November 26, 2014
Once
again, Adam and I have been quite adventurous.
We were planning to go to Yoro to hike up the mountain on Saturday. So on Friday night, I showed Adam the plan
for the next day, including the train schedule.
Adam decided to look up how far it really was to Yoro and seeing that it
was only about 10km, we decided to bike to the mountain. Earlier in the week, we had ordered bear
spray on amazon japan (you can buy almost anything on there). I spent part of Friday evening, reading the
entire pamphlet that came with the spray.
This may or may not have been such a good idea as it made me more
concerned about bears. Now you may be
asking yourself, “Do they really need to worry about bears in Japan?” Well, a few weeks ago a bear killed an
elderly gentleman in Takayama. All the hikers we came across had bear bells too. Apparently (from what Adam read on the
internet), the bears can be more aggressive because their habitat is endangered. However, the main reason for the safety
precaution was our bear run in a couple years ago in Waterton. Since then, we’ve both been extra careful.
Saturday
morning, we have a nice big breakfast and leave our house by 8am. We bike to Yoro which takes about an hour and
it takes a bit longer to find our way to the park. The bike ride was beautiful, and most places
had a biking path so it was fairly safe.
On our way to the park, we decide that it’s only going to be uphill from
here, so we park and lock our bikes and continue on foot. Yoro park is really beautiful and even more
so with the autumn colours. Even in the
park, we were working hard ascending the pathway to the waterfall. The waterfall is pretty similar to the Fuwa
falls here in Tarui, but much more developed so you can get really close to
it. There’s a story about these falls
which have made them famous as a type of “fountain of youth” so they sell water
from the falls and beer brewed locally.
We were going to try some of the beer, but the one place we asked were
selling it for 570 yen for one bottle.
We figured that was too much.
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| Park leading up to Yoro Falls |
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| Really pretty maple tree |
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| I look tired already and we haven't even started the hike. |
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| The falls |
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| The story about the falls |
What did we see? Was it worth the grueling up and down?
We saw a junction with a sign that showed what was in three different directions. The sign we had seen must have said something like: junction for other hiking trails/mountains 1.6 km ahead. We sat down on a bench, disappointed. We discussed the possibility of taking a different trail down the mountain, but as we were unsure of where that trail would spit us out, we decided it was best to just go back the arduous 1.6 km to where we had left off. On our way back, we ran into a couple that we had passed on our way to the junction. They stopped and tried to talk to us, which wasn’t very fruitful. After continuing on our way, we figured that they must have done the same thing as us and been disappointed with the results. The hike is fairly popular so we passed many other people, we still had our bear spray at hand though.
The walk back down the mountain was faster and not nearly as exhausting. By the end, we didn’t care to look any more at the autumn leaves as we both were tired. We got on our bikes and headed home. We arrived back at our house around 5pm, making that around 9 hours of exercise with maybe 30 minute break. I felt like how I do after a day of skiing moggles times two.
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| The hike |
Sunday, we slept in and had a relaxing morning. Seeing as we had biked to Yoro the day before, we thought, “Well, how far is it to Ogaki? Maybe we could bike there.” The Catholic church in Ogaki is only about 9km from us. So, we decided to go on our bikes again to Mass. It actually only took us 40 minutes to bike there (it took us 50 minutes on the way back as it was uphill). Seeing as Ogaki is 7 minutes by train and then we have to walk half an hour from the station to get to church, biking is just as fast and we can leave when we want to, instead of following the train schedule. This also saves us the train fare. The bike ride is nice with a bike path the whole way along less busy highways. I should mention that the weather this weekend was beautiful around 15 degrees and sunny every day.
Monday was a national holiday, so Adam and I, although physically exhausted, still wanted to go somewhere. We decided to bike (again :P) to Ikeda. Ikeda is only about 7km away. It was uphill the whole way except for the last two kilometers where we went through a tunnel that was all downhill. We came out of the tunnel and right away were at the onsen, which is where we were wanting to go. Japanese onsens are very famous. They’re hot springs and they have them all over the place. A major difference between Canadian and Japanese hot springs is that in Japanese onsens you go in naked. I should mention that the men and women baths are separate. Although unsure about how we felt about this all, we decided to go for it. We go into our separate change rooms and I look around to make sure that what I read was true- everyone does go in naked. (I mean wouldn’t that be embarrassing if it was all a myth and you end up being the only naked person?) So I follow suit and lock everything up in a locker. I then go to the showering section. I read that Japanese people wash very well before going into the baths. They had big bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash there. You sit on a little stool with a bucket and a shower head. I took a peak around again to make sure I was doing this properly. (Adam said the men didn’t wash as carefully.) Finally, I was ready to go into the onsen. The women’s was quite nice with an indoor pool, and several outdoor pools. I was surprised at how small the pools were though. The women had one main pool that was fairly shallow but nicely designed with rocks to sit on, a cooler pool for walking in, a shallow bath that two people can lie in, and a place to sit while two streams of water come down on your shoulders like a massage. They also had these rocks imbedded in concrete that you could walk across, maybe this was supposed to work as a foot massage, but it mostly just hurt. I tried everything except for the indoor pool. For not liking hot tubs, I quite enjoyed the experience. I think it helped that I didn’t know anyone and most of the women were old. Some of the old women were chatting together like it was over tea. One lady tried talking to me, but I just said that I don’t speak Japanese. I didn’t want to try having a conversation in Japanese while being naked. Coming out of the onsen, I showered off again and again when I got home. Something about everyone being naked seems less sanitary.
After the onsen, we had a picnic in a green area by the parking lot for the onsen which had a nice view of the mountains. We had talked about trying to find the gorge in town, but were both just too tired. The bike home was nice as after the 2km uphill tunnel, the rest was downhill, so we got to enjoy the “koyo” (fall colours). I believe that we will remember this weekend as the one where we discovered that we can bike everywhere.
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| Outside the onsen |
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| Parking lot for the onsen and the view we had for our picnic of the mountains. |
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| Our bike ride home from Ikeda. Adam wanted to take this picture as he felt it really captures Japan: bent sign, old building, and beautiful mountains. |
