Monday, September 25, 2006

To the Mountains!

My colleague, N, and I thought it would be a good idea to get out of the city this past weekend, and since it was the only weekend for the next two months I have both days free, I couldn't think of anything I'd like to do more.

A Japanese hiking buddy of mine sent me some info on places we could go to camp and hike that were close enough to be accessible yet far enough that we would be away from the rush and crush of Tokyo. I forwarded the info to N to let her decide where she wanted to drive to. She selected one of his recommendations, downloaded some info off the web, and checked out her map so she'd know where we were headed. At 8:00 Saturday morning I hopped on the train and she picked me up at a few stations down the line.

By 8:45 we were in the car and off. Destination: Chasuyama, a 2-3 hour drive. N showed me on the map where we were going. My job was to navigate us. Navigator cap on, we got lost a few times and had to stop at McDonalds, gas stations, and convenience stores for directions. On the way we went into a home store and picked up a few miscellaneous camping items. By 2 pm we were close, really close, to our destination. We weren't sure how to get to the trailhead, so we stopped at a police box to ask for directions.

The officer looked at our print outs and maps and looked at his maps. He looked at our stuff, he looked at his stuff. Then he got on the phone with somebody else, hung up, and called them back. Finally he came back over to us and said in Japanese, "You're in the wrong prefecture."

Collective moan.

According to him, there's a Chasuyama in nearly every prefecture and we should have gone to Nagano, not Gunma. N and I conferenced quickly to decide where we should go to instead. She selected a mountain not too far from where we were...maybe another 2 hours in the car.

Once again we were off. We managed to get ourselves to our new destination. We drove until we found a campground, which also happened to be at the end of the road. We went into the office to see how much it would cost to pitch our tent and to see what kind of hiking up the mountain we could do. For both of us to stay, it was going to be 1600 yen ($13.75). We thought we would spend the night and go hiking in the morning.

Nope. Turns out we had driven up to the top of the mountain. After another quick conference we decided to head up towards Nikko. N wasn't too keen on doing this since she's been up there several times, but I thought it might be okay. Plus, I knew some hikes we could do since I had been up there back in June.

By this time it was about 4 pm and we needed to start thinking about where we would camp for the night. I wanted to find a place before 5:30 or so because it gets dark in Japan quite early. We drove, and drove, and drove some more. Daylight was moving into twilight and we couldn't find any place to stop. We were along a skinny little road flanked by mountains and buildings, and there weren't any options.

Then we found our spot. Alongside the road there was a little turnout that had a place for us to park just below the passing cars. It wasn't ideal, but it was mostly out of sight. We pitched the tent, made some dinner, and listened to motorcycles roar by all night long.

Car camping in Japan

If you look, you can see the guard rail in the upper left-hand corner.
The road was close.


We managed to sleep (despite the fact it was quite chilly and our sleeping bags had absolutely no insulation to them whatsoever), and in the morning we packed up early and finished our drive into Nikko. The hike we did was up Mt. Nantai. It's a hike I had started but didn't have enough time to finish the last time I was there. In true Japanese fashion, the trail went straight up the mountain and we had to scramble over a lot of rocks. The views from the top were stunning. My camera had run out of batteries, so I took a few photos with my phone.

Getting near the top



Torii gate at the top of Mt. Nantai


I'm sure the statue is imbued with meaning, but I don't know what.

After our 7 hours up-and-down (and an unsavory run-in with a family of monkeys near the end), we decided we needed to soak in an onsen (hot springs) for a while. We asked around for recommendations and ended up at a teeny little place that left us smelling like rotten eggs but feeling like spaghetti. The three hour drive back to the city was uneventful.

All-in-all it was a great weekend (even if we did spend all day Saturday driving from disappointment to disappointment).

1 comment:

Yoshi said...

It's amazing that you guys DID climb Mt. Nantai. It must have been so hard. Actually we did this summer, though we climbed during the night. If you are curious about what we did, please take a look at this entry .

I think the statue you found on summit is the enshrined deity named "Okuni".