D2 Koyo at Lake Nojiri

Route: Nagano - Shinano- Lake Nojiri - Kurohime 
Bicycle: 58 km

Train: 30 km

Average speed: 15.2 km/h

Total ascent: 1054 m
Weather: cloudy, wet after lunch , 5C

Riding time: 3:49 h

While I write this I am sitting in the waiting room of Kurohime station, where I arrived just a few minutes after the train to Nagano had departed and now need to wait for one hour. Admittedly the waiting room could be a little bit warmer and unfortunately the soba place has closed also at the same time as the train left. But anyway I’m sitting here in the dry and trying not to get too cold. After a day outside riding through very beautiful koyo... but also some rain at the end:

When I first booked the hotel in Nagano for this long weekend I hadn’t really a precise plan what I wanted to do, but I thought that this area here should be nice for cycling. And it definitely is. So I asked in a cycling related Line group, I’m a member off, if anyone had any suggestions for cycling in this area. And one member suggested Lake Nojiri.

When I first arrived to the lake it looked very romantic with the clouds hanging low over it and vapor coming up from it. 

After riding for a little bit along the shore I found a very posh place to have a hamburger. Apart from hamburgers they also had a sauna which seemed to be very popular, as there were many people that clearly just had come out of the sauna.

During lunch I decided to do the full circle of the lake, which wasn’t actually part of my original plan. But looking at it now it was definitely the best part of today’s ride. 

Maybe I should have stop there and come directly to the train station, but I continued with my original plan which foresaw another lake and potentially a waterfall. I didn’t make it to either because what previously was just a bit of dampness became rain and rain at 2°C is just plain cold. 

I’m not entirely sure, but this might’ve been the first ride I’ve ever done with more than 1000 m of climbing in just one ride. And that in only about 50 km!

A few hours later I am sitting now in a horse meat restaurant enjoying some horse sashimi and being very comfortable warm after taking a long onsen soak in my hotel  the same DormyInn where I stayed for 1 night at the end of my Silver Week this year. 

D5 Noijiri lake and back home

Route: Shibu onsen - Lake Nojiri - Nagano
Bicycle: 83 km
Train: 250 km
Average speed: 16,6 km/h
Total ascent: 1135 m
Riding time: 5:15 h
Weather: a bit of everything (except snow), 13 C

For the last day of this very long weekend I made yesterday two different plans:

• Plan A: ride up to the gondola for Sora terrace. Apparently a place where one can often see a sea of clouds. But not today… thanks to their live feed on YouTube I could check and it was within the clouds for the entire day. 
• Plan B: ride (again) to Lake Nojiri. Again because I had been here about a year ago already and really liked the lake, the landscape and the small villages. 

Plan B it was. 

In the morning it was still raining at the hight of my Minshuku but by the time I was ready to leave the rain has stopped. But streets were still damp. It was a leisurely ride downhill. Not too steep and mostly on very quiet roads. 

On the other side of the broad and very fertile valley I made it up the hills on a road that was so quiet that hardly any car passed but still it was a wide road. A few small villages thrown into the landscape. All apparently with minimal services only. 

I don’t think I saw a single restaurant anywhere. But I knew that this wouldn’t be a problem because the lake itself is a bit touristic. Low key, but touristic for local people to enjoy fishing, water sports…

I had phoned ahead to see if a small restaurant was open, and it was. Riding there it started to rain lightly, nothing to worry too much about. But about 1 min after arriving and sitting in the warm room , rain started to pour down. While I ate my Curry rice and an extremely tasty tomato salad (of local tomatoes), the rain stopped and even a shy sun was making some intermittent appearance.

While riding around the lake I had a feeling like there was something wrong with my rear wheel. And there was. The wheel had lost most of its air. I tried pumping it up with my small pump, but either that pump is so small that only microscopic amounts of air enter or I did something wrong, it didn’t seem that the wheel was gaining any air. So I continued riding carefully until the next village along the lake where I asked at a few watersport shops and the third one (that was actually closed) I found a bike pump. With that proper pump I managed to pump it up. It seemed that it was leaking air from a lot of microscopic holes on the side of the tire. But I checked during my ride (there would have been the opportunity to take a train back to Nagano) and it seemed that the air was now holding. Will need to observe that. The tire is less than a week old and tubeless.

D1 Nagano to Nozawaonsen

Route: Nagano to Nozawaonsen
Bicycle: 70 km
Train: 250 km
Average Speed: 14.5 km/h
Total ascent: 1050 m
Riding time: 4:30 h
Weather: Warm, sunny and just splendid, 20 C

Another long weekend, again good weather... actually quite warm for early November in Nagano... and off I went again to Nagano. A few weeks ago, I had organized several weekends away booking even double accomodations in two differents places where I want to ride, so I could cancel based on the weather. The other option for this weekend was Shizuoka... but Nagano in early November is definitely the place to be. 

I got up early in the morning... but it takes me quite some time to actually get started, so finally I didn't arrive to Nagano station until shortly after 10:00 and rolled out just before 10:30. There are different ways from Nagano to Nozawaonsen. Obviously the easiest would be a train... however that isn't the plan here. The second easiest would be just to follow the river to the foot of the ascent up to Nozawaonsen... boring... so instead I planned to visit yet again Nojiri lake but with the late start, lack of sleep, and the ascent that is needed to even get to the lake I got tired mid way through, so shortened the ride a little bit. Still came pretty close to the lake... but not to the lake itself. But road through really nice autumn colours in the countryside. 

I always knew that at the end there was a hill awaiting me... I just didn't realize how much of a hill it was. It seemed endless to my already tired body... and even when I reached this sign of Nozawa onsen, there wasn't actually yet any sign of the village itself. For that I needed to cycle a little bit further uphill until a higher lying valley came into view. 

But the lodge I had reserved wasn't in town... but rather in the ski area of Nozawa onsen. So it continued up and up for me. However once arrived, I was rewarded by this nice sunset over the Japanese alps in a light evening breeze: 

My hotel itself was called "Lodge Hahnenkamm" like the ski descent in Kitzbühel. An other hotel up there was called "Pension Schnee". Very Austrian everything. 

I was the only guest for the entire weekend and the hotel owners were extremly kind. They drove me down to the village (which in meters isn't very far, but a steep descent), where I went to the only onsen in town with a rotenburo... but that was a very nice onsen: Furusato no yu. I had a nice relaxing bath there. It has 2 pools inside. One called "lukewarm" at 41-42 C and one called "hot" at 43-45 C. And a rotenburo which seemed to be cooler than the lukewarm option. The hot option initially might seem to hot, but after a while was actually quite enjoyable. As long as you don't move around in the hot water. 

The city itself, being an onsen town is actually dotted with onsen, aparently all free of charge and the ones I saw all looking very nice... but none of them have a rotenburo... and if I can have a rotenburo that is definitely where I am headed. They looked nice though. Very traditional. 

After the bath I had dinner in town, then called again my hotel owner, who came down to the village to pick me up again.