Mountains & cold
After monkey-san it was time for mountain-san. Matsumoto, a gateway to Kamikochi & the Japan Alps was our first stop. We stayed in a lovely wooden ryokan – Nunoya – tlc had been applied to this one! The only downside was the low doors (although this is an on going general problem in most places we have stayed in). Nick suffered here more than I & banged his head on many an occasion getting to the loo!!The main draw to Matsumoto (other than for getting to the Japan Alps) is the castle – one of Japan’s national treasures.
You wouldn’t know there was a castle in the town, you don’t see it until after you’ve entered a gate & turned a corner. Then suddenly, there it is, in all it’s glory. It is five storeys high from the outside, but as you walk round you realise that you’ve visited six floors. I believe this is a common feature of Japanese castles – a floor for all the samuris to hide in when fighting & the enemy doesn’t know where they are (in this case between the second & third “floor” when looking from the outside).
The castle also held some features common to English ones – holes to drop stones down on your enemy & thick walls. Although in this case the thick walls were only about 18 inches thick – compared to our couple of meters. They seemed proud of their thick walls – made out of rope & straw & a mud-type substance (spot the girly-type description!). Nick reakons their enemies can’t have had cannons – having said that – this castle has never been invaded – probably why it is one of the only ones of its kind in Japan.
It was in Matsumoto that we hit our first food problem…how can you tell whether or not a place is open – with difficulty – the doors are half covered with blinds and there are no windows to look in, so everything looks closed. Once you’ve found one that looks open, the next stage is to then decipher a menu – we’ve taken to not even trying, rather we make sure that they either have a picture menu or plastic food in the window (neither of which were a very common feature in Matsumoto!) Having said that you do feel a bit of a numpty having to go outside & point at the dish you want from the window!
After Matsumoto it was on to Kamikochi. You can’t take your car into Kamikochi itself (not that we had one) but I don’t think I’ve seen as many coaches trying to pass each other on small windy roads before. The road up was very impressive with lots of tunnels(including one with a t-junction), driving alongside a large damn type construction and (when you weren’t in a tunnel) colourful autmun leaves (to take your mind off some of the steep drops into the damn).
There isn’t much to see at Kamikochi – most of the bus loads of Japanese tourists seem to make it to kappa-bashi bridge, take their photo, maybe cross the bridge & have a little walk, and head home again (maybe a slight exageration – but not far off the truth). I don’t know what is so good about the kappa-bashi bridge…perhaps it is because it is the first “thing” you get to after getting off the bus (other than general tat/food shops), but who knows. The view of the mountains is good (when it isn’t raining like it was when we arrived) and at this time of year (autumn) the leaves are beautiful.
Apart from the tat/food shops there are a couple of hotels & that is it. Kamikochi done. Not for us, our plan was to head up to Yari-ga-dake (7th highest mountain in Japan), then take the daikiretto over to Hotaka-dake (3rd highest mountin in Japan) before heading back to Kamikochi (what is described as the Kamikochi-Yari-Hotaka circuit (very imaginative!))
We set out in the rain – at about 7.45am – lovely early start! We knew the day was going to be a long one – the description in the Lonely Planet guide has it down as being 17kms – on calculation after getting back to Kamikochi the Japanese map has it at c.20kms.
For the first 4 to 5 hours or so we followed a valley (apparently there are good views – but it was still raining). We knew we had 1500m of “up” to do that day, so when we were about 4 to 5 hours in at Yarisawa lodge and had only gone up about 200m we knew the next 8kms or so would be hard work. Boy was it hard.
It was also getting cold – I’d resorted to wearing gloves as I was losing feeling in my hands – but rain and non-waterproof gloves don’t work well at keeping your hands warm for long. As we slowly went up – the rain stopped for a bit – long enough for there to be a break in the mountains and for us to see the yari-dake-sanso hut that we were aiming for that night. I half wish the weather hadn’t broken. We knew we only had about 1.5kms to walk to the hut – but we also had about 800m of vertical up still to go.
Long, steep zig-zags.
Never ending, long, steep, zig-zags.
It was about 3.6 degrees c at this point & about 4pm. The sun went down at 5 and we still had a long way to go. The clouds came in and took the view away.
Never ending, long, steep, zig-zags.
We finally got to the hut at about 5.15pm, my hair around the hood of my jacket had started to freeze and it was nearly dark. The lights were on in the hut. Pure relief from both of us – there is also a worry when you turn up to a hut that it’ll be shut.
It looked like dinner was served at 5pm from the signs.
Hum. We might have a bed & breakfast, but we really needed some dinner – there is only so much chocolate cover peanuts can do (our fuel for the climb up – along with a cold rice ball).
Thankfully they were kind & the lovely lady phoned someone (in the kitchen I guess) and that someone said yes, we could have dinner. More relief.
I can’t really remember what we had – rice & miso soup as always – various pickles and who knows what else – but it was good.
It was lights out at 8.30 – but we didn’t notice that – we where in our (unheated) room with about 20million duvets on top of us (well 4).
Overnight the windows to our room froze shut.
Breakfast was at 6am (with sunrise) and we were outside ready of a days walking at about 7ish. It took us about 10 minutes to walk 10 meteres down to the start of the path as it was so icey. Perhaps, when a hut which sleeps 650 only has 2 in it (i.e. us) there is a reason. Perhaps there is a peak season for a reason. Just as the hut closes for the winter on 31st October for a reason (it was 25th).
After spending a couple of minutes looking at the start of the days walking towards the daikiretto (which includes ladders & the “ability to hold onto steel cables very tightly” – and about 3 hours away) we decided that it probably wasn’t a sensible walk to attempt – cold, icey ridge and we didn’t have time to wait for it to thaw. So we turned round and went back down the way we had come up the day before. We didn’t even try to summit Yari (which would have added an extra hour to the day) – it looked far too icey.
At about at the point we were at 4pm the previous day, we were in shirt sleeves and boiling. Yari was is full sun & we found it difficult to imagine how cold we had been an hour previously. Although you could still see the wispy ice clouds blowing off the ridge. Then more clouds came in and the view disappeared & we were pleased not to be in amongst them.
Just as the up the previous day had been draining. The final 4 hours of flat on the way back down were tough (and yes the views of the valley were beautiful, but I was in no mood to appreciate them fully). Very sore soles of feet from trudging along very hard paths and ground.
The last km took forever. It was a very long km. It was definately more than a km.
Boy was the onsen good at the end. That was all I kept thinking about, a large (1.5m by 6m or so), hot bath at the end of the walk. Pure bliss (although it was too hot to stay in for more than about 5 minutes!)
In the end it was not quite what we had set out to do, and we are slightly disappointed not to have summited at least one mountain, but it gives us a reason to come back.
When it isn’t so cold.
Tags: Japan, Takayama, Travel, Trek
Jenni
Wow, sounds incredible! But definitely something I want to read about from the relative comfort of my office chair. Which is why we sent you out there!
Glad you’re enjoying the trip, hope you fix the photo prob soon xx
Ooohh… I feel for you with all that cold. Can’t wait to tell Mum about the windows freezing shut – that will put our cold weather here into perspective!!! Can also appreciate the whole walking up a mountain in the cloud thing…
Look forward to the next installment!!
Katie
Hmmm… I’m actually still in NZ… not Australia!