SW D7 Tokamachi - Akiyama - Nozawa onsen

Route: Tokamachi - Akiyama - Nozawa onsen
Bicycle: 80 km
Total ascent: 1750 m
Average speed: 15,2 km/h
Riding time: 5:15 h
Weather: hot but not that humid, mostly sunny later some clouds, 30 C

After the rest day, today the Queens stage: up to Akiyama and then at the end up to the ski area of Nozawa onsen. 

Akiyama was suggested as one of the interesting spots fit the art exhibition, but I didn’t make it up to the interesting piece. I stopped about 6 km and , more importantly 240 meters of elevation before reaching that part of the exhibition. Maybe in hindsight I should have continued on, but I had the feeling that there was a lot of downhill in the uphill I had done and needed to cycle all this back. But it was misleading. Actually what I saw on Komoot was much closer to reality, ie nearly one long downhill with one kicker, compared to what I had felt coming uphill. Not the first time that some downhill in an uphill on the way back seem petty.

At this abandoned school I turned back after a good rest and an onigiri I had bought at a conbini in the valley. Inside was an art installation that was more for children to play with. 

But the valley itself was gorgeous, with a steep wall on one side and a lovely stream.

On the way down I stopped at a soba restaurant. Apparently Niigata is very famous for its rice, but I have been eating soba twice and even saw some soba fields. 

Back down in the Shinano valley I stopped at Hong Kong house and yet an other abandoned school turned into an art venue for a last look at some art:

But overall the art I like here is the one that stands in the landscape and interacts with it. 

For the night I had reserved a room with half board in the ski area of Nozawa onsen. I had come here last year November. Very friendly owners. And a good cook. 

Tomorrow probably back to Tokyo as weather isn’t promising here. Not yet decided if I’ll ride in the rain to Nagano or get down the mountain by bus and then take a train from Iiyama. 

SW D6 More art, more rain, no bike

Route: ryokan to MonET museum and back
Bicycle: 0 km
Taxi: 3,5 km

Bus: 3,5 km
Weather: rain and more rain, 25 C

Today’s forecast was rain and more rain. So much rain that parts of Niigata prefecture are under alert for landslides and inundation. So cycling wasn’t in the plan today. But today the museums opened again, so I took a taxi from my ryokan to the MonET museum in Tokamachi. 

Frankly I am a bit disappointed by it. I had expected that as the main venue of the festival the art work would be new, but really only the art work on the openly accessible ground level was new, and I had seen that already on Sunday. 

While the art inside the museum was mostly (or maybe even completely) the same as 2 years ago. This doesn’t mean it’s not good /interesting art, but I had expected to be mostly new exhibits. 

Anyway I was able to see again this “waterfall”. It’s not water but silicone oil falling down and creating a very nice and gentle movement. 

As I had no other plans for today , I took it slowly , then had lunch at the neighboring “michi-no-eki” and am now sitting in the onsen of the museum, writing todays and yesterdays blog posts. 

The onsen doesn’t have a rotenburo, which normally isn’t what I like, but with the rain rotenburo can often not be enjoyed anyway. 

Once I finish this post I’ll go and get my bath and then either watch the sumo tournament here or go back by taxi (or bus?) to my ryokan for a last night. Tomorrow weather is supposedly again sunny (and hot - very hot apparently all in Japan with 36 C in Tokyo and not much less here) and I’ll ride from here to Nozawa onsen, to the same pension I already went last year. Probably on Saturday I will return to Tokyo as the weather in the region isn’t going to be good for riding. So probably I can participate in the NPC ride in Tokyo on Saturday evening. 

SW D5 More art

Route: Valley of Tokamachi
Bicycle: 48 km
Total ascent: 554 m
Average speed: 16 km/h
Riding time: 2:58 h
Weather: very humid, some rain, and warm, 30 C

Today’s weather forecast had some rain, some non-rain time. I managed to pass the rain time under the roof of a 7/11, but still got kind of wet: road spray and an incredible humidity. Like in a botanical garden subtropical green house. 

I had decided to stay in the valley and look for some new artwork in the area. Luckily the app of the Tsumari Echigo festival has a google map where one can filter for new artwork. I should also remeber fit the next time that the indoor events are all closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

Most of the art work I saw left me pretty indifferent …

Except these cubes in the forest on a very soft ground in a very wet forest. 

But I also went to see some long time favorites:

I think here the official art work is the blue metal construction (an English terraced house) but I like the enormous torii in the rice paddies. 

This was the furthest I got today from my accommodation . Rain was already visible in the distance but I made it to a 7/11 comfortably in time and has lunch under their roof (outside) while waiting out the rain, before returning and going towards Tokamachi. A new piece of art that has been recommended was this:

A man powered snow plow, which wouldn’t work, which is clear from looking at an actual snow plow right next to it. 

Checking the weather it weekend it wouldn’t rain soon, so I continued to the farest spot in Tokamachi , where these two pieces of art awaited me:

I had seen pictures of it, where the ball was still green, but I think even with the withered leaves it still looks nice. 

These two pieces were next to a shrine at the feet of a hill behind the local sports ground. 

This shrine had a sumo ring, but this wasn’t where I watched sumo today. Instead back in my accommodation I watched the autumn (!) sumo meeting and how Oo-no-sato did win his 10th match in a row, on his way of winning this tournament with two wins advantage over the next 3  competitors. 

SW D4 more art and a castle around Tokamachi

Route: Tokamachi area
Bicycle: 44 km
Total ascent: 582 m
Average speed: 12,9 km/h
Riding time: 3:24 h
Weather: hot and humid, some rain, 30 C

Today’s highlight was not art, but a castle.

And I nearly missed it for the third time. I have been here now three times once in 2015 by car and then two years ago in 2022 by bicycle and both times I was really close to this castle, but both times I did not make it up to the castle. The year we came by car, we went to a part of the art installation that is only a few hundred meters below the castle, but if I remember correctly, it started raining, so we probably didn’t drive up to the castle. Two years ago, I came again to this area on a very hot and humid day and had struggled up the hill to a certain point, not actually with the goal to reach the castle, but those aren’t installations below it. But I gave up on the road junction and rode downhill instead. Today again, I was at risk of not reaching the castle. The initial road is crazy steep so I pushed up the bike for most of it. Then at the road junction where I had given up the last time, it levels off a little bit, but at that point it started raining. Not the first rain of the day but the first strong rain. Luckily, I made it under a tree and in combination with my rain, jacket and helmet cover I stayed reasonably dry.The rain didn’t last very long, which was kind of clear from the type of clouds today. So I waited it out for maybe 10-15 minute, And then restarted my ride. Originally, I hadn’t even planned to ride up to the castle, instead, I was interested in the art installations.But once I reached the entrance to the art installations, I remembered that I had been here already back in the day. So no need to repeat this again that instead, I continued uphill and was greeted by this very asiatic view. One can easily imagine it as an ink drawing.

But let’s start the day at the beginning. The first artwork was really close to my ryokan, So I kind of felt compelled to go and see it.

Well, I would say that the bear alert sign on the road leading up to it was more artistic than this piece of art.

After that, it was down through the rice and soba fields and the next stop was this artistic parking lot, which I kind of like and have visited in every single visit to this area.

This time I even saw how it looks from the side.

The next stop was one of the artworks I had been recommended the other day at the museum. And it was nice, but didn’t make the highlight of the day. While I was there it rained a little bit on and off, very light rain, but still I did hide below some trees and waited it out.

At this point, I had become rather hungry, and I had missed to buy some snacks at a conbini. So I decided to ask Google sensei for some restaurant recommendations, and it came up with a very good suggestion for a soba restaurant. Both tasty and very nice settings. I would say this was highlight number two of the day.

What definitely did not feel like a highlight, or even vaguely interesting, was the artwork right in front of the small castle. I get it, that the stone is formed like the mountains in front, but with all the clouds, the mountains weren’t visible, and overall the stone just seemed a stone among other stones.

 

From here it was mainly downhill. I made a stop at the local golf course which hosts another big part of the art exhibition. But even the outside artworks were today closed. Not really sure why that would be necessary.

SW D3 Matsuyama and Matsudai art

Route : Tokamachi - Shikawatari - Matsunoyama - Matsudai
Bicycle: 43 km
Train: 15 km
Total ascent: 739 m
Average speed: 13,7 km/h
Riding time: 3:10 h
Weather: sunny and getting hit again, 32C

Yesterday at the Monet museum I asked the friendly lady at the reception for suggestions of art work to see plus I had seen a picture of a old house from which an enormous bubble emerges which I found curious. 

Today I didn’t start that early and while a few hours extra sleep where nice it also meant that I was still out there when it really got hot. although truth be told, while it is hot, it isn’t unbearably hot, just about bearable. When I looked at the map yesterday to plan the ride,  I saw a a street on the other side of the valley, which seemed to have potentially less traffic than the road on this side. So I decided to take it, and it was great, part of it was actually kind of closed. Maybe not really closed but definitely again the road that isn’t been transited by anyone. Luckily, I also did not run into a bear. 

From Shikawatashi I started uphill, but soon found the first artwork.

Actually, only the first of these shows an artwork. And only a small piece of that picture is a artwork. Mostly it is a Tepco installation for Hydro power. And frankly speaking, the industrial installation was much more interesting than the art. The second picture isn’t art at all. It is a damn against landslides and avalanches. But in the context of the art triennial anything can seem art. While some of the art doesn’t seem right at all.

I continued further uphill and found three other small exhibition, places within close proximity. I have the impression that except the two purpose built, museums in Tokamachi and Matsudai, anll exhibitions are either in abandoned school buildings, or abandoned houses.And abandoned school houses are very abundant. In general in Japan, and in this area that is very rural, and not well-connected even more so. In one of the buildings, there was a long explanation about the history of the school building, it started as a small school at the end of the 19th century, then grew and grew before reaching its peak shortly after the second world war. From there, it was a continuous decline and probably from the 90s onwards bottomless fall. Number of students diminishing so far that school got combined and closed. I read somewhere recently studied by the Japanese government that says that about 40% of all Japanese municipalities will disappear. 

The other sort of venues are abandoned houses, of which there is no lack in the countryside in Japan. This artwork here with a web of strings through the entire building kind of captured this feeling of loss. 

I’m not sure, but I suspect that some of these houses will only host this one installation, will not survive until the next annual, and no one will remove the installation. This house here already in Matsudai, at the end of my ride today, felt like a capitalist nightmare. The entire house covered in fake gold, Mahjong tiles, game automat, and more gold.Removing all the decoration to reuse this building for something else would seem a total waste of time, knowing how many abandoned buildings there are in this area and in general in Japan.

But back to the house with the bubble. Curiously called China house.I have no idea why it has absolutely no obvious connection with China. This is how the bubble from the inside looks.

Close by there was another abundance school now used as an exhibition facility. Unfortunately, the school was abundant before it got installed air-conditioning so it was actually quite hot inside.

There was a bath inside, but not off refreshing water, but instead of wooden balls. Much harder to get out than the IKEA balls.

I have been recommended another Place in the area, called “the teachers house”, But by the time I had finished with the exhibition and the schoolhouse, I felt quite hot and decided to just ride downhill to Matsudai. The museum there looks a little bit like a spaceship that landed in the middle of rice paddies. In the coffee, I had a cold drink and a small piece of cake, but in an art project even that can look like art.

And thanks to the advancements in AI technology, I was even able to raise my foot that was standing in the picture and disturbing the artistic vibe.

But it was also nice landscape today…

 

… some even without any art in it.

Even at this museum, I was still feeling relatively hot and why it was getting a bit more bearable outside. I also saw that there’s a very long tunnel between Matsudai and Tokamachi, and I have no idea if it is nice to ride with a bike or not. So I gave into the temptation and took the train back to Tokamachi and then only cycled back the last few kilometers to my ryokan.

SW D2 Yuzawa - Tokamachi

Route: Yuzawa - Karekimata - Tokamachi
Bicycle: 62 km
Total ascent: 1007 m
Average speed: 13,8 km/h
Riding time: 4:30 h
Weather: sunny in the morning, rainy after lunch, 30 C

On my second day of this trip I made it over the mountains to Tokamachi. I started extremely early today, not so much because of the heat, but because there was rain forecast starting in the early afternoon, and I didn’t want to be still in the mountains when the rain started.

I had planned a ride on what seemed to be a relatively small road up into the mountains. It wasn’t only small, it was not frequented at all. In the entire time I climbed up I met only one person. 

On the top of the mountain, the small road joined what I thought was going to be a little bit of a bigger road, but it was still very small and very remote. So remote that the school in the village has closed many years ago, but it’s now being used as one of the venues of the art festival.

There is an exhibition inside. But it only opens at 10 o’clock and I was there around probably 8:30 in the morning. But there was also a small shop, if you can call something a shop where as a customer, you are also responsible for collecting the money. But it was perfect. I got a bottle of mugicha, had a second breakfast close to a round rice paddy field/artwork and then climbed up a few meters to a very small shrine in front of which there were some more art works.

From there, it was mainly downhill, except the parts where it was uphill. On the way, I passed a few other artworks some of them didn’t tell me anything.

And some others were simply fun, but it’s probably saying too much that they are art.

On Google maps I had seen a recommendation for a viewpoint over rice paddies, and while I had already seen nice landscape and rice paddies from my small roads, I still went there. The road was quite loose gravel so after pushing the bike for a while I gave up and left the bike on the side of the road and continued by foot uphill until the viewpoint. 

The next art stop was Ubusuna an old kominka straight from a Ghibli film. 

Where some energetic elder ladies have a small restaurant and prepare very good and filling lunch. The artwork itself inside was so so, I would say any school project given sufficient time would be able to produce something similar.

Right after I finished lunch, the rain started. And it started with a downpour. I waited a little bit, but it didn’t seem that it would stop raining very soon so after a while, I donned my Castelli jacket and the rain cap for the helm and started riding downhill to the next Art installation. 

I had bought the ticket for the art festival online, but you still need to get the actual ticket, and it’s only available in a few locations and none of them was in Yuzawa  which would have been very convenient. So at Ubusuna they made me pay again, while at this house already down in the valley the guard took pity on this solitary cyclist in the rain and let me in anyway. 

Finally I made it to the Monet, the main art museum of the area and got my actual ticket. I also looked around a little bit but decided against actually going into the museum. Thinking about doing this on Friday as weather seems to be unfriendly then. 

Last time I was here I remember this enormous pool in the middle. I remember it was a very hot day and it was refreshing to sit on the shores of the museum relaxing and cooling down a bit. Today instead I decided  to go to the onsen that is in the same building. One of the few museums with onsen, I am sure. But not the only “strange” installation with an onsen. In Tsunan station is also an onsen.