D3 over Tsuchiyu pass into the fog

Route: Urabandai - Tsuchiyu - Fukushima
Bicycle: 80 km
Train: 300 km
Average speed: 15.6 km/h 
Total ascent: 1143 m
Riding time: 5:09 h
Weather: cloudy and very dense fog on the descent, 16C

I had so many options how to return. One easy one would have been to just ride down to Aizu Wakamatsu, spend a few hours in an onsen right besides the station (I was there in a previous visit to the city) and then take the train back to Tokyo. But the weather seemed good enough to instead attempt to go to Fukushima. Even to Fukushima there were different options available. The maximum option would have been to ride over the Asama Bandai skyline, which probably had starting of koyo. But there were intermediate options, and I finally took one of those. 

I didn't start very early, which would have been needed for the full option due to the long climbing. After stocking up on food and drinks at the local conbini (and only conbini in the area), I took a left turn and was out in the mountains with small lakes below. 

These lakes formed after the eruption of Mt. Bandai volcano about a century ago and now in this region there are a few big lakes and a lot of small ones. 

This is what I got as a view of the inner crater of Mt. Bandai... not much: 

This is how it should look like ... but not today. I will need to come back, which I plan to do anyway. The region seemed very nice, and there are a lot of accomodation options in Urabandai. In winter it is a ski region, but fishing seems to be also very well loved activity as well as hiking. Cycling also was relatively popular. Specially on the first day I met a bunch of cyclists (all coming downhill) in the awful rain. 

I continued on my small road, which however did have some traffic, so I never felt totally alone and cam across a small food stall that sold local vegetables and other produce, but also offered some nice warm udon soups. Which took care of the lunch. 

While eating lunch I studied my options. From here I had still the option to go mainly downhill to Koriyama or to go uphill towards Fukushima. After a lot of thinking I decided to take the shorter of the two uphill versions, just riding to the entrance of the Asama Bandai skyline but not riding it itself, as time would not have been sufficient. 

It was a little bit too early for koyo. Probably the following week would have been good. Probably actually up on the Asama skyline it was already good for koyo... but not enough time for me. 

However when I started the descent towards Fukushima on the other side very quickly the fog moved in. 

And what a fog! It was so dense that one had to ride very carefully. It also doesn't help to wear glasses, which just seemed to attract every single water droplet. On the upper slopes I was still mixing with cars, not a lot but some. Farther down, the road separated: A road only for cars (I think it was illegal to cross the tunnels by bike/foot) and the old road, now essentially only for bicycles. Maybe on a day with nice weather some cars and probably a lot of motorcycles would use it as well to do some sightseeing... but not so today. In the fog this road didn't feel very safe. Not because of the road itself, which was good quality, but because there was just absolutely no one. No other cyclist was crazy enough to ride there and the cars and motorbikes were all on the main road. So it felt like if something would happen, it could take a day or two before someone would even find me. 

But nothing happened. No bear, no deer, no other kind of incident. 

Getting further down the fog lifted and I came to Tsuchiyu onsen. A small onsen village that was recommended by the owner of the pension I stayed. I took the very first onsen at the entrance of the village. They had a nice big outdoor pool. Not really with a view, but somehow one could see that all around there were trees. After this refreshing and cleaning bath (I was rather dirty due to the wet roads), it was downhill from there all the way to the station.

I had a ticket reserved for around 19:00, but I was at the station about 2 hours earlier. I packed the bike and there was a Shinkansen just a few minutes after I managed to pack everything which had some unreserved seats. I couldnt change to reserved seats as everything was taken, but there were enough unreserved seats that I even found a place in the last row to store the bike behind. 

D2 Around Lake Hibara

Route: Goshikinuma and Lake Hibara
Bicycle: 34 km
Hiking: 5,5 km
Total ascent: 452 
Average speed: 13.1 km/h
Riding time: 3 h
Weather: cloudy but no rain, 16 C

The day started with more rain, but by the time I was ready to leave around 10 o’clock it had finally stopped raining. Originally, I wanted to ride up to Bandai skyline, but with the threat of rain, a day out with a long descent on wet roads didn’t sound like an intelligent thing to do. Instead I decided to do just a round around the lake here by my pension. Before that, however I went to the local famous spot of several small ponds, that were created by the eruption of Mount Bandai in the Meiji period. These ponds are famous for their color variation.

The hike took about an hour and a half and then I started my ride around the lake with my sight on an onsen at the lakeshore already closed back to where I’m staying. That onsen is in a big hotel complex and on this long weekend, only open publicly until 15:00. But I planned it apparently to perfection and arrived there a bit before 2 in the afternoon so could enjoy a good soak in the hot water while looking into the forest over the lake.

My pension also allows stocks to stay. Which is very rare in Japan. Originally, I thought that was the owner would have probably several dogs, but apparently they don’t have any. Today in the morning I saw One guest was a dog who was very well behaved. The dog. This evening, a family of three adult adults and one dog checked in and this dog is extremely badly behaved and their owners don’t seem to have any idea how to control it. During dinner he was walking around in the dinner area and the pension owner needed to ask them to put the dock on a leash. But even then they put him on a leash, but didn’t attach the leash to anything so still the dog was still running around. Now I’m sitting in my room writing the notes of today and in the neighboring room, they are trying to manage the dog shouting at him that he shall not do this or that, and in all this, the dog already pissed into the common area. I think the pension owners are now trying to negotiate that the dog must sleep in the car. 

The other guests in my pension are two men who came here to fish. Which seems to be a very well loved pass-time in this area. There are a lot of small boats on the lake and really a lot of cars who had brought their boats with them.

D1 - up to Urabandai

Route: Koriyama - Inawashiro - Urabandai
Bicycle: 64 km
Train: 250 km
Total ascent: 862 m
Average speed: 16,4 km/h
Riding time: 3:56 h
Weather: rain all day, cold 11C 

For this weekend originally I had two reservations. One in the Hakuba area and the other one in Fukushima Prefecture. A few days ago, I looked at the weather forecast and it seemed that the weather in Fukushima was going to be reasonable while in Hakuba it seemed to rain. I have no idea what actually happened in Hakuba, but in Fukushima, it was definitely raining.

But now I was committed to this three day weekend in the Urabandai region. In Tokyo, I managed to get to the Shinkansen just before the rain started. When I got off the train in Koriyama, the rain hadn’t started yet here, but it would start soon after setting off towards Inawashiro. 

I had come up the same road a few years ago when I stayed in Aizuwakamatsu on a still relatively hot September weekend. Back then, I had a lovely view of the lake. This time the lake was grey and the imposing mountains around shredded in rain clouds. 

I stopped along the lake for lunch and they even had a small fire going, but my shoes and socks were so soaked that even putting them right in front of the fire, it made no difference for getting them dry. I am actually writing this block post on the following day and the socks are still wet although they have been hanging to dry for over 24 hours. Luckily, I was able to dry my shoes though with a strategic use of newspapers. Actually, a very interesting newspaper. It seems that instead of getting the first female Prime Minister, Japan will be getting the third non-LDP Prime Minister in a few days. But I needed something to dry my shoes.

After lunch while riding uphill I made a quick stop at a fruit stand, selling local apples and peaches.

D3 Ooyu & Hirosaki in the heat

Route: Kazuno - Hirosaki - Shin-Aomori - Tokyo
Walk: 3 km
Car: 100 km
Train: 700 km
Weather: hot and sunny and this in Northern Tohoku, 32 C

Today in the morning on my phone already appeared a warning for Tokyo to not do any activities outside due to high temperatures. And even where we were in northern Tohoku it was pretty warm. 

We started off the day (after yet another other full Japanese breakfast) with a visit to a Jomon era stone circle in the village where we were staying. 

From there we continued to Hirosaki a famous castle (one of the 12 original remaining castles in Japan) in Tohoku. It is specially famous for its cherry blossoms and must be incredible busy then. Now it was simply hot, even though we had our small sun umbrellas. 

We just had a Quick Look at the old tower (which maybe is the only part of the castle actually still standing. It was moved a few years ago by a few hundred meters. Maybe because it was standing on the castle walls and they had become unstable. However it wasn’t really explained anywhere. 

We found our way back to the car and thanks to google maps found a restaurant on the way to Shin-Aomori station that was ideal for this heat.

We gave back the car slightly early (maybe 20 min) and even got some money back. That was a surprise. What was a less welcome surprise is that also the return Shinkansen was delayed, by about an hour due to some problems with a previous train, that delayed all other Tohoku Shinkansen. But at least this time we could sit in the air conditioned car with our drinks and snacks. And Netflix. 

Back home in Tokyo it’s hot, and will remain hot for the foreseeable future. Just a few days of respite Thursday and Friday this week, but then up again to 36C and more. With humidity , obviously. 

D2 - Towadako and Oirase

Route: Kazuno - Towadako - Oirase and back
Bicycle: 29 km
Car: 42 km 
Riding time: 1:49 h

Total ascent: 236 m 
Average speed: 16,1 km/h
Weather: mostly cloudy , 27 C 

When my friend first suggested this trip she proposed to cycle once around Lake Towada.  Which I agreed to, but also pointed out that although this is only about a 50 km ride it has more than 1000 m of elevation gain. It’s a lake. But it is a volcanic lake in an old crater and in one place the road goes up to the rim of the crater. So it was quite unlikely that we would manage to do the ride. 

Luckily a good alternative appeared. We had a relatively late start and until we were actually sitting on the bikes (we drove up to the lake from Kazuno by car) it was already 11:00. We parked at a road side station and started from there which was the flatter part of the ride. On our way I saw that the road along Oirase stream would be open from 12:00 onwards. 

My friend was very happy to see that news as it meant we could alter our overly ambitious plan to make a full round of the lake to a much more easy but tourist-worthy ride along Oirase stream. Actually I had hoped that we could walk along the stream, but only the road had been opened for traffic, the walking path officially was still closed. Which didn’t stop all potential hikers but did stop us from attempting it. Oirase stream is very popular and has become very popular with foreign tourists as well. But thanks to the closure yesterday there were very few people today and no bus tours. So we could ride leisurely along the road , stop every now and then and walk a bit to see some highlights. 

The River was fast flowing still showing the damage of the strong rain a few days ago. 

As this is a River flowing out of the lake the road along it is downhill. Not steep at all, but it also meant we would need to ride it uphill again  so relatively early we returned and started on our way back to the car.

The main road in some places was still very dirty from the rain that had washed down parts of the forest. So our bikes (and we) got pretty dirty.

Back at the car we put the bikes back into their bags and in the car and then drove back down to our excellent ryokan. We did stop at a very new road side station in our village that even had a foot bath. Kind of mandatory at a road side station called “big onsen”.

Back at our hotel we had a relaxing hot bath in the rotenburo before another excellent dinner and an early night on two very comfy futons. 

D1 - Towadako with a friend

Route: Tokyo -  Hachinohe - Towadako- Kazuno

Bicycle: 12km

Walking: 2 km

Train: 650 km

Car: 110 km

Weather: Sun and clouds and much cooler than Tokyo but still warm. 29C

A friend of me wanted to go for some summer vacation.  I hadn’t any plans but insisted that it must be up North to flee the scorching heat of Tokyo. I hadn’t any plans made some potential plans to go to Towadako, so that’s where we went. We met up a few weeks ago to plan everything, found a very nice ryokan in Kazuno (all the places on the lake itself were either extremely expensive or had bad evaluations). 

A month before we bought the train tickets, which turned out to be more complicated than we thought. Although we took an early morning train out of Tokyo on a Friday morning when we wanted to buy the tickets, there were no rear row seats available anymore and overall the train was already pretty packed. But she managed to get some reasonable seats in the second but last row. 

However this morning we had to wait for 1,5 h for the train. Somehow there was a delay in rail works between Omiya and Sendai so no trains of the Tohoku Shinkansen could leave Tokyo station.

 So although I got up at 4:30 we were only at around 12:00 in Hachinohe. 

Towadako is pretty hard to reach by public transport and probably impossible with a bicycle in tow, so we rented a car (my first time driving in Japan after converting my driving license again back in 2022… I had driven here sometimes between 2015 and 2017 but not since)  but luckily driving is slow and automatic cars are easy to drive. 

As a typical Japanese my friend found a perfect spot for a light lunch in an old farmhouse. 

Our original plan was to do some hiking along the famous Oirase stream… but when we got to the upper parking lot we learned that both the road and the hiking trail were closed since a few days due to damage by too much rain. So we did a mini walk around that information center … 

.. and then continued by car onwards to our ryokan. Which was actually good timing as we arrived around 17:00 and had all the time to enjoy the rotenburo while gazing out into the big Japanese garden with an even bigger pond…

… before our rich dinner in the room.

D3 Yamadera

Route: Zao onsen- Yamadera - Kaminoyama onsen
Bicycle: 86 km
Train: 350 km
Total ascent: 500 m
Average speed: 15 km/h (for the part wahoo recorded)
Riding time: unknown (Wahoo only recorded the ride up to Yamadera)
Weather: sunny, a bit windy, 22C

The day started in two different onsen tubs of my hotel. Between 21:00 and 10:00 the onsen are free to be used (privately) by the guests. When I woke up at 6:00 and went down to get a key there was none but around 7:00 I got a key to this tub:

Where I had a relaxing bath. When I came back to hang the key back at the board also an other key was available if one of the tubs with a view that I hadn’t been to yet. So I took the opportunity and had a second bath.

While taking the bath one actually doesn’t really see the landscape. Only if you sit on the wall between the two tubs. But then there was the famous “unkai” = “sea of clouds”. 

Sufficiently clean and relaxed I went back to my room and had my conbini breakfast (which I prefer over a Japanese breakfast) , packed my too big bag (definitely did bring unnecessary items: 2 jackets!) and then started the ride of the last day of this 3 day weekend.

When I planned this weekend back in August I only knew that Zao onsen itself is famous and that the crater above is a nice place. So I hadn’t a specific plan for the third day. And then decided to give Yamadera a second visit. I had been there already on my Tour de Japan back in 2017. Curiously nearly exactly 7 years ago on 11/Oct. Back then I went by train from Yamagata as I had gotten incredibly wet the day before and didn’t want to take an other chance. Turned out weather was totally fine. And I missed a very nice cycling path along a river. 

Today being a National holiday and perfect weather the temple was more busy than back then, but still reasonable.

But strangely the part of the temple I like most is the post box. Last time I even saw the postman coming up all these stairs to deliver/ receive post. 

Back down the many stairs I jumped back on my bike and down it was along the nice bicycle path until I took the turn to Yamagata, which week was on streets that weren’t that nice. I took a rest in the castle park had a snack there…

… and decided that by now it was too late to get to an onsen I had seen in the hills around Kaminoyama and instead cycled to the station directly where I am now in the waiting room with the bike packed up, a bento bought and waiting for my train. It wasn’t possible to change the reservation to an earlier train as it is fully booked. But sitting here isn’t so bad either. 

D2 Okama crater

Route: Zao onsen to Okama crater and back
Bicycle: 49 km
Walking: 2,6 km
Total ascent: 1480 m
Average speed: 12,2 km/h
Riding time: 4:02 h
Weather: sunny and early autumn temperatures. Between 20 and 10 C depending on height 

Today up to Mount Zao and its very photogenic crater. 

To get there even from Zao onsen which is already halfway up, it still takes a lot of more ascending. But no place crazy gradients. Thus slowly but steadily, I made it up there. From Zao onsen one first needs to go up to about 1000 m but then the road drops again down to about 700 m from where it is an up again to about 1600 m. And the same, obviously on the way back.

On the way up, I took a brief stop at the athletes Village, which seems to be a sport training center for various kinds of sports to get additional fluids from their vending machine.

From around 1300 m the koyo started.however, it isn’t an impressive arrangement of colorful leaves, probably because of the lack of maple trees and the food that you get the less trees there are anyway.

Probably the best koyo was just below the entrance to the lift to get up to the crater.

The lift was a typical flimsy Japanese lift. This one was lacking practically all kinds of safety measures. It was essentially only a place to sit without any backrest and one pillar to which to hold on. Luckily, it did not get very high above ground. And it wasn’t windy. I’m always surprised by these lifts in a country that is so risk adverse like Japan. A country that regulates every single river and creek so it doesn’t cause any destruction. A country that builds walls against the ocean blocking most of the view to protect itself from tsunamis. A country that closes hiking path for very extended times due to minor volcanic activity. But at the same time a country , where if you have a lift that was built probably before more stringent regulations came into place, you are totally welcome to keep it operating even when it is clearly is a rather dangerous affair. 

Before getting on the lift, I don’t all my clothes as it was already relatively fresh at the base of the lift and at 1700 m. It was a little bit colder and a bit more windy. But my cloths were up to the challenge. 

The crater itself can be accessed also by car, but not by bicycle, and the lift I took. With this being a long weekend and wonderful weather, they were quite a number of tourists up there. and thanks to them. There was also a small visitor center that did sell some easy food. I got a big pork bun which I ate on my way down.

After that, it was down first with the lift then 13 km or so by bike luckily it hadn’t been too steep on the uphill so on the downhill, there was no part that was uncomfortably steep. Then up again and over a pass and down again to Zao Onsen, where I bought in the conbini my dinner for tonight and returned up the hill to my hotel with the many different rotenburos. For today, I had reserved with a spectacular view, only that I was there after sunset. But still, if you switched off the light then you could look out into the darkness over the valley, see the mountain range opposite, the lights in the valley and along the hills, under the dark sky with a few stars.

 

D1 Zao ONSEN

Route: Kaminoyama - Zao onsen
Bicycle: 32 km
Train: 350 km
Total ascent: 983 m
Average speed: 8,2 km/h
Riding time: 3 h
Weather: very sunny but it is autumn now, 20C

Another long weekend, and for this one I had reserved back in August a hotel in Zao onsen. And ONSEN is really the right word for this trip. It was definitely more time in onsen today than on the bicycle.

This here is one of the free rental onsen in the hotel I am staying.

But the highlight of the day was the big Rotenburo onsen of Zao. In principle, a simple place, but wonderful. It is an onsen located right by the side of a small hot creek. They are channeling the water through a big stone pool, but one can actually even sit in the stream itself. Surrounded by trees in a relatively narrow valley. It is a famous place and was well visited when I was there today. But not too full. No pictures were allowed obviously, so I only took picture of the small creek a few meters downwards from the onsen. 

But I started this ride back down in Kaminoyama onsen, a railway station on the small Yamagata Shinkansen. I had come through this small city 7 years ago, when I cycled from the very north of Japan to the south on my Brompton. The not so old castle was still standing.

 

But for me, it was up into the mountains to the famous village of Zao onsen. I read about this place quite frequently on the Japan guide forum pages when people ask how to come here. it is a famous winter ski resort and specially famous for what they call snow monsters: trees, full of snow and frozen. But that doesn’t winter when I will not be here by bicycle. As for the previous weekend, I had actually reserved two different places, the other one in Yamanashi prefecture, but my main goal was to come here and when I checked the weather a few days ago, it seemed that it will be very good weather here.

Being a ski resort in winter, and obviously means that the village is halfway up on a mountain.On my way up, still at a pretty low elevation, I saw this khaki fruit stand. It did sell an entire basket for ¥200, but it also have some car kaki for free to taste right there, and a small knife to cut it down.

From there, it went up and up, but the elevation was generally OK even with my relatively heavy bag. I couldn’t really decide what weather it would be so I have a little bit of everything a warm jacket and cycling T-shirts.

At the entrance to the village is this very idyllic lake. It just doesn’t sound very idyllic because the road is relatively close by so one can hear quite a lot of car noise.

 

For koyo it is still too early, at least at a height of about 900 m. Let’s see tomorrow whenever I ride further up to this mountain if the autumn leaves have started to turn red.