Travel on Nanikore

The Working Monkeys (and Motorbikes) of Nagano

Sun, 19 Mar 2017 03:29:48 +0000

We were up in Shiga Kogen (Nagano Prefecture) again a few weeks ago for yet more snow fun, and decided to go and see the famous snow monkeys in the hot spa pools of Jigokudani Park, since we were in the area and hadn’t been before. There are a million or so amazing photos of these monkeys around the internet so I won’t post any of my own of them, but instead, a couple of the valley running through part of the park to give you an idea of what it looks like when you take a step back.

The park is actually a ~1.6Km walk from the car park area to the monkeys, and requires a fee of ~800yen per person to get in to see them, so be aware. The walk up is through a beautiful valley side though, a long, winding, if somewhat icy track, which is quite relaxing. At the base of the stairs which mark the final few hundred metres, there’s a group of old traditional houses and a steam geyser - and the occasional naked man in an outdoor bath (routenburo) if that’s your thing!

You can see above where most of those amazing photos actually happen. It’s not always this crowded though, if you take a look at the webcams when they’re live, it’s often fairly empty. It is of course well staged - the monkeys are fed by the park staff to encourage them to come down, though guests are understandably discouraged from feeding the monkeys. As someone who has had a close face-to-face encounter with an adult male snow monkey in a carpark on a previous snow trip, I can vouch for not getting too close.

Also of interest to me was a group of old, and somewhat battered looking motorcycles down by the track, some Honda (Super) Cubs and an old CD90, all muddied up and with chains on for the snow, ice and mud. They look like they’ d seen some fun for sure. They seem to be used for running basic deliveries, and I dare say they’re probably road legal, but sadly there were no owners around I could ask. Definitely the types of vehicles you want for this terrain.

Bike Tour: Lakes, Tea and Senbei

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 06:46:17 +0000

It’d been quite a few weeks since I’d been out on the motorbike for a day trip, so when my old friend CS offered up the middle day of a 3 day weekend for a trip out in November, I was up for it, and so spent some time staring at my Touring Mapple book and Google Maps to see where we could put in a few hundred kilometres.

The Classy Meet Up

As I’m all about style and culture, I had decided we should meet up on the infamous 246 road before moving up into the mountains of central and western Kanagawa Prefecture. The meeting place: The Eastern Gods Truck Station. Well technically it’s the Toushin Truck Station, but the literal translation of the kanji sounds a lot better in my opinion. Yes, it’s a truck stop - a fair sized one too - with a restaurant, showers, some rooms, and of course ample parking for large trucks, and a smaller area for vans. We parked up in the latter car and van park, CS’s Triumph Tiger 1200 dwarfing some of the vans, whilst everything dwarfed my CB400.

A cup of tea and a catch-up later we were on the 246 for a little while before heading north on the 412 and then moving onto the 413 and pushing west. The 413 is a decent road - well surfaced, the odd narrow portion, with plenty of twisties to play on. For the most part you’re going along valleys, but at elevation, so expect some dampness and mist, especially on an overcast day like we were on. It was at this point I discovered the mist loved settling on my visor and stubbornly refused to roll off, so I need to sort that out.

Doushi Road

About half way along, we came across a rest area near the town of Doshi, and sailing past all those people in cars who like to queue for parking spaces, we parked up in the bike area which was packed with bikes and bikers - men, women and children of all ages, with all manner of bikes, trikes and quads. It was a good place to take a break, with people queuing for various hot snacks or grilled chicken, pork, vegetables , some tasty looking grilled fish, as well as a shop selling powdered radish roots, fresh veg and other things there was no way I could fit on my bike. In the end I had a bottle of hot lemon juice from the the vending machine. A missed opportunity in retrospect - I should have queued for the grilled fish.

Back on the road, more twisties, but then a slower section in traffic around lake Yamanaka. I always like the lakes around Mt. Fuji, especially for the novelty ferries. I didn’t take a picture, but Yamanaka had the giant swan ferry on the water as we rode past.

Another missed food opportunity here: we went past several nice local places and pulled away from the commercialized lake area,and only when we were stopping for some fuel did we decide we were hungry, by which point our only real option was the nearby Royal Host. It’s perfectly acceptable as a place to eat, but as a franchise, we’d usually avoid it.

As CS has a GPS system, he oddly likes to make use of it, and due to this, it likes to run him a merry jaunt on occasion. This time, instead of taking us to a small tea house on a mountain road I had spied on Google Maps, it decided we really wanted to sit in more traffic around the outskirts of the larger Kawaguchi lake in a market stalls area where it continued to confidently claim the tea shop was always 3 minutes away,.

After fifteen minutes, we called it out, told it we weren’t happy, did U-turns and followed my direction following my paper map. That was better. Or at least it was better for a while, since on the 137, we were to look for road 708, a svelte mountain road where this legendary tea shop would be waiting for us. Unfortunately CS was a couple of cars in front of me, and he missed the turn. This left me bombing up the road thinking I was way behind, arriving at the beautiful tea-shop and realising it was just me. Long story short, CS did finally locate the place, and it was worth it.

Tea Time

It’s called Tenkachaya (天下茶屋), as in, ‘whole world under heaven’ tea shop. They also make and sell senbei rice crackers. There’s no parking as such, and the collection of cars and bikes basically hug the sides of the road. Inside it’s all wood, modestly lit, and very relaxing. The staff were really friendly, and explained what was available in the shop and on the menu. That’s when we noticed we’d misunderstood something. They do sell tea - indeed they give you a complimentary cup when you sit down - but their speciality is a blend coffee. I had to have one, and yes, it was very good. Also, the senbei were sweet, sort of lemon flavoured, and the staff advised us to break them in their plastic wrappers before eating because they could probably stop a bullet. They do taste rather good though, so we bought some as omiyage to take away too. It’s by itself really on that 708 road, which the tunnel making it far quicker to get to and from the lake, but it is worth the ride/drive up for a rest stop and to take in the view.

After that good rest we started winding our way towards the Chuo expressway, joining at it’s southern starting point, and following it east. There was plenty of traffic - perhaps people returning Sunday night to avoid the read traffic insanity of the Monday return, so we ended up filtering for a couple of kilometres before stopping before the Hachioji junction where we parted ways. My route would take me onto the newer Ken-O extension south. I like the road as it’s not so busy, there’s plenty of distance between junctions, and even though there aren’t yet service areas, it’s a relaxing ride though I should note, there’s no street lights along some sections, so with just me on my bike, even with the headlight on, it felt oddly isolated.

The only notable thing on that final stretch was that all the auto-payment arches (ETC) were broken on my exit ramp, so I had to stop and get off my bike, get my bike seat off to give the chap on the gate my ETC card so he could manually check it through, then put it all back together. I’ve never had to do that before. Odd really.

All in all a good day out.

(An aside here: the lake is called Kawaguchiko. That ‘ko’ denotes lake [湖], and though most signs in English say Lake Kawaguchiko, it’s technically Lake Kawaguchi I think).

Some photos - September 2012

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 07:28:41 +0000

It’s been a while since I stuck a small gallery up on here, so I took a few random photos from the library to put up. They’re from a few places, mainly the Shonan coast here in Japan and a recent trip to Guam where I took a few photos from the beaches and from some attractions around the place.

May Recommendations: 5 Quick Things in the North of England

Sun, 22 May 2011 14:20:38 +0000

Since I’ve been on one of my occasional trips to the northern part of England to see friends and family, I thought I’d use it for one of my even more occasional ‘recommendation’ posts. So then here are five things which have been worthwhile whilst I’ve been back in Blightly.

Live Football Game - despite HD TV and all that, it’s actually worth getting yourself a ticket to a real, live football game in my opinion, even if you aren’t a true fan. My old local team, Grimsby, are now in the Blue Square Bet league (the league below the real leagues if you like) but I went along to see them lose to Altrincham, with a less than impressive performance, but as ever, the atmosphere and the fan commentary is where the real value for money is. The pie and cup of tea were pretty good too.

Rand Farm - If like me you have young children, and you’re looking for a day out, it’s probably worth a trip down to Rand Farm. It’s a working farm which lets the kids get up close to all the usual farmyard animals, as well as handling and feeding some of the smaller ones. Another bonus is the generously sized adventure playground with trampolines, which kept the female side of the clan happy for quite a while. Also, the food isn’t too expensive, and actually tasted pretty good too.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park - If you want something a little more artistic, I can heartily recommend the YSP. It’s a massive open country park, interspersed with various sculptures and seats, along with dedicated indoor gallery spaces, and is well worth a visit if you’re passing on the M1 or M62. The current installation when I was there was by Jaume Plensa, which was well worth the time. For me, it’s perhaps akin to the Hakone Open Air Art Museum, depending on which venue is more obscure to you!

Louth - North Lincolnshire is an area dotted with old market towns. Louth is one on the A16, being in easy reach of Lincoln if you happen to end up there. It’s got all the small streets and buildings, with decent architecture and tea houses that you’d expect of a market town, and of course a worthwhile church to look around. Wednesday is the main market day, so if you do go that day prepare to battle for parking spaces, and good luck with baby cars. We decided to do lunch at Melanie’s, which was recommended by a couple of people and was very good, and sources all of it’s meat and produce locally. I recommend the venison sausages.

On the way back to the car though, we also found the Gobstopper Sweet Shop, which sold all manner of ‘old fashioned’ sweets, which meant I could stock up on hard liquorice, granular sherbet and even liquorice wood!

KLM and City Hopper - For the last few years I’ve returned to the UK via KLM from Tokyo, stopping off in Schiphol (Amsterdam). I do this mainly because it’s easier for me to get to my family’s house more quickly from Humberside Airport even with the stop in Schiphol, than flying in to London and trying the train or even car to the north. KLM is not the best carrier, being somewhat erratic, but prices are OK, and that stop in Amsterdam also gives you the flexibility to use one of their CityHopper flights to most larger cities in Europe, and to a lot of smaller airports (such as Humberside!).

Out on the Road (Again).

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:11:07 +0000

Out on the Road (Again). Or in a plane. For the first time in a few months I’m out of Tokyo on business. It’s a fairly aggressive schedule too, doing the Tokyo, Mumbai, Beijing and back to Tokyo triangle in six days. Lot’s of things to do.

Actually, as I write this I’m sat on an ANA Boeing 737-700 from Tokyo to Mumbai, and I have to say, this is a really nice plane. It’s essentially a small[ish] business jet, with only forty seats - all business class - and the bonus for me is that there’s a power socket at each seat, so I brought that extra battery for nothing, given that it’s a nine and a half hour flight. It means I can sit and watch more of my own films, rather than rely on the selection on the system, which seems to be very limited on the flights I get and read some documents and such I brought along.

Whilst I was up here I took some photos through the window on my little Canon Ixy 20 IS, which made me look like somehow like a first time flyer, but it’s a view out there which always looks amazing to me - all that planet, all that cloud and all that sky; definitely something I can’t see myself ever getting tired of.

Missing the family already though. Only yesterday we were running around the park in Chuo-ku, and in a few hours I’ll be three and a half time zones away.

Waxing the Board

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 08:34:06 +0000

I just got in from almost an hour and a half on the balcony tuning and waxing the boards so we can send them to Kiroro tonight, in time for next weekend’s three day trip.

Standing on a chilly balcony may not sound like fun, but it’s worth it, partly because maintaining the boards is important, but also because for some reason I quite like it; I think it’s fairly therapeutic - I get a bit of fresh air, listen to my iPod at loud volumes, and check up on my favourite hardware.

Waxing and ’tuning’ a snowboard isn’t too difficult, although I suggest that doing it well takes a lot more effort and practice than I can contribute. There are lots of guides on the web though.

Today then I spent a lot of time on my board, and more specifically, my edge. The board is six years old now, and has become something of a war-horse. The edges are scratched and burred a little, and despite regular cleaning and drying after use, I’ve noticed little rust pits appearing in a few places. I decided then to break out a fairly small gauge file and get some of the pits out that the little red rubber-and-sand block wont. That took a while, but the edge gleams now, it looks brand new.

Whenever I wax my board, it’s like a trip down memory lane. I can remember where I got pretty much all the marks on it: the gouge I got three days after I bought it in New Zealand, piling down Temple Basin, only to snag a rock barely below the surface of the snow. Fortunately we filled it with plastic quite well and I haven’t had any more issues with it. There’s also the scrape along the top side, where an out of control beginner slashed across behind me and I lunged out of the way, only for her to rip my rear binding strap off, and leave a small hole in my trouser bottoms. It might not sound good, but had the timing been any closer, I think we’d have both ended up in hospital with broken limbs.

So the boards are now done, and I can double-check the binding angles, put them in their bags, and the great people at Seven Eleven will hopefully make sure they get to Yamato/KuroNeko and off to Hokkaido. Roll on Friday.

Chichibu hike

Sun, 08 May 2005 22:41:08 +0000

I used to have a mantra: never travel outside Tokyo during Golden Week [GW]. There’s a reason for this. Everyone travels to ’tourist’ spots during GW so Tokyo is virtually deserted which is a good time to see those places in the capital you’d never got to seeing, or, more likely, lounging around in outdoor bars/coffee houses enjoying the warm, but not humid weather.

However, I’m married now and have certain responsibilities. Apparently, one of them is to take at least one of the days I’d scheduled for loafing around to ‘do something’ during GW. OK, so how about hiking? My infinitely better half then found us a place to go - Chichibu in Saitama prefecture - last Wednesday.

Getting there was the usual nightmare: packed trains, people in gaudy 80’s ’leisure wear’, screaming children, dogs in small bags, people who haven’t buttoned their fly but no-one has the courage to tell them - and that was just the first two hours on the train. To be fair, it was interesting in that it wasn’t actually a normal train but a time machine.

In our universe the trip took two hours, but the ’train’ had actually gone back over 35 years. We made one change of trains in a place which is slightly south of nowhere, then onto another train until we got to Nagatoro. Really. It was like being back in the 1960’s (as I suspect - I wasn’t born then) and dare I say ’ quaint’.

By the time we got to our destination we were in the middle of nowhere - again - which is usually a bad thing, except in Japan you can at least be sure there’ll be a vending machine. And people. Thousands of them. All recording their children running around screaming.

There are two incredible highlights to Nagatoro - the hiking on the local mountains, and the awesome, incredible ropeway which takes you nearly to the top of one of the mountains. The queue for the ropeway was almost an hour. An hour watching people smoke whilst reclining on chairs in the shade whilst I burned (literally) in the sun. Damn smokers. I could’ve looked at the local ‘market stalls’ but I’ve seen these before (all ’tourist’ places have the same thing) and generally they sell all the things you don’t want to eat in the hot sun - seaweed, senbei and warm beer from the 1950’s fridge which may or may not be plugged in.

Once we were in the ropeway car I understood why people waited so patiently, the opportunity to get 50 people into a 5 tatami size space! Great! Video cameras all over taking pictures out of windows of trees. I bet these people will go home and watch it every night. Five minutes later we’re at the top, out of the small gondola and I’m learning to breathe again.

This is where it all gets better. After nearly four hours we can hike!! However, I was worried the place might be busy given the river of people at the top station and of course those still waiting to get on the ropeway for the five minutes of ecstasy. I shouldn’t have worried. Obviously the ropeway is the coolest thing they’ve ever known and therefore, why would anyone want to hike down - let’s go down on the ropeway! That’s why the hiking trails were empty - really - deserted.

Therefore I can report we had a very nice afternoon hiking round and about a beautiful wooded mountain in Saitama before getting a bus back to the station from the other side of the mountain and getting back on a much less crowded train back to Ikebukuro, 2005 and some very good ramen.

Moral of this story? Stay in tokyo in Golden Week! Only joking, it just reminded me how everyone going to the same place at the same time can be arduous, but can also be fun at the same time, in a dark way. Anyway, have a look at the photos here.

2005 Chichibu hike

Original Comments

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neal — 2005-05-08

Hello fella. Love the pics, the photography is coming alog nicely. Will send some pics of the weddings… two in two days was just a bit tooo stressful! Off for a lie down…. ;-)

Japan Tourism PDAs?

Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:43:17 +0000

I just saw this on the venerable Slashdot - the Japanese government is planning to give out PDAs to tourists to help them get around. This is all part of the government’s drive to get more tourists over here, and goes to show the lengths they’ll try. I think they mean well, but I can’t help thinking they’re barking up the wrong tree. Tourists numbers dropped off again after the World Cup which was a deservedly great showcase for the country.

So what are the issues Japan faces as a tourist spot? Well, several. Some cite the sheer cost of ‘doing’ Japan, but to be honest, if you look around, there are decent places cheap, providing you can convince some of them to offer this deal to a foreigner, but it shouldn’t be that hard. Lonely Planet often has decent info. Whatever you do, don’t read crap like Radio One put out.

Language is an issue, as signs outside of the main cities aren’t in anything other than Japanese (which is fair enough), but these are seldom of much use to Japanese either - there’s a reason car navigation systems are popular. Many Japanese speak or understand a small amount of English, and a map and pointing is pretty universal; however, get at least a phrase book, and for a change *actually* read it. The Japanese language is mercifully phonetic and like most places, people will try to help you more if they think you’re trying!

I think a key point is what you want to see - many guests on a Japanese talk show were amazed when they compared interesting destinations listed by travellers, and what they thought were interesting - they listed all the usual suspects: Fuji, Kyoto, shrines and such; many travellers wanted to see Shibuya, Akihabara, the Fuji Rock Festival or wanted to do some snowsports in Nagano or Hokkaido.

I suppose that’s a difference between domestic and international traveller inclinations - groups trips versus backpackers. Anyhow, no matter what people say about Japan, it is relatively safe and secure, and yes, it might be expensive than other Asia destinations, but compare it to places like London. The problem with Japan, especially from a Euro or US perspective is that it’s so different you really have to witness it to believe it.

South Korea

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 12:19:08 +0000

We’ve just got back from 3 days in South Korea. I’ve uploaded a few (85!) pictures in the gallery here. [ Update: Sorry, the gallery has gone. I’ll try to get around to reposting!]

It was the first time in Korea for the both of us, and with only a limited amount of time we decided we wanted to see day-to-day Seoul, some of the tourist bits, and the De-Militarised Zone [DMZ] between North and South Korea. I’m writing a full travelog to post on the Brightblack site later this week, so I’ll just put the highlights here.

Seoul is a great city - not as intense as Tokyo, but with lots to see and do, and with a lot of cool places to eat and drink. We took in some of the historical buildings, as well as trying the local teas which are excellent (I recommend the plum tea). The underground system was very cheap and efficient, and even though the trains were spacious and modern, the ticket machines were a little less friendly. We also checked out the insanely large and modular shopping district, as we had to buy a few items of clothing to meet the dress code to go to the DMZ.

The DMZ

The DMZ trip is only do-able on an organised tour, and I use the word ‘organised’ very loosely. An hour north of Seoul and you’re pretty much at the DMZ border, after a stop for lunch and a look at Freedom Bridge and the very odd fun park there, and it’s off inside the DMZ itself to the Joint Security Area [JSA] on the actual cease-fire line where North and South meet. We didn’t think we would be let into the meeting room itself, where north and south sit down together, but literally at the last minute we were allowed, under guard and only for a few minutes.

However, I can say that I’ve stood in North Korea! It’s a very quiet and very weird place. Beautiful and yet quite sinister. We were escorted closely by UN/US/Republic of Korea soldiers at all times and told when and where we could take photos. The dress code was enforced - you can’t go near the JSA in jeans, so those people had to wear ’loaners’ from the troops there.

The guides gave us detailed instructions on where to go, as we were bussed around the 3 linked camps which make up the UN force’s presence in the area. They also detailed the spot where two US soldiers were axed to death by North Koreans in the mid Seventies as they were guarding contractors who were chopping a tree down which was obstructing the view of the observation post from one of the other ones.

It’s an odd place - the DMZ fence, 2km away on either side from the true cease fire line, is all barbed wire, minefields and anti-tank blocks, but the ‘Military Demarcation Line’ is just a line of posts, and some rusted signs on the bridges, so it’s easy to see how someone could stray across, and if you did, as was pointed out, you’d be dead. As you can see in the photos the ROK soldiers look tough, they stand in a TaeKwonDo ready stance at all times, facing off against the North Koreans, who whilst we were there was one guy on the steps, rifle slung over shoulder. All in all, ’enjoyable’, but quite surreal.

As for Korea, it’s an excellent place, and well worth making the trip to if you’re in the region, and check out real gimchi (spiced cabbage) which is great. The people were very friendly and helpful, and if you speak a little Japanese and English you can pretty much get round everything (most tourists are Japanese from what we could tell). Anyway, go and take a look at the pics!

Out and About in Sydney

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:58:34 +0000

Well, I’ve been here in Sydney, Australia for a week now, and in the small amount of time I’ve spent outside of the office, it seems to be a really nice place. The food is excellent with some of the best steaks I’ve had in a long time - my only criticism is that a lot of places seem to close early compared to Tokyo - but maybe that’s unfair as Tokyo has about 10 times the population.

Yesterday though I went for a long walk - I started around the Opera House which is 5 minutes from the hotel. It’s a very impressive structure, though I was surprised that it isn’t actually white, but a series of creamish tiles. However, it really is beautiful, both by day and (I found out later) by night.

After taking a load of photos around it I went for a walk around the botanic gardens, which are more like a huge park, and is free to wander around. As a visitor from Tokyo, it was nice to see so much grass and trees, without concrete and tarmac around them. They have an amazing selection from all over the world, including some bat forests, palms, roses and some trees so rare they’re in a cage.

I also took a look around some museums and a few more parks before checking out some of the shops - it’s not that cheap here for some things, even compared to Tokyo, and the price for consumer electronics would even scare the British. My new digital camera was almost double the price here…

To get a taste of a city though, you need to get out of the tourist areas, and here Sydney seems to do OK too - the financial district (which, OK, is right next to the tourist area) is pretty relaxed, with a few nice bars and such. 24 hour convenience shops do take a bit of searching for, but there’s a 24hr diner right on Circular Quay which does a decent coffee at all hours.

Bridge Climb

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 05:29:26 +0000

One thing I thought I’d do whilst I was here is the bridge climb - literally you climb up one of the arches on the Sydney Bay Bridge, all the way to the top where the flag-poles are - 138 metres above the sea. It’s not cheap - AU$150-250 depending on time - but I actually thought it was worth it - over 3 hours of time spent, with a good hour and a half or more up on the bridge itself.

You set out from one of the towers, then climb up some stairs to the arches and then walk up some steps on them, cross the span at the top, and then come back to the start point, but on the arch on the other side. The weather was great when I did it, and the view of the bay and the city is spectacular. Although you can’t take cameras up, they will take some pictures which you can buy later on - it’s not a cheap thing, but if like me you’re probably on going to be down here once, it’s a good memory to have.

Oddly, the only bit where I checked for structural safety was right at the beginning when you’re on some planks about 50m above the road and then some grating over the water. Once you’re on the arches, it’s like being on a hill. The guides were pretty good, and you’re kitted out with all the equipment and a safety line, so there’s no reason to fear. On the way back, coming down the stairs between the rail and roadways, I got lucky and experienced a commuter train whizzing past about 5 feet from me…and when you look down through the grating you can see the sea about 60m below. Actually, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone - most of us didn’t want to come down again.

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neal osborne — 2004-03-30

cool. very envious of your travels! will have to save my pennies and travel to that part of the world. saw a programme about the back packers in sydney and it seems that sexual diseases, tattoos and body piercings are the top things to do and experience!! think i will stick to the bridge walking!! glad to hear you are doing ok and will catch up with ya soon.

Dateline: Sydney

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:09:56 +0000

Currently, I’m in Sydney Australia on business, and I must say I feel lucky to be here, because it really is a beautiful place, especially as the summer here draws to a close, and I’m fortunate enough to have a hotel room facing the Bay Bridge (which strikes me for some reason as a cleaner version of the Brooklyn Bridge - I’ll have to find a picture of that on-line and see if I’m just imagining that).

So far everyone has been great - good food and drink too, though for some reason I’m struck by how spacious things are, but how ’low intensity’ they feel compared to Tokyo. Maybe the correct word is ‘de-compressed’. Anyway, I’ll be snapping pics as best I can - especially over the weekend, and try to get something in the gallery ASAP.