Obon D1 towards fresh air

Route: Yokokawa - Usui pass - Karuizawa
Bicycle: 28 km 
Train: 140 km
Total ascent: 999 m
Average speed: 8,7 km/h (not helped by all the walking I did)
Riding time: 3:15 h
Weather: Sunny and kind of warm but tolerable in the mountains and nice in Karuizawa (at 940 m elevation) 33-28 C 

While you’re up this year is baking in the heat with heat wave upon heat wave, in Japan, it is surprisingly fresh this year. I did write to the office until quite late in July and then again this week it became fresh enough to be able to cycle to work without melting away. So I thought that I would give it a try to have a long weekend away. Since several weeks, I’m kind of feeling that I didn’t take enough vacation this year and really need some time off. Next Tuesday is a local holiday anyway (mountain day), so how better to celebrate by doing a long weekend in the mountains.

Thus, on Thursday, I set out with the help of ChatGPT to check where around Tokyo it would be the best temperature. Initially I had thought about going to Nozawa onsen, A village have been already several times in Nagano prefecture. But the problem is getting there because unfortunately, there are no local trains from Tokyo that go towards Nagano city. You need to take the Shinkansen, which obviously was sold out weeks ago. After all, it is Obon, a traditional holiday in Japan, where many people take off maybe visit the mountains or traditionally visit the grave of their family. By pure luck I found one room at an agreeable price in Karuizawa. Karuizawa is the classical high class summer vacation spot of Tokyo elite. It was “discovered” by an Anglican missionary in 1886. From there, it quickly grew into the favorite spot for the rich and cultured elite of Tokyo to spend their summers. His own summer house has been well maintained and is now open to visitors.

As a exemplary missionary, he obviously also built a church:

Karuizawa is a very peculiar village. It doesn’t feel Japanese.I don’t really know what isn’t Japanese about it but the summer houses are scattered through the forest and it kind of feels like an ideal summer retreat from a 19th century novel.

Quite centrally in the village is also this famous pond:

To get here, I came by train first to Takasaki and then Yokokawa which is the furthest that the normal train line that once existed between the Tokyo area and Karuizawa is still running. Although this week, it was surprisingly fresh in Tokyo, it actually got hotter now. So I did decide against cycling up from Takasaki and took the train as far as possible, just to the base of the climb.

At the station, I went through my summer cycling routine, soaking my T-shirt, completely in water and holding my head under cold flowing water before starting the ride.

There are various roads over the pass towards Nagano prefecture from highway to small winding road over Usui pass. This road is famous for the train bridge that supposedly is evoking glasses:

As the train line no longer runs, one can now walk on the line and through the train tunnels. I have to admit a cycled until the bridge, also it was officially prohibited. But there were only very few pedestrians so really no issue. At the bridge, however there were many more pedestrians and crucially a few guards who insisted that I walk. 

The train road now ends at an abandon station. From there, I had to carry the bicycle over some stairs down to the road. That road is extremely curvy. Quite similar to this tree:

A few meters behind the pass, I found a vending machine and got some cold drinks and had one onigiri in the shade. Until here I had only written about 12 km and it would have been only another 2 km down to my hotel at the station. But I saw a tourist map on that pass and it called out a shrine that wasn’t too far and perfectly reachable from where I was.

A very nice road through the vacation house forest did lead me with many more curves to the shrine. When I first had lunch, some soba noodles, before visiting the actual shrine. The shrine itself to me seemed pretty normal. But it must be quite well liked, because it had a huge shrine shop. 

This was actually a shrine where you kind of needed to walk through the shop to get to the small devotional shrines to pray for the health of your dog or car.