The Return of Jack Frost

One nondescript weekend in November, Isabel, Andrew and I made our way up to Lake Tazawa to get our (heinously cheap) ski rentals for the year.

If you’re an ALT or Akita International University student もごころ(Magokoro) rentals near Lake Tazawa if your place. ￥4000 for skis, poles and boots for the season.

Gardeners in Kenroku-en

That evening we joined in a board game night in Kakunodate, where a local business owner opened her restaurant for us to take over and fed us for a small fee.

The next morning Isabel and myself were awoken by Andrew’s chilling announcement of ‘guys, I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s winter’. Sure enough the view outside his apartment window was off a 4 inch thick blanket of snowy white. We were not prepared for this.

After recording their latest podcast for their series J.E.T set pod (shamless plug: can be found on sound cloud) which I was invited to make a guest appearance in, Andrew and I headed out into the elements and down to the local community centre to get bundled, tugged and bound into kimono. The girls got a chance to wear a traditional wedding robe, that not only turned out to be rather heavy, but also cost thousands of dollars just to rent for a couple of days.

Kenroku-en feat. trees with snow ropes

Fast forward to 6am Thursday morning and Steph, Liam, Kate and myself had bundled into Kate’s car and begun making our way south to Kanazawa, Ishikawa prefecture. Our first stop was the Kenroku-en gardens, boasted as one of Japan’s three most beautiful gardens, and fortunately due to how far south we were, still shrouded in koyo.

Unable to resist the siren call of coffee shops, we stopped in at ‘full of beans’ for lunch. After a short recuperation at the Airbnb (I’ll leave out the hectic parking situation caused by the impossibly narrow road) we walked back down into the CBD, our target: The Cottage, Irish café and restaurant. Walking into the small cosy restaurant decorated with fairy lights, it really did feel like Christmas. The owners, Tony and Momo, were fantastic hosts (to the point where we all decided we wanted them to adopt us) and we were treated to roast chicken, pizza and tea. We spent the rest of the evening wandering through Kanazawa’s Tea district and hopped between a couple of bars.

Late night in the tea district

Friday morning it was another reasonably early start, a short stop for a Lawson breakfast, and then inland to visit the thatched roof Villages of Gokayama in Toyama and Shirakawago in Gifu Prefecture.

We were not prepared for the weather. I have never seen such large clumps of snow in my life. At risk of sounding counterintuitive it would have been better if it had been colder. As it was the temperature was still above zero and as a result we spent the morning trekking around in slush, feeling our toes from cold, to freezing, to numb. I had previously visited Shirakawago in January with Henry on our winter holiday but the scenery had been nothing like this. The thatched rooves were sprinkled with white dust and the view from the lookout at Shirakawago was stunning.

Shirakawago, Gifu

There may have been a small debacle when Kate lost her go-pro down the snowy bank and we had to ask the shop assistant for something to retrieve it with. The young girl cracked up laughing when we explained what had happened and hurried off to grab tools for us. Armed with a snow scoop and pole we tested the stability of the section of bank before Kate and Liam climbed over the fence (we had drawn a small crowd by this stage). With Kate hanging onto Liam, Liam hanging onto the fence, myself holding onto Liam and Steph to Kate’s bag, Liam lowered Kate down into the snow and undergrowth. A few minutes later we returned triumphant to the gift shop to return the snow scoop and pole.

The decision to return to the Airbnb to thaw out ( I had to wring my socks out once back in the car) was unanimous and we swung by the McDonald’s drive through to avoid having to put our damp shoes back on.

Shirakawago, Gifu

That evening we found a Thai restaurant for dinner and watched the skies flash with lightning before unleashing a hail storm that turned the ground white in minutes. We continued to partake in our new favourite pastime – bar hopping. A favourite for the night was the Kanazawa music bar where all four of us fell a little bit in love with the stunning lass who was the designated record disk jockey. We also couldn’t resist a trip to H&M.

Tojinbo Coast, Fukui

Saturday saw us ticking off the 4^th prefecture for our trip; Fukui. The coastal drive took us to the basalt cliffs of Tojinbo. The first word that springs to mind on seeing the hexagonal stone pillars is ‘rugged’. With dramatic chasms and bluffs carved out by the violent waves with area is sadly also a popular spot for suicides (after our trip to Kegon falls we seem to be making an inadvertent habit of this…). In the early noughties a retired police officer grew tired of fishing bodies from the sea and began patrolling the cliffs for people looking to jump, he and his organisation is said to have saved over 500 lives over 11 years. The popularity of Pokémon Go has also helped to deter suicides due to the Poké stops at the coast drawing visitors after dark where it would previously have been deserted.

Oshima Bridge

We wandered back up to the lane of shops to indulge in some of the local delicacy, crab (served by a very bewildered Jii-chan who seemed perplexed by our general existence). A short stop for kinako (roasted soy bean flour) flavoured soft cream and we continued around the coast to the Oshima Bridge which spanned from the mainland to Ojima Island.

Returning to Kanzawa we spent the rest of the evening bar and restaurant hopping, our food stops including hot cakes and a Korean restaurant. Wandering the city looking for another bar to grace Liam spotted coloured lights on the 9^th storey of a building so, drawn like moths, we ventured over to check it out.

The small selection of soft cream flavours we had to choose from

On arrival we were delighted to discover that it was an ‘ethnic garden bar’, paying our ￥500 for a self-poured drink we collapsed into the outdoor furniture style table and chairs and toasted to finding somewhere interesting. About 15 minutes later we noticed a pole being erected on the small stage, then the lights were turned down, then we noticed that about 98% of the clientele were male.
And then we noticed the slim, bikini clad Thai lady in platform stilettos making her way to the stage…  

Following the events of the garden bar we spent the next hour meandering through the streets and around the drunken salarymen going down like dominoes left right and centre. We finally came to a French bar that had no seating charge. The three brothers that ran the place were half French and half Japanese, with their father being from Kanazawa they had visited every year before deciding to open a bar together. Seeming to enjoy the English conversation, one of the brothers came over for a chat and we talked about standing out in Japan as ‘foreigners’ (a word that I have come to despise) and how in spite of being half Japanese and speaking the language almost fluently, he was still an outsider.

Slightly less impressive than the Kurobe Dam

Sunday saw another early start and brisk breakfast of Lawson coffee to fuel our long journey northward. We had planned to visit the Shomyo falls and Kurobe damn in Toyama on the way home but after taking a 2 hour detour to get there, were informed that due to the unexpected amount of snow, they were unreachable unless we took an additional four hour detour and approached the mountain path from the other side.

Defeated, we returned to the coast and continued north through Niigata and the rain that we were convinced had stayed there since our decent on Thursday morning.

As I’m writing this on the 1^st of December, the first official day of winter, a sheet of white has slowly been spreading over Konoura.

Winter has come again.



And having just typed this my JTE returned to the staffroom from the corridor and curled into a ball in front of the heater like a cat before the fireplace. 

Four Colours

Juniko

Maybe it’s lethargy after over 14 months of attempting to refine memories into comprehensible records, maybe I’m just useless.

Either way October and November appear to have slipped away on me and yet again I find myself counting down the days until Henry arrives in Japan for our winter trip this year.

In the meantime however, here’s a brief (yeah, I’m lying) overview of what autumn had in store for us.

Earlier in October Andrew, Liam, Steph and myself gathered at Isabel’s house for a viewing sessions of Clue, before we visited Juniko, the 12 blue ponds in Aomori Prefecture the following day. The stunning clear blue waters of the ponds were complimented by the oranges and reds of autumn leaves and as always we relished being surrounded by trees as opposed to rice paddies.

The start of November brought with it a long weekend which saw Steph, Drew, Liam and myself travelling south to Tochigi prefecture to chase the koyo of Autumn. We made a stop in the small town of Mashiko, famous for pottery. The bitterness of Autumn had not yet reached Kanto and so the four of us sweltered in our long trousers that the chill of Tohoku had demanded that morning.

Three Wise Monkeys - Toshogu

Turning back inland we arrived in Utsunomiya city and took no time in locating the local delicacy; gyouza. The weekend turned into a marathon during which we set the goal of consuming 100 gyouza between the four of us.

That night we wandered down to a local Izakaya that was renowned for having monkeys which served beer. After narrowly avoiding ordering karaage made of bees, the stars of the show came trotting out.

None of us have much faith in the way that animals are treated in Japan (a visit to a pet shop is enough to understand) however it was difficult to ignore how much the owner of the restaurant cared for these monkeys.

Guests could sit on chairs as the owner encouraged the little rascals to sit in their laps and finally the oldest and biggest monkey would come and perched on their head for photos. I feel sorrow for Drew’s future children as I don’t believe anyone could have looked more doting or besotted with these creatures.

The other group of guests in the restaurant left soon after snapping out a few photos and so the owner asked if we wanted to go back over and continue playing with the monkeys, he had barely finished asking before Drew and Liam were racing over.

We were able to give the wee things snacks and have them clamber over us. The owner performed tricks with oldest monkey Fuku-chan, getting her to perform a couple of spectacular backflips before doing a ‘sexy pose’.

Shinkyo Bridge

On Saturday we drove further inland to Nikko which is renowned for its beautiful Autumn colours. Our first stop was the Shinkyo Bridge, followed by a morning of wandering through various temple complexes.

Rinnoji temple, under renovation for the next few years, was covered in scaffolding but we were still able to enter and see the shrine roof being laid with shining copper tiles. Next we followed the stream of tourists to Tosho-gu shrine, resting place of the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate and location of the three wise monkeys. The lavishly decorated, gold plated shrine and gates were a stark contrast to the more traditional, simple decorated Japanese temples.

As the rain started coming down we continued on to Taiyu-in Temple, the complex was flushed with autumn colours and between that and the blissful lack of crowds, it was deemed as a favourite.

Our next venture involved being stuck in crawling traffic for 2 hours on a heinously winding mountain road. Consisting of 48 switchbacks, the road to and from lake Chuzenji looks rather comical on maps. Each corner is marked by a hiragana (coincidentally the Japanese hiragana script has 48 characters) though the characters are ordered according to a poem that was popular prior to the modernised ordering in the Meiji period.

Kegon falls

After 2 hours of hairpin turns we finally made it too the Kegon falls look out. An infamous suicide spot, the falls’ most renowned victim was a young student who carved a haunting poem into a tree before throwing himself from the cliffs.

Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misao_Fujimura

A translation of his poem: https://oceanontuesday.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/misao-fujimura-suicide-note/

Formed when the Daiya river was rerouted due to lava flows, the falls stand at roughly 97 metres and are ranked one of the 3 most beautiful waterfalls. After watching the water plummet hypnotically in sheets off the cliff, you understand why.

A lift takes you 100 metres down to see the falls from near the base for a different approach, following this venture (and being sprayed with mist) we indulged in a hot chocolate before continuing on round lake Chuzenji to the Ryuzu falls, a much more modest view of twin waterfalls that separate further up stream before joining again in the falls’ pool.

Toshogu

The following day was our deadline for meeting our quota of 100 gyouza. Our mission ended in a throng of hundreds of people at the gyouza festival where incredibly deceiving signs informed us that the queue was 20 minutes long. It was about 5…

Zao Fox Village

Stocked up on dumpling goodness we continued to the Zao fox village in Miyagi prefecture. Back to animal treatment in Japan…Don’t linger in the indoor section of the village. The outdoor section however, consisted of paths winding through a spacious area where foxes could roam as they please and brush right by you (cue childlike excitement). In amongst the autumn coloured floor you could see little pairs of black ears sticking up from the fallen leaves.

With one road trip down, there was one more to squeeze in before December came, and brought with it the wrath of winter.

Taiyuin Temple

Ryuzu Falls