Tag: Okahida

Hirayu Onsen

On By rrainefioreIn TravelLeave a comment

When I was looking at Takayama as a possible place to visit, I looked up things to do.  One of the recommendations was to go to the Okahida area where there were a lot of hot springs resorts.  Why not stay a couple nights at a hot springs resort on the way to Takayama instead of doing a day tour from Takayama?  A little more research and I booked a room for two nights in Hirayu Onsen. 

Hirayu Onsen is a small village full of tourist accommodations, an unfriendly visitors center, a decent sized bus station, a couple restaurants and a lot of hot water.  I use the word hotel in this blog, but they are ryokans (guest houses).  There is water running under every street. Sometimes it’s in an open concrete ditch beside the street or in a ditch under the street with grates or pavers over it, and sometimes both.  You can hear it running everywhere, rushing, falling, trickling.  The town has three free foot baths sitting in different parks.  They are shallow pools with hot water to dip your feet in.  I’m sure every hotel has it’s own onsen bath. Most businesses seemed to have a small water feature out front too.

The hotel I wanted to stay at only had family sized rooms available for over $300 a night.  So I booked one in a less fancy hotel that was a little over $100 a night including breakfast and dinner.  My room was huge and overlooked a duck/koi pond.  It definitely wasn’t the high end hotel, but it would be good enough.  The hotel next to mine seemed to span quite an area including buildings on both sides of the street.  Every time I would go to or leave my hotel, there would be people from that hotel just milling around the street in their robes.

The day I arrived, I walked around town.  I went to the visitors center.  The guy at the desk never looked up once even when I stood right in front of him.  I picked up some maps and pamphlets and headed back out.  I found the town nature walk.  After about 15 minutes I decided I could check that of my list of things to do. I went to a gift shop and found the first foot bath.

The cost of my hotel room included dinner and breakfast. All the tables were the traditional tables where you sit on a mat on the floor. There were two dining rooms. In mine there were three single tables and a table for six. Most of the food was already laid out. A guy came over and lit a burner under the plate with beef and a burner under a dish with a white milky substance. He also brought me two different soups. The rest of the food was already on the table. The milky substance was tofu and it thickened as it cooked and then you put it in this delicious sauce. I tried everything except the river fish. Most of it was delicious. Most of it, I wasn’t sure what it was. One guy at the six person table came in, ate and left. Another came in, grabbed something he wanted to eat and left the room with it. The others came in and ate so fast they were done in under two minutes. The other single table guys came in after me and left before me. How did they eat so fast?

After dinner I went to the public bath at my hotel. In my room was a robe and towel for each day. There was also a pajama type top. I put on my robe and slippers to go down to the bath. When I was coming back I saw people in their robes with the pajama type top on top of the robe. Was that what I was supposed to do? I can’t decide if I like public baths or not. I’m thinking I’m not a huge fan.

Did you know that ducks wake up at 4:30am and start quacking loudly? I know that now. Breakfast was a similar experience to dinner in that the food was all laid out and most of it was mysterious. There was a goo on a leaf and a lady lit the burner below that plate. When the goo started to bubble because it was so hot, I took it and the burnt leaf off the plate. No, I was not supposed to do that. The lady shook her head and indicated that it was to remain on the burner. The leaf burnt to a crisp and the goo was stuck completely to it. I don’t get it. I think one of the first things I’m going to do when I get home is get an American breakfast. Although, I’m not completely against miso soup with breakfast.

On the map I got at the tourism place, there was a thing listed that had something to do with turtles. When I googled it I got one hit that Japanese make some product from soft shelled turtles (suppon). I got another hit that showed pink flowering trees. The translation was turtle nursery. So my first adventure for the day was to find out if this was a place where they raised turtles, sold products made from turtles or had a tree nursery somehow named after the soft shelled turtle. I was hoping for trees. It was trees! A grove of white and pink flowering trees. This is what I imagine it looked like all over Japan during cherry blossom season (which I just missed). I’m not sure why these were in full bloom, but they were a sight to see. The shades of pink ranged from white to baby pale pink to a slightly darker shade of pink. And when the breeze picked up, tiny petals fluttered on the breeze. They slowly drifted down to the ground, so graceful and soft. It was like some fairy tale movie. The building next to the trees had a tiny store in the front of a huge building. Inside were products I couldn’t identify. I didn’t stay long to look. Suppon is supposed to be very healthy and is used in stew for cancer patients as well as a supplement in Chinese medicine. I didn’t see any actual turtles.

I walked by the local ski resort. It looked to be about two runs in size. It was on the way to a waterfall. The waterfall was pretty, but the hike up to it was not in the shade so I was very hot when I got there. There was no cooling off in the waterfall as it was not accessible for close up inspection and the river below it was unfriendly. Another sightseeing stop in the general area was Big Tree, Onezuko. I found where I think the path went to get to Onezuko and it was straight up a narrow side sloping trail that could have used stairs. I did not want to come back down that. I was still hot from the waterfall walk so up didn’t look fabulous either. There would be no big tree for me.

Dinner was in a different area of the hotel tonight. I had a room to myself with a tall table and regular sized chair. It was a different assortment of mysteries. It was a different type of tofu still cooked over a flame. The beef tonight was cooked on the same leaf as I had for breakfast. I hope you are not supposed to eat the leaf. There was no way that was happening. All I could think of was “You’ve heard of Elf on a Shelf, now there’s Beef on a Leaf.” There was a different river fish tonight. It was the same “no way” from me, though.

After dinner I went to the public bath at the hotel I had wanted to stay at, but couldn’t justify the price. There were seven or eight outdoor pools and they were so clean. It felt like you were out in the forest instead out under the awning of the roof. I enjoyed this onsen much more than the one at my hotel. I was real glad I paid $8 to enjoy a new onsen.  Public baths were back on the thumbs up list.

Travel Day

On By rrainefioreIn TravelLeave a comment

I got to the Ueda train station early, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do and partly because I hoped to see a shinkansen zip through the station without stopping.  When I was in Ueda in 2019, this happened. I’m not sure if I wrote about it then, but it was such a terrifying and wonderful experience.

After a couple shinkensen came and went, I heard an announcement.  It didn’t come with the same chime before it that seemed to announce a train arrival.  And it was never repeated in English.  Then I heard the gates to the platform click.  They were already closed, but this sounded like a “just to be sure” locking of the gates.  Then the roar came.  I stood up to get a better view, but couldn’t get my feet to move closer.  I felt the air change ahead of the train and it felt like the wind tried to carry me with it as the train sped by.  My heart stopped.  I’m sure because after the shinkansen went through, my heart hurt.  I had trouble catching my breath.  Of course, there was no way to do a video of it.  It all happened too fast and I was immobilized from instinctual fear..  I wonder how fast it was going.  I’m sure it slows down a little to go through a station?  They need a digital display that reports the speed.  It did happen a second time.  This time I got a video which of course is nowhere near as dynamic as the real thing.  I didn’t go up to the gate for fear the train might take my phone. 

I was on the first train for one stop.  It took 15 minutes to travel what would have taken one hour by car.  You do the math.

I had 45 minutes to get to my second train.  When planning the trip, I left time in between just to be safe.  Two trains were listed on the electronic board for platform 6.  Mine was the second listed.  A train sat at the platform so I assumed it was the first listed on the board.  That train left and the next train came earlier than I expected mine to come.  I stared at it.  There was no station name or train name on it in English.  I stared at it and decided to not get on it.  A third train came in.  A European couple was standing near me and he asked if this train was the one that went to Matsumoto.  I replied “I hope”.  Most of the cars were empty.  This was great since the seats looked smaller than my suitcase.  As car 4 rolled up, it was completely full.  Crap, my ticket is for car 4.  The sign on the side of the car said car 4 Shinano 8.  I felt pretty sure this was the right train.  I stood aside to let people out.  They kept coming out.  I’d peek around the corner, more people.  More people.  I looked to the other end of the car.  It also had a solid line of people coming out.  It was like the clown car I remembered from when I was a kid.  More people came out than could possibly have fit in the car.  Now I was concerned.  Would the train leave before I could get on it?  When I finally got on, Car 4 was empty except for me, the couple going to Matsumoto and 4 other people.  Whew – my suitcase could have a seat of its own. 

A little more than an hour later I was in Matsumoto.  First order of business: lunch.  Second: coffee.  Third: bus station.  I searched for a restaurant and found the cutest coffeehouse that also had sandwiches.  Score!  Goals 1 and 2 together.  The coffee shop looked like something I would expect to see in Europe.  The china was ornate and gilded.  Grand desserts in foggy metal cups came out.  Was it dry ice or just super cold?  Large coffees and small coffee came out.  Small open face sandwiches came out.  The proportion of dessert to sandwich was way off.  I had a ham and cheese sandwich and thought of ordering the dessert, but didn’t.  I had ordered a cinnamon coffee.  It was cinnamon and orange.  I hadn’t expected the orange, but it was a lovely combination.

The bus station was across the street from the train station and two blocks from the coffee shop.  I had my ticket on my phone so I went past the ticket office and straight to the bus platforms.  There were 10 platforms.  There was a timetable on the wall.  None of the timetables showed my bus. I didn’t feel like playing the game of “pick any number between 1 and 10”.  So I went to the ticket office and asked.  Platform 7. 

Whoa, this was a bus ride to remember.  The road was so narrow with tons of twists and turns as it climbed into the mountains.  The road was not wide enough for two buses (in my opinion), but we passed many other buses and large vehicles anyway.  At some blind curves our bus would just stop and wait for other vehicles to pass before making the turn.  At a couple places he stopped even though he couldn’t see around the curve in the road.  When the big vehicles had passed he continued.  I wondered if he had some sort of large vehicle radar that told him when he could go.  Through every tunnel I could have touched the wall if I could stick my arm out the window.  The bus was just as close to every guardrail and every other vehicle as well – just an arms length away.  The guardrail looked completely insufficient for how steep the drop offs were.  Yes, I had my seatbelt on for the whole trip. 

Most of the way the road followed a river.  At the bottom it was wide and dark green.  It got wilder, spicier, and full of whitewater as we kept going up.  Many places the river was dammed creating blue mountain lakes.  There were also more tunnels than I could count.  After each tunnel was a breathtaking view of the river, a lake or waterfalls.  The mountainsides were covered in every shade of green that exists.  The forest was dense with no hint that anything other than forest, water and us existed.  It was a stunning , beautiful, terrifying drive and I had the best/worst seat in the bus – front row where I could see out the front of the bus and left side window where I could peer down every drop off into a river or lake.  There were still pockets of snow up high and I was very glad I wasn’t doing this drive in winter.

Sorry for bus window glare in some of my pictures, but it was the best I could do.