MAGIC HOUR

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.