This postcard is my biggest disappointment of the entire set. Gifu’s third postcard features ukai, or cormorant fishing on the Nagara River. Men train u, or cormorant birds, to fish for ayu, then bring the caught fish back to the boat instead of eating them. The men and birds go out on boats almost every evening from about May to October to fish the river, except when torrential and record-breaking rains sweep into Gifu RIGHT as I get there, thereby canceling the event and preventing me from seeing the ONE thing I was most excited to see! ARG! (As you can tell I am slightly disappointed. Slightly.)
As a result, the closest I came to actually seeing the cormorants or the river was this:

Yeah. Woo.
It might not be this year, or next year, but I WILL be back to Gifu City to actually see Ukai, and I will post about it them! Meanwhile, you can assuage your curiosity with a youtube video here, or this fantastic blog post about it here. And if you want to hear more whining about missing it, check over the rest of my Gifu visit at my personal blog here.