also sells many souvenirs made out of cypress trees.
We got to Hinoki Village around 10:30AM in the morning and there were already a lot of people. All the buildings in the village were painted black and there was a giant cypress tree trunk at the entrance of the village. These cypress trees had a very special scent to it that could lift the spirit of an individual. It was also said that the scent could help to prevent mosquitos away from people.
At the center of the village, there was this gigantic cypress tree root beside a gift shop. The root of the tree was 10 times larger than an adult and was quite impressive! It was unbelievable to see a tree as large as this, but it was also sad to see such giant tree got cut down like this. There was also a tree that were wrapped with red string for people to make wishes. People could buy wooden pendants and write down their wishes on it and then hang it on the tree.
As we walked down the street of the village, we saw several more houses but there were all very similar. There were also many Japanese anime characters built along side of the houses such as Totoro. The streets within the village were paved and fenced on the side. We felt that these streets and fences were all built in the recent years and did not represent the old heritage village. By looking at the houses, the paint on the wall was also way too new and the roof top were definitely newly constructed. This was a bit of a disappointment as we were hoping to see some real historical buildings that were left behind 100 years ago.
There were also way too many gift shops. Essentially every single building in the village was a gift shop selling various items to the tourist. There was no exhibition hall show casing the history of this village and providing tales of this village. There was only few boards talking about what this village was for and how it was funded. This was a bit unfortunate.
The Hinoki Village was a good place to visit as part of the rest stop of a long road trip. About 30 minutes were enough for us to see everything here since we did not visit every single gift shop there. Parking is a bit difficult to find here but many people simply asked the drivers to drop them off.
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