A weekend of volcanic activity

For as long as I can remember Sheena and I have talked of going to Kusatsu in Gunma prefecture. She had already been the year before I came to Japan but it had been cold and wet and they never made it up Mt. Shirane to see the caldera lake, presumably the source of such a wonderful onsen town. So on a bright Saturday morning we packed up, drank lots of coffee and headed north with Stephanie and Laura to the perfect weekend.

Most of Saturday was dedicated to just getting there. Once we got off the expressway in Gunma the drive was really pretty along the local roads past these beautiful forested hills with precarious stony cliffs that looked like they came straight from water-coloured paintings of ancient Asian scrolls. Very pretty. By the time we got to our hotel it was late in the afternoon so we just checked in to this lovely resort, complete with people that carried our bags and escorted us to our room and everything! A little refreshed we caught a shuttle bus and road it into town centre. Kusatsu’s central plaza must be like none other I’ve ever seen, or that even exist, for right in the middle of a quaint iconically old-fashion Japanese village is the main hot spring source: Yubatake. The basin of natural hot spring water is said to the most productive hot spring source in Japan and at the very least is the most dramatic in my opinion. The air was filled with the smell of sulfur and puffs of white steam as the water pumped from the ground was far too hot to touch. It brought with it a beautiful array of minerals that settled down into the wooden water ducts and little stone pool turning everything it touch to a soft milky green colour.

 

 

After circling the water field a few times, it was time for the yumomi performance. I’m not sure how it’s done in modern time but in the old days, in order to cool the 90 degree water, the hot spring would be stirred with large paddles before being distributed to the various bathhouses and ryokan in the area. Apparently if cold water is simply added, it ruins the benefits of the minerals. The water in Kusatsu is said to cure everything but heartache. Off the narrow streets now, the four of us filed into an atmospheric little bathhouse and sat before a wooden bath of baby blue water awaiting the dance to begin. Before long several older women wearing traditional kimono came in and performed the ritual of cooling the water to a rhythmic song in time to the beats of the paddles. They took a break for the audience to give it a try, I stuck to my picture taking, and then continued on at a greater frenzy. This time without any warning the slammed the paddles down and using old-lady muscles that put my young body to shame they beat the water sending it soaring into the air in great surprising splashes. Now I understood how playing with a giant wooden spoon in some hot water might cool it down.

Back in the cool night air we did a bit of shopping, exploring the narrow lantern lit alleyways with the dramatic backdrop of the surrounding mountains at the end of the lanes. The sun was setting and for the first time this year I began to feel a bit chilly. It was a good feeling to know a hot bath of our own would await us at the end of our adventure. We returned to the hot spring field to find it lit up in gold and blue lights as night quickly approached. I could not get enough of the charming old buildings, puffs of foggy steam and beautiful water source in my viewfinder. It all came together so atmospherically and the best part was we’d been down there long enough to no longer notice that the place smelled of rotten eggs. Or maybe that was how charmed we were that it no longer mattered. It was with a content heart I cast a final gaze over the now dark scene and rode the bus with my friends back up the hill to our hotel.

 

The rest of the evening was dedicated to food, drink and bathing. The wash, rinse and repeat way. Dressed in our yukata and fresh from a bath, we feasted like queens on tabehodai of steak, gratin, pasta, prawns, tempura, sashimi and potato fries and nomihodai of plum wine and tropical cocktails. Returning to the room I thought I’d sleep forever but we opted for a late night bath and sunk into the mineral rich waters of the outdoor pool a little longer. The pool was lovely in the evening with a hot waterfall cascaded a jade mineral over the rock face and various stones to lounge about on. I slept so well that night, if even for a short time as we had a schedule the next morning. We woke around eight, bathed again, oh how nice it is to lay about in a hot spring whenever one feels like it, and had another tabehodai at breakfast: French toast, every type of egg, bacon, croissants, fresh fruits and coffee. To the average Canadian that sounds like a shrug-worthy meal but in Japan it’s rare to find what I constitute as a ‘proper’ breakfast.

 

After check-out we piled into the car, still a little comatose from our luxury, and headed further up into the hills beneath an overcast sky. I was excited for the day’s excursion, a trip up to the crater lake on Mt. Shirane, but was a little put out by the clouds. As it turned out, I had nothing to fear for we broke high above the clouds at an altitude of 2000 meters-above-sea level. Up there it was nearly alpine with little shrubberies and highland grasses instead of intimidating trees and on the horizon the over cast sky was nothing more than a sea of clouds beneath us. It was quite breathtaking. We stopped often for more pictures and finally found ourselves at the top of Mt. Shirane.

From the parking lot it was another twenty minutes up a stone path under the purest blue sky I’ve seen in ages along a landscape of scorched rocks from a long forgotten eruption. The sky! My gods the sky was magnificent! The rocks so red, the plants so green and the crater lake so spectacularly milky blue! It was blue like turquoise cut with cream. The red ridges surrounding it were amazing and in the distance the sea of clouds did magnificent things to the lower mountains painting them all shades of blue.

 

After quite a while of shooting pictures we headed back down to the parking lot and across the road to a second volcanic lake the made up for a lack of drama with a sense of peace. The air tasted of autumn and the leaves were frosted in red. Each of us found a little place that called out to us and found a seat to contemplate the beauty from a different perspective around the water. It was kinda cool that despite not communicating our intentions, we each settled down to a state of meditation. We must have looked like some sort of gaijin checkpoints each on a different spot on the boardwalk nearly perfectly spaced apart.

It’s always hard to say goodbye but the day was waning and we still had to return all the way to Yamanashi. We stopped only a few times, once for pictures of a quaint stone bridge all ready for autumn and twice for coffee and then it was home.

With my list of prefectures completed I hope to spend most of winter lounging about in baths and doing little weekend trips such as this one. Thanks Sheena, Steph and Laura for an awesome time!