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!
