Category: Oyaji Life

I have not been feeling well since the end of last year. At first I thought that I had entered a “bad luck cycle” that is common in my life, but things did not improve and my physical condition was not good either. The cause of all the problems seemed to be insomnia, according to my acupuncturist, which was highly likely owing to my high heart rate even while I am at rest. The results of medical checkup showed that there was no problem with the heart itself, so it must be an autonomic nervous system problem. I decided to purchase an Apple Watch and monitor my health status.

After a 4-day trip to Taiwan in February, the situation was improved. My heart rate dropped and my insomnia somewhat eased. However, the golden time was over after three weeks. Hay fever triggered another bad cycle, things were even worsening due to natural factors such as typhoon-class low air pressers coming almost every week and harsh temperature fluctuations in this spring. The insomnia worsened as my physical condition was weaken.

My acupuncturist and I share the same view that fundamental solution to my autonomic nervous system problem is quitting my job, but that simple solution will likely to lead other problems. It seems to me that an effective strategy getting better would be to go on a trip.

It was around the end of March, but I did not think I can wait until Japan’s Golden Week holidays in May. I decided to go to Hotel Keifu on the outskirts of Hakodate, which I had planned to visit in late fall. I have decided to make the trip advance. Since the purpose of this trip was self-therapy, one-night trip would be too short. After some research, I found out another hotel named Hotel Hakodate Hirome-so, also on the outskirts of Hakodate. I also found that When I stayed two-nights in a row, they would provide a shuttle service between accommodations. Since there is a favorite high-end sushi restaurant in Hakodate where I may visit at the end of the trip and I have heard that no hay fever in Hokkaido, it would be a perfect escape from reality.

Even though I omitted spring break period, there were no seats available on frequent flyer award ticket for the flight leaving Tokyo on Saturday morning. In fact, the plane itself was nearly full. Rather than having a seat in the middle of three-rows of seats at a fare close to the full amount, I decided to take the Hokkaido Shinkansen even if the ride took four and a half hours. For about the same fare, I could ride in the green car (upper class). Since I would be sleepless at night, it would be good to get a sleep while on the Shinkensen.

I bought a beer at Tokyo Station for a morning nightcap (or whatever called in English), but before I could finish it, I lost consciousness around Ueno Station, and when I opened my eyes a few seconds later, I was already in Aomori. I didn’t even notice Sendai or Morioka Stations on the way. By drinking a stale, room-temperature liquid, I passed through the Seikan Tunnel with my consciousness often losing, then arrived Hokkaido Island. With this much sleep while moving on the Shinkansen, the green car ticket would have paid for itself.

When I arrived in Hakodate, the weather was clear and the temperature was hot. It was so hot that it seemed a different city where I had been freezing in a snowstorm a few months back.

I took a streetcar from Hakodate Station to Jujigai. After a lunch at Gotoken, a favorite curry restaurant, we boarded the hotel’s shuttle. On that day, the Tsugaru Strait had a calm seascape. After arriving at the hotel, I went out to see the nearby Todohokke fisheries port and lighthouse.

I went to bed early on that night, perhaps tired from two hours of walking around, or perhaps from the good effects of the self-therapy.

The next morning, I was in bad condition. Was the effect of the self-therapy an illusion?

I went out for another walk to take some pictures. It was warm again that day. As I walked, my eyes were caught by a cedar tree with a disturbing brown color – bad sign for cedar pollen.

I guessed that the reason for my poor condition that day was hay fever. This was completely unexpected. I heard that only birch trees could cause hay fever in Hokkaido Island, but it might be a different story in southern Hokkaido. It is true that about 20 kilometers across the Tsugaru Strait from the hotel is Honshu Island. Therefore, it would not be surprising if there were some cedar trees growing in the area. Unlike the Kanto area, where pollen dispersal was just about to over, this was probably the peak of the season in southern Hokkaido.

I have hay fever only from cedar trees, not from birch trees for sure. I thought I would not have hay fever, and did not bring any medicine with me. Moreover, there was no drugstore in the neighborhood in remote area of Hakodate.

Even so, thankfully my hay fever did not get much worse, perhaps because there are fewer cedar trees in the forest, or perhaps because there are fewer air pollutants.

When I returned to Hakodate city central in the afternoon of the last day, I finally found a drugstore. I thought I would be okay to return from Hakodate without any medicine, but the last and biggest event of the trip, the dinner at high-end sushi restaurant was planned just before my return flight.

I rushed into the drug store. There was a shelf of nasal inflammation medicine, but as much as seen in the Kanto area. I wondered if the demand was rather low. Still, the medicine was the same.

I finished up my trip at the sushi restaurant without a dripping from my nose. On the return flight, there were seats available on the award ticket, I took the last flight back to Tokyo. The weather was fine during the trip, and I returned to Tokyo extremely satisfied.

As I was sitting on the express bus from Haneda Airport to Yokohama Station, my Apple Watch beeped just before the Yokohama Bay Bridge as the bus entered Yokohama City. My Apple Watch was set to sound an alarm when my heart rate exceeds 120 beats per minute at rest. By the time I arrived at Yokohama station, it had calmed down to about 100. There was no way I could sleep when I got home in that state, and my insomnia returned back.

Is a three-day trip not enough time to deal with insomnia? Or do I need to have a passport for a self-therapy trip?

It is possible that the idea of traveling as self-therapy is an illusion. However, I would like to avoid the fundamental solution to my autonomic nervous system problem, so I need to devise a different coping remedy.

In order to come up with a new strategy, I need to reexamine my life from a new perspective. In order to make a fresh start, I decided to go to travel first.

One evening in mid-August, I received a message from my old friend, Shinkoro. He was visiting Japan at the end of August and asked if we could meet on Sunday. He knew, without asking me, that I would have plenty of free time on a weekend only 10 days away. It is because of from our long acquaintance, I suppose, or something else.

I thought it would be an easy task just to make a reservation at our favorite sushi restaurant in downtown Tokyo for the evening, but it seemed that he had changed his mind and asked me if we go trekking or go to an onsen for one-day trip in Hakone area. As I have enough free time, I could see no good reason to refuse, but I did my best to block him from going to Hakone where I expected super crowded on a summer weekend.

I happened to read a book about Mt. Tanigawa back then, I came up an ambitious schedule that included a ropeway ride on the Mt. Tanigawa and trekking at Tenjin Pass, then renting an electric bike to see Ichinokurasawa Valley. As a result, trip became too tight for one day and we decided to stay overnight in the Minakami area.

Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture is upstream area of the Arakawa River, which I had always disliked due to proximity from Tokyo, but Mt. Tanigawa is in Gunma Prefecture and on the Tone River although it is still in the Kanto region. If you go to the headwaters of the Tone River, you will feel as if you have been on a real trip.

However, the problem will be Minakami area. In my opinion, Minakami is in the same league as Kinugawa area as a hot spring resort that I dislike without even trying. I am not fun of so-called “big-box” hot spring hotels, and I have no taste for visiting ruins from the bubble era.

I made some research and found that there is a hot spring called Yubiso deep in Minakami area, which was a remote hot spring resort even in its heyday. It was on the bus route from Joetsu Shinkansen’s Jomo Kogen Station to the Mt. Tanigawa Ropeway, so it seemed like a not bad option.

On the same day when Shinkoro contacted, I looked for a hot spring hotel in Yubiso, and by the next morning I had completed our reservation. I thought I had done a pretty good job for a plan I had made in one night, but that was not the hard part.

The problem was the weather. It is true that the weather in the mountains is changeable, and there are many thunderstorms in the northern Kanto region in summer, but this year it was particularly bad. Moreover, as the departure date approached, the weather forecast became unstable, perhaps because the season was turning to autumn. Even worse, a large typhoon was brewing over the Pacific Ocean, creating moist air and making the weather further unstable.

It would be undesirable if rained, especially Shinkoro had gone to the trouble of bringing trekking shoes to Japan. I kept looking at the weather forecast quite frantically, hoping to find somewhere sunny even if we had to pay a cancellation fee. I further tried looking outside of the Kanto region, but even with the nationwide forecast as of two days before, only Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture looked like they would definitely be sunny. The word “Hakone” came to mind, but I decided not to pick up any potential problems.

We cut our plans for the first day, changed only the designated bullet train ticket for the outward journey. We met together at Tokyo Station in the heat of the sunny summer day, and set off for Mt. Tanigawa. It was already overcast at Omiya on the way, and a thunderstorm broke out around Kumagaya.

I started to have a bad feeling. As expected, the lights in the train went out in the tunnel past Takasaki, and the Shinkansen came to an emergency stop. The following train was reported to have suffered a power failure, and operation resumed after a simple vehicle inspection.

In the end, the train arrived at Jomo Kogen Station about 5 minutes late. From there, the bus to Yubiso Onsen was a 7-minute connection at the scheduled time. We happened to be on the train car in front of the stairs to ticket gates, so we managed to run to the bus 20 seconds before departure.

I began to have a good feeling about the future. It must be the potential of Shinkoro, who has a mind of “a glass of half full of water” instead of thinking as “a glass of half empty water” like me.

Still, it was raining really heavy while we were on the bus, but after a while we arrived at the inn, it started to drizzle lightly. We went out for a walk outside. Yubiso may have been a remote hot spring resort in the past, but now it is a deserted village deep in the mountains with a few hot spring inns.

The small village was wet from the rain, creating an extremely atmospheric scene. After walking for a while, we came across a bus stop that could appeared in a famous animated film, and a shrine in a dense forest that looked like it could have appeared in a film by the same production company. Other in the village was the sound from the clear stream.

We stayed at an inn called “Nakaya” where the open-air bath was reserved for 40 minutes for private use. I wondered if it would be a good idea to reserve the private bath for two old men, but aside from that, the rain stopped just before we took the bath, and the sunset started after a while.

I have a bad habit of going out to take pictures right before dinner time. I said I would be back in five minutes but ended up spending about 15 minutes taking pictures. The deep valley was covered with reddish color clouds, and the scenery was absolutely fantastic.

By the time I returned to our room, the ice-filled aperitif was already running thin, but my buddy had ordered a beer for me. The food at this inn was excellent. While the food was rather typical course meal at this kind of onsen inn, I thought the amount of care that had gone into the western-style dishes was great. This is probably the result of the chef’s deep love for soups and sauces. I would have thought that a casual French course from start to finish would have been fine.

The weather forecast for the second day was not promising either. If it rained from the morning, I thought we would return to Tokyo early, but it was forecasted to start raining in the afternoon. We decided to limit our schedule in the morning, and to determine to go to Tenjin Pass or Ichinokurazawa Valley, depending on the weather conditions.

When we took the bus to the ropeway station, it was cloudy as predicted, but the lady at the ropeway ticket counter told us that there was blue sky over the Gunma Prefecture side.

We decided to take the ropeway. Looking at the Mt. Tanigawa from Tenjin Pass, the valley was covered with deep clouds, and we would have seen nothing if we had continued on to Ichinokurasawa Valley. Even though it was the end of summer, flowers were blooming in many places at Tenjin Pass, and we had an enjoyable trek.

I thought the trip could be a simple trip, just two old men going to a modest hot spring resort and back. It turned out to be an extremely enjoyable trip. I guess it is important to have a mindset of “a glass of water is half full”.

Note: Please refer here for our itinerary.