Tag Archives: gunma

Minakami and Takaragawa

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En route to Minakami, we did some work and then some shopping… snacks, drinks, fabric; you know, the essentials. Lunch time hit and Mr K wanted to find a sushi train. Something to do with us heading towards mountain towns and the high likelihood of there being a decided lack of sushi and seafood on menus, I think he was taking pity on me as he knows how much I love seafood in Japan. We found Hamazushi, which we think is another conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain? Not entirely sure but it was so similar to the last one we visited, odds seem high.

Ordered a ‘Melon Float’ (beause, Japan!), sadly not quite the winner the amazake was at the last place as it was waaaay too sweet. 🙂

None of it healthy. Most of it very tasty. Lunch for two for approximately AUD$12 each… can’t complain. Even ordinary sushi train here is better than good sushi train nearly everywhere else in the world.

On the way to Minakami, we stopped at a Tea Cup – I should clarify this a bit: that we call them Tea Cups stops, most other people would probably call them Roadside Service Centres. If you are road tripping, the Tea Cups are essential, because service stations where you buy fuel do NOT always (in fact, do not usually) have bathrooms for public use! The Tea Cups is what they are signed as on the side of the road. The centres are basically large roadside stops with clean bathroom facilities, restaurants where you can get a proper meal – there’s no deep fried fucking Chico Rolls here, baby! – loads of vending machines, as well as local snacks and produce, souvenirs and gifts all sorts of cool stuff. Nearly every one of these places seems to either have its own mascot or has heavily adopted the mascot of the local area. I do not know why – but we no complain. They’re so cute!

And the local mascot will be on everything! This little pig is super cute but kinda cranky-looking, but stuffed if I can figure out what / where he is the mascot for???

Honey seems to be big on the local produce scene here…

We’ve also fallen in love (all over again) with Japanese roadworks… they have the coolest signage and visual warnings to show that there will be delays ahead. I am certain if I could read the signage, it’s probably extremely apologetic about any impending delays. I haven’t managed to get a picture of the guy of the bowing guy that thanks you at the end of the roadworks, but I will continue to try!

We love the little inflatable dudes… they look different in every prefecture.

The little Gunma-chan is the main mascot for this entire prefecture – and he turns up in the most unlikely of places… on road furniture, on saké cups, on pickles!

So, next stop was one of those ‘Insta-famous’ places… I saw it as a recommended stop on a Reel on FB, and added it to my list of things that were en route to places I knew we were going. Jack the Tart Fantasty. No idea who named this place, but Hokkaido cheese tarts in Minakami in the middle of Gunma? Why not, I say! To be honest, I just thought their aesthetic was cool, and wanted to check it out, but taking Mr K here was probably not my best laid plan – because he really likes the sweet stuff!

Weirdest little place ever! We are in the middle of like a tiny town, smaller and as remote as say, Cooyah, and there is a tour bus here visiting a tart shop! They have jazz music playing softly in the background and a LARGE cafe out the back for visitors to have a coffee and a tart. I have no idea what the jazz, old books, and a manual typewriter have to do with Hokkaido cheese tarts in the middle of a Japanease mountain prefecture like Gunma?! But here they are!

I was right, letting Mr K decide what to buy was complete folly – I wanted one cheese tart, he bought seven! Two plain cheese tarts, and one each strawberry, royal tea, matcha, chocolate and pumpkin!

They also sold these little containers of fudge/cookie slice pieces? I don’t know what these are exactly, but they had little samples out and it tasted like pure sugar so I left it well alone.

The most Japanese thing in the weird little cheese tart fantasty house was the Daruma – but he has no eyes yet! Not even one. :’( #SadDaruma

I have no idea how we are going to eat seven cheese tarts… when all our breakfasts and dinners are included in our accomodation in Minakami.

This was about enough for me! Though I did force myself to enjoy most of the strawberry one. Japanese strawberry things actually tasting like real strawberries and all, so it felt like a struggle worth doing.

Random photo of strange brutalist hotel for Angus… because bitches love brutalist architecture. In rural Japan. Confusing (and ugly) AF.

We found our ryokan without any trouble… all that is somewhere else.

After some stupid early work meetings, we made some time to go tootling around the mountains here to check out some of the other towns. So we took up a drive to Takaragawa Onsen.

It was nice to see some colour creeping into the mountains – though they should be bright red and orange by now in a usual season.

I’m still a bit disappointed at the lack of autumn foliage, it’s mid-November and everything should be deep red by now. Fuck climate change and fuck oil and coal executives with their bought and paid for politicians even more. 🙁 What are we doing?

Still, even with the limited red and orange leaves, the drive into Takaragawa was really pretty.

Takaragawa is a very popular onsen town, and has been consistently rated as one of the best in Japan. It’s an interesting layout in the town – there are ryokan buildings on either side of the river and they all access large public onsens together rather than maintaining their own individual public onsens. Most of the baths are konyuku (mixed gender bathing) where ladies hire a bathing costume and men hide their goolies with their onsen towel. But there are also segregated bathing areas as well.

Now this whole place is ‘discreetly tattoos allowed’. As in, if you are one of the overnight guests staying in the ryokans, the tattooed can get away with using the onsens early in the morning or late in the evenings, or you might be encouraged to cover your tattoos with bandages… but generally, they still do not want tattooed people using the day facilities where the baths are busiest. This is partly why we chose nearby Minakami for a ryokan with a private bathing facility.

No photography allowed here, so here’s some pics blatantly stolen off the internet of the outdoor baths and they look amazing.

Takaragawa is really well known for its autumn magic landscapes.

Following the Tone River …

Minakami is a quaint little town with a small shopping strip near the train station – think about one tenth of the size of Hakone. We did find this quaint little glass art studio which had some beautiful but very chunky glass jewellery on display – it’s not really the sort of thing I wear, but I can appreciate how beautiful it is, and the artistry and skill that goes into making these gorgeous objects.

Seriyu Park on the Tone River has a cool little footbath where you can rest and enjoy the views of the river… which would have been cool, but there was an excavator about 300m away that seemed to be moving/crushing river stones (?) making a helluva racket! So maybe not so relaxing after all.

Also nearby on the riverside was a ‘relaxation zone’ which we initially thought was putt-putt, but then got closer and it looked to have a skate bowl, but got closer and realised it was just a strange arrangement of rocks and things for you to wander through with no seemingly obvious recreational purpose? Maybe it’s the start of a new garden of some sort? It’s a mystery… who knows!

Now, I wish I had taken a photo of the sign explaining this… this lovely riverside park which is where you come to get out of the city and enjoy the nature had been taken over with ‘glass crystal sculptures’ to ‘dazzle and delight’. It was a temporary installation that is over now and looks to have been associated with night time illuminations and possibly fireworks by the river! No particular reason for it seemed evident – like it doesn’t appear to be an annual festival or something??? And, sadly, we missed the night shows by about three days.

I’m easing into it here…

With the polite and not overly strange sculptures…

Then there was this enormous 6-7m diameter monstrosity of glass, driftwood and crystal, mirror balls and ???

So much glass, so much crystal Barbie shiny, so much mirror ball! 😮

Enquiring minds need to know, “Why?”..!

Truly bizarre… and wouldn’t it be some sort of fire hazard?

And all by the peaceful river…

After the excitement and confusion of the Crystal Barbie Park, as it will henceforth be known to us forevermore… we went to the little town, picked up some local beer, saké and retreated to our ryokan to go back to work!

Ikaho Onsen – Oyado Tamaki MOKUREN

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While we were off exploring, the staff at Oyado Tamaki moved our things into our other room for the next two nights.

I had a chance to take a few more photographs of the entrance to the ryokan when we returned from being out all day. I have to say that is a strange, and I am sure unintended, side effect of the overt hospitality of staying at these lovely inns… when you arrive, there are always staff *outside* to meet you, to help you with your bags and to valet park your car for you and usher you into the inn. The downside of this wonderfully welcoming hospitality, is that if you wanted a moment to take a couple of pictures of the beautiful gardens or the thoughtfully designed entrance to your ryokan you kinda can’t without gumming up the works. First there will be staff there, and you want to try to respect their privacy and not take their photography, and secondly, they are gently ushering you inside to welcome you with tea or beer and snacks, so it feels rude to keep them waiting! 🙂

This is the main genkan for the entire ryokan, it is quite large and has a big stove to warm guests in the winter.

We had returned a little earlier than expected so decided to take tea in the lobby, so got to enjoy the garden views for a short time while answering some emails.

Our new room was just down the hall in the opposite direct to our original room.

The ryokan is full of carefully arranged trinkets and artworks to define the season and give the ryokan an ambiance. I know this job falls to the landlady, as with any flower or plant arrangements may be in the display nooks, and I wonder whether it is an easy, second nature task for her or if she agonises over which little ornament to put where and worries over how the lights play over the objects etc.

We had several spaces with little ornaments in display in our room – is the landlady responsible for all of these things? How often do small children come along and make treasures of these attractive little displays?

Wow, so this suite is enormous. We first opened the door to a genkan (entry room/foyer), that I think might have been roughly the size of a hotel room we once booked in Shinjuku a few years back! 🙂

The main room was about the size of my kitchen/dining room combined… a gorgeous Japanese furnished living room with tatami mats and chabudai (low Japanese table), as well as rocking chairs and two enormous bean bags!

The bedroom, which was able to be separated using sliding paper screen doors, had very comfy western style beds and a large desk to work at (which is really going came in handy as tomorrow is going to be all work).

I found these chairs which are only a couple of inches off the ground to be far more comfortable than the older style ones which are flat on the floor with a cushion and a back. I would not have thought being barely 4” off the floor would make much difference.

Our room keys had the same well loved/well lived look of the furniture in our other room.

We found some small welcome snacks, some sakura wagashi, little chocolate flavoured beans and crispy coloured sugar snowflakes?

We had glassware and cups, tea pot and tea and coffee making bits enough for four guests. Everything was catered for…

We also had a fairly large fridge full of free beer and soft drinks, that were replenished when the staff serviced the room.

Matcha tea service and another cute sewing kit.

Mr K already at work as I am still checking out the space.

We had a lovely large balcony with views over the mountains – the weather has been glorious to us so far. This time last year we had early snow and it was fun, but also made some of the mountain roads a little hairy!

Hold your hats and add to the slipper collection! Ryokan slippers, room slippers, toilet slippers and now balcony slippers! 🙂

The bathroom was very stylish and modern… and the towel warmer was a lot calmer than the Agent Orange one.

We are just as over the top with the amenities as always, and we have some sort of crazy space age looking hair dryer that I am sure the Japanese vloggers are thrilled about!

The shower room was large enough for two – easily! This is a huge suite.

Oh, and the best bit for last… the open air bath. All these wooden slatted doors were on sliders so you could open the entire space to the views if you wished (being simultaneously aware that doing so mean you were opening the view in too!).

The water quality here was simply exquisite. It felt soft and silky, and left my skin feeling so amazingly soft. I wish we could take this home with us!

Loved it! The entire decor, the whole suite, it is just beautiful.

We had an enormous range of clothing available for our use during our stay, hanten coats, more yukata in so many sizes, samue pyjamas, more tabi socks etc. We also found a stack of futons in the closet – I dare say the room could comfortably accomodate 5 or 6, though you wouldn’t want to all be trying to use the bath!

There is always some cute little ‘lost in translation’ weirdness. 🙂

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Pre-dinner soak and saké time…

Feeling so relaxed as we dressed to go down to dinner… it’s actually really nice to get clean and sort of dress ‘down’ to go to dinner rather than dress ‘up’!

We were a little early for dinner so took a wander around the lobby area and had a poke through the gift shop. Gunma-chan, lots of local plum sweets and things, and these interesting long long scrolls that I haven’t seen in shops here before… they have seasonal designs on them and a couple with Chinese zodiac symbols, are made of lush fabric and appear to be hand painted and weighted; presumably so they don’t fly around in the breeze too much.

The restaurant is directly below our room, and is the same space we had meals in last night.

I think this display had changed from yesterday…

Funoataki Premium Junmai – Shibasaki Sake Brewery in Yoshioka. Love the cups.

The meal started with a yuzu aperitif and appetisers of: Braised mushrooms with chrysanthemum petals; Shrimp and duck loin stew; Princess Turban shell pumpkin Castello; Salmon and cream cheese roll; Taro dengakuji.

Sea soup: bream, anpei white maitake mushrooms and stalk vegetables. This was absolutely delicious – just a really light and flavourful broth.

Sashimi course: tuna, scallops, flounder, button shrimp.

Simmered dish: steamed tilefish.

Strong Joshu beef shabu-shabu… Joshu is the traditional name of the Gunma prefecture, and the beef of this region is particularly famous. Though I am starting to think they all say that… the Gifu prefecture would say their Hida beef is the most famous, the Kobe beef… it’s all amazing if you ask me!

Shabu-shabu paired with ponzu and sesame sauces… the ponzu was delicious paired with the beef, I found the sesame was extremely tasty but also quite a strong flavour that overpower the meat somewhat.

Steamed shark fin.

All served with noodles, rice and pickles.

There are noodles in this dish under all the yummy vegetables.

Dessert: Melon and Kyoto persimmon… our waiter told us a local saying ‘When persimmon is red, doctor’s face is white’. It’s effectively ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’, becasue the more red the persimmon, the higher the vitamin C content; eat lots of persimmon and send your doctor broke!

As I was going through these I realised I am taking an awful lot of photos of food… I kinda can’t help myself. Once upon a time I studied to be a creative advertising photographer and now when I see such carefully styled food, I just have to take a photo! “The camera eats first!” I should get that translated into Latin.

A few pics of Ikaho at night… some taken from our balcony, some from in town.

After dinner it was back upstairs to let our dinner settle before having another lovely soak in the bath before an early night… so lucky to be here for another night after this! No second guessing who has leaned into the saké tonight!

Woke up to this gorgeous pre-dawn light! Just glorious! Mt Akagi, Mt Myogi and Mt Haruna in the distance…

You know what? I don’t know which is which and probably have been listing them out of order!

Breakfast was another delicious affair of fresh local produce… I really could get used to this, which is odd given I am a skip breakfast kinda person at home normally.

Salmon, Tamago, rice and pickles, salads, miso soup, yoghurt, fruit… lots of delicious healthy things.

Tamago, grated yam, salad.

Salmon and tofu (below)… I always get Mr K’s mushrooms! 🙂

Miso soup with the little baby clams… I don’t know if you’re just supposed to just drink the soup and leave the little clams, or am I supposed to be there working the clams out with my chopsticks!

Fresh Japanese pears.

Today we spent the day alternatively working, hoping in the onsen, drinking saké, and watching the world fucking burn… it is just utterly unfuckingbelievable. By the end of the day I was having trouble believing that there are any intelligent, competent, compassionate or sensible people left in the world. It has been a truly troubling day that left me feeling really unsettled and shaking my head in disbelief.

Because we were in for the whole day working, we chose not to have the staff service the room, when we did surface, we discovered they had left us a trolley full of fresh bathrobes, towels, onsen towels, tabi socks, tea no coffee resupplies, and some refreshed snacks! When you put out the ‘do not disturb’ in Western hotels, you‘re lucky if they even remember you are there!

We’ve really enjoyed our stay at Oyado Tamaki – it’s a beautiful ryokan with a blend of traditional and modern elements. Western beds if you want them, low Japanese furniture, comfortable rooms, amazing onsen baths, and incredible Japanese kaiseki meals… each night seemingly outdoing the night before. I can’t recommend it enough. And with breakfast being so substantial, we skipped lunch knowing we had another lovely meal coming this evening.

This food is so beautiful plated, I couldn’t *not* take pictures, though I had intended to just leave off.

Aperitif: Yuzu liqueur… with dinner, I chose a glass of lightly yuzu saké. I couldn’t risk Kazushi’s (our waiter the last three night) and his look of concern and/or approbation by ordering a whole 300ml of saké all to myself again! 🙂

How beautiful is this? The appetisers were a light dash broth, some additional sashimi – very unusual but the staff had been making a fuss about our three night stay and seems the chef also seemed to think a three night stay was important.

Soup bowl: sea urchin, white onion, daikon radish, ginger and abalone. *chefs kiss*… magic!

Sashimi course: tuna and flounder slices.

Boiled Unagi Hakata – so named because the design made by the layered unagi looks like a hakata obi belt… absolutely delicious! I’ve never had unagi prepared like this before and it was really light and so tasty.

Famous Matsutake mushrooms, served with rice, miso soup and pickles.

Mushroom and pork hot pot.

Dessert course featured Warabimochi (matcha mochi served with a thick molasses like syrup), fresh pears and crème brûlée.

Gochisōsamadeshita!

Dinner was followed by another terribly tedious night of having to soak away our troubles in the onsen!

Add enough saké until the eyes sparkle was the order of the evening… honestly, it seems the only sensible way to deal with the sense of impending doom that was suddenly pervading our trip. There have been plenty of horrors this day, and so much hate, negativity and disappointment in the media… but hopefully we can put the angst behind us as quickly as possible, and worry about the fall out when we get home.

Woke up early to discover a gorgeous colourful skies over the mountains! Simply glorious.

#NoFilter – on the mountains that is… the selfies are always kawaii filtered here. 🙂

I noticed a town worker outside diligently cleaning the steps that the golden onsen waters run down in the middle of the Stone Steps Street – he obviously has the power to turn off the water!

Then it was time for final breakfast before we checked out from Oyado Tamaki. Glorious view from the restaurant this morning.

If you’ve ever been looking at quality Japanese crockery items before, you’ll know that this assortment of small plates, bowls, pinch pots and dishes are worth hundreds for everyone in here. It’s all so carefully curated. I really appreciate the attention to detail that the Japanese put to small details.

Tuna, chicken dumpling, beef in our breakfast salad today.

Butterfish… I’m not sure I’ve had this before, but it was light and soft, with a texture like salmon; prepared with light miso flavours, it was delicious.

I’m getting quite a fondness for Japanese pickles with good quality Niigata rice… I’m going to have to start stocking up more to take home seeing I’m declaring them anyway!

Sadly, (after two more soaks in the onsen), it was time to pack up and move on to Shibukawa for work for the day, which often means emptying the fridge. Normally this would involve packing up some beers and saké to take to our next abode… on this occasion, I found a lonely puddling that needed consuming before we left. Famous Ikaho mid-morning pudding? Yikes! Oh well, I guess that is what holidays are for, thankfully Mr K managed most of it.

The lovely landlady, whose name I wasn’t able to catch, saw us off with a lovely gift. She made comments several times that it was special it was for people to stay with them for three nights and how thrilled she was to have us – and to be honest if you have the time and the money, it was totally worth it! The Dinner No.3 was spectacular with all the stops pulled out in the Japanese delicacies department. I thanked her using Google Translate, telling her that we had such a a lovely stay, that they inn is extremely comfortable, the dinners were amazing and the staff were very friendly and welcoming and she was just delighted. She even insisted on taking our photo before we left.

I can thoroughly recommend this ryokan for a traditional Japanese ryokan experience, with very few international tourists around. We loved everything about it.

Ikaho

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Ikaho is a small town of around 4,000 people; together with the villages of Akagi, Komochi and Onogami, they comprise the merged city of Shibukawa. Ikaho is located on the slopes of an extinct volcano and, (no one will be surprised to read this bit seeing we are here!), it is widely renown for its hot springs!

On our way into town, there was apparently a very well knonw ‘Must-Do’ stop at the Ikaho Pudding House Crayon. I found out about it by persevering with YouTube videos done by Japanese content creators – not the easiest way to get your travel hints when nothing is in English, but.. famous puddings, you say? To take to our ryokan? Don’t mind if we do!

So much pudding! Pudding isn’t really a big thing in Australian – as far as I’m aware anyway! I don’t usually have much of a sweet tooth, so don’t tend to seek these sorts of things out when I’m at home. However, Japanese sweets tend to have less overpoweringly processed ‘flavour’ added. I can’t quite explain it, but something here that is melon flavoured, will in fact taste like melon rather than some amped up over-sweetened version of a ‘melon flavour’. Anyway, famous puddings flavoured in Royal milk tea, matcha tea, chocolate, strawberry, salted caramel, lavender; it goes on. Thankfully they have these teeny small taster sized portions so you can choose a few flavours without consuming your body weight in pudding! (Edit: predictably, the salted caramel was the best!)

Throughout Japan, you will see tiny little police stations, they are like teeny one man booths, this is the second police station that I have seen that actually appears to be a larger presence – the other being the one we spent over two hours at, on our last trip (J4), when Mr K was given a moving violation for crossing a solid line on the highway right in front of some cops less than four hours after we arrived into the country! Good times!

I LOVE this little police car! You can see by its sleek design that it is definitely made for high speed pursuits. 😀 We also thought the sign out front which shows two horse-police people wearing masks, was really typically Japanese cute! Joshu-kan and Miyama-chan are the police mascots here. I can’t decide if their names are some sort of piss take? Joshu and Miyama are both fairly famous types of beef!

The most well-known Ikaho landmark is the famous stone staircase that runs through the centre of the entire town. The steps number exactly 365 and lead up to the Ikaho shrine; ‘the steps stretch out like aiming for heaven’ is the original plan. The steps are believed to have been here for over 400 years, and were most recently refurbished in 2007, where the new plan is explained (in writing!) as 365 steps leading to visitors to the town 365 days a year! That is Fair. Totally fair. Without tourism, a lot of these small towns would be in real trouble.

Now, I haven’t written much about it at all – I intended to, but got distracted – but I had a total knee replacement in August… nearly 12 weeks ago. Given I live in a low set house (ranch style if you’re an American), there are ZERO steps in my house. So I’ve been doing my physio and doing my hydrotherapy exercises since the surgery, and visited a friend for a weekend who has steps in their house, but that is the most ‘stairs’ that have been in my life since the surgery. Naturally, the best thing I can do here is attempt to walk up all 365 of these steps!

I wasn’t really thinking about whether or not I *should* climb these stairs and was far more focused on whether or not I physically *could* climb these stairs. Which may or may not have been a mistake, I’m not sure. Thankfully we were in no particular hurry and I had the assurance of knowing that there was a wonderful private onsen bath for me at the end of this ordeal if it went poorly.

The town’s onsen waters flow straight down the middle of the street. You can see it here at the base of the steps as the water cascades down the steps, and at various other points further up you can see it gushing down the street through some glass viewing points.

Intermittently at the tops of small flights of stairs, there are terraces for resting, for smoking rooms, or that go off down little alleyways for cafes, restaurants, bunny shops (?) and gaming alleys … it all feels a bit like a fete or carnival with the street food and side show alley type games. The scenery was just magic every time I took a breather to look back down the steps.

The entire street is lined with quaint little shops.

This ‘shrine’ looking spot is actually a rubbish bin! It has been decorated with rubber ducks which seems to be one of the popularly won prizes in the side show alley games.

Also lining the street are a number of public onsens… sadly they are not available for those of us wearing permanent marker.

Cute little winding alleyways built on the slopes that house tiny little cafes, ice cream shops, and other stalls selling local onsen buns.

Taking a moment to rest and look back down the stairs is highly recommended… not just for the break for the broken knees but also for the views which improved the higher up the steps we climbed!

Glorious day for it! The three peaks of Mt Akagi, Mt Myogi and Mt Haruna are well framed from this photo point.

There are several little foot baths where weary tourists can stop and soak their feet on their way up the sacred steps. Speaking of tourists – we accounted for two of the four western tourists we saw all day on the steps. Ikaho is only two and a half hour train then bus trip out of Tokyo, so it’s doable in a day (a long day), but it’s not as accessible as many other destinations where there are better train services. There is no easy train here. To come stay, you’d need to train, then bus, then get your ryokan/hotel to come collect you and your luggage from the bus station. So it tends to be a very popular spot for domestic Japanese tourists, but not so commonly visited by foreigners.

There were many convenient little rest areas on the way up the steps… though I think the town provides them mostly so you have somewhere to sit and consume the onsen buns and ice creams that they want you to buy as you make your way up through the town.

The Komaguchi is the river that branches from the onsen source of the Yumoto. In the stone steps there are four small viewing windows or ‘mouths’ that allow you to see the water gushing down the street – and it’s seriously pumping out a LOT of very hot water.

Also, in the stone steps there are 12 hot spring inns that have been owned by the same families of landlords for over 200 years. Each of these landlords has a zodiac sign inlaid into the stone in brass to locate where their inn is – much like a family crest, only a chosen zodiac sign. I saw a few of them, but was so focused on how many steps we had gone up, that I wasn’t seriously searching for them. This (no doubt very clever, clever) rat is kinda cute.

One area of the steps has a poem by the Akiko Yosano inscribed into the steps, I can’t for the life of me find a translation of this poem on the internets, which is a little disappointing – I’d like to know what it says. Edited to add: The poem is called “The Town of Ikaho” and describes a scene of Ikaho in the early Taisho period (1912-1926), but further than that, a translation I can not find!

Above and below: Some of the carnival / side show alley gaming shops.

We found a little cafe to stop at around the 230 steps up… Mr K needed a coffee and I caught sight of some cute (notably Insta-famous) steamed buns. 😀 It was a pricey little steamed bun – but also the tastiest one I’ve ever tried here, so I forgave it.

A Daruma sundae… again we find that the sweets here are not so sweet and something labeled as strawberry flavoured, actually taste like strawberries, not just the sickly sweet pretend strawberry flavour you find in ice cream or milkshakes back home. This was strawberry, rose hip and hibiscus flavoured, all made with local produce from the Gunma Prefecture. It was quite flavourful and refreshing.

There are numbers on the steps telling you exactly how many more you have to go started to be encouraging at this point; which was appreciated given they were a little distressing at the beginning when my knee was already complaining at steps numbered 12 and 15! We stopped into some cute little knickknack shops – and there are several of them scattered about the terraces. I saw this cool canvas bag depicting the Seven Gods, which I couldn’t figure out a use for, so I didn’t buy it. Retail remorse has since ensued and I wished I had picked it up. It was only ¥800… but c’est la vie! I’m so not going back up the 240 odd steps to go get one tomorrow!

This little guy is Ishidan-kun and he/she/it/they is the mascot of Ikaho… which should be fairly evident from his little onsen hat and his stairs for an apron! lol

The Ikaho Bakery… which didn’t appear to sell any baked goods, but did sell… wait for it… moar pudding!

Now, I reckon we have to be all pudding’d out by this point, but they had a neat little insulated bag there that I thought would be useful for the rest of the trip as we are trafficking our saké around, so we picked up two little puddings for after dinner, so I could buy their insulated cold bag.

These were called ‘Stone Steps Pudding’ and were a traditional style egg pudding, and were not sweet at all. A bit like a light vanilla creme brûlée style deal without the sugary crust.

Another zodiac… no metal pig though.

Japanese manhole covers are famous the world over for being works of art. This one for Shibukawa is so famous it can be found on coasters, washcloths, plates, and all sorts of merch.

The last stretch to the top! It was really busy at this point of the steps – the shrine is just at the top of this next stage. I was worried about how slow (and carefully) I was walking and getting in people’s way and holding them up… and also lamenting that I wouldn’t be able to get any pics without people in them.

I stopped to gather my breath and stretch my knee a bit, and held a spot waiting for a break in the traffic. Patience is a virtue I don’t usually posses… until it comes to trying to take a photo without tourists in it! Then I seem to find the will to wait until the people have passed. Worth it!

The Ikaho Shrine… complete with queue of people waiting to pay their respects and ask for the blessings and cast their wishes. Apparently it gets crazy busy here at New Year.

I know in the big scheme of things, walking up 365 steps is not a big deal… but seeing it was so soon after getting huge chunks of my knee removed and bits of titanium and chromium cobalt implanted, and going from not being able to even hobble unaided from my bedroom to the kitchen in my house 12 weeks ago, this felt like a HUGE achievement. So I’m pretty damn happy with my wash!

It should be noted that I couldn’t have gone *back down* those 365 for love or money! Going up is one thing, but going down steps at the moment is still quite another. NOPE. We had to find a circuitous route down via the winding roads that meander in and around the steps to service the hotels. Still, small victories and all that.

On the way out of Ikaho, we made a stop at the Kajika bridge… the bridge is a famous photo stop, being strikingly red in the middle of summer green leaves, stunning when surrounded by autumn foliage, but also looks amazing when covered in snow. I guess this means we need to come back and see it in all seasons.

It feels like that is all a town needs to do in Japan to get people to come by – have some gorgeous Japanese maples carefully planted intermingled with cherry blossom trees, add one strikingly red bridge across a small ravine or creek. Add a couple of food stalls and get some tourists to start sharing photos of it it to make that thing Insta-famous. Build it and they will come!

The red bridges are such an iconic Japanese object that they never fail to be beautiful and feel ‘typically’ Japan.

We ❤️ Ikaho… I’ll definitely be back.

Takasaki – Byakue Dai-Kannon and Daruma-ji

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Went to see the renown Takasaki Byakue Daikannon – or ‘Giant Takasaki White-Robed Kannon’, today. It is located on top of a small mountain, Mt Kanonyama in Gunma Prefecture and has an elevation of 190m. Colloquially it is called Kannonyama and sometimes they call it Byakui, and it is also known as the Goddess of Mercy… so I am just thinking of it as Kannon Of the Many Names! The Kannon (not the actual statue, but rather the concept of the Kannon), came originally from China where she is named, Guanyin, and people come to the Kannon to pray mostly for protection and peace, particularly for protection from natural disasters… which makes a lot of sense when you live on islands prone to volcanos, earthquakes and tsunamis.

The Kannon can be seen from quite a distance away as you approach as it is 41 metres tall on top of Mt Kannonyama. You can see the whole of Takasaki City proper in addition to all the most well-known mountains in Gunma from the top. You can go inside the Kannnon and climb up as high as its shoulders – there are nine floors inside that house 20 Buddhas along the climb.

The Byakue Daikanno was built by Yasuaburo Inoue in 1936, originally as a memorial for fallen soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army who were stationed in Takasaki. It was always intended to eventually serve as a tourist attraction, and the promotion of the Kannon for tourism began as early as 1937. At that time it was the tallest Kannon in Japan, but has since been superseded by a number of other Kannon (the tallest is currently the Sendai Daikannon), and it is now the tenth tallest in Japan. At 41.8m tall, it has a 48m waist measurement and a 0.4m thumb circumference (though why tourists need to know that, I’m not sure!); she weighs a whopping 6000 tonnes.

Stunningly gorgeous day today. Blue skies, cool breeze, 20°C… just like a Brisbane winter!

We chose not to select some fortunes today… it looked like there was a lot of bad luck being left behind at this shrine! And I, for one, do not need any bad luck.

Every Valentines Day, a giant red string is tied around her finger and couples come to pray for blessings and happiness as well as longevity in their relationships.

Mr K looking chill under a Japanese maple tree… busy deciding how empty my cup is. Apparently, one shouldn’t remark on the fact that the maples haven’t turned this year and they should be bright orange by now, as this means your cup is half empty all the time. Le sigh… 🙄

Takasaki off in the distance there.

Around the base of the Kannon were some smaller shrines which (from what I could understand from the poorly translated signs) housed the graves/remains of much beloved temple authorities.

Nearby was the ubiquitous souvenir shop selling Daruma dolls. The Shorinzan Daruma-ji temple is nearby (and our next stop), so it’s not surprising to see them everywhere in Takasaki. The Daruma doll are a hollow, papier mache, round traditional doll modelled after Bodhidharma – the founder of the Zen tradition of Buddhism. Traditionally, they come in red and are designed to represent the Indian monk, Bodhidharma, but now they come in a wide range of colours and vary greatly in designs depending on regional variations and artistic interpretation. Lots of people consider the Daruma dolls to be a toy, but they are also believed to be a good luck talisman for many Japanese.

You can see in the images that the dolls have blank eyes – I’ll explain this a bit later below. The dolls have become a bit commercialised by many Buddhist temples and even co-opted by politicians as aspirational images for their campaigns. Now, you can buy your fav colour to meet your fav goal… vicarious airy-fairy meanings applied to each colour for the rose-quartz crowd.

This morning as we left the ryokan on our way to the Kannon, I had mentioned to Mr K that we may need to hunt down a supermarket to buy some Japanese pickles… generally speaking I abhor pickles (particularly American gherkins!) and other pickled things at home. Even in Japanese restaurants in Aust they are really ordinary, but here, they are so flavoursome and come in such varieties, that I wish we could get good quality Japanese pickles at home. Wouldn’t you know it? Mr K parks us to go visit the Kannon right beside “The Pickle House”… home to a wondrous selection of Japanese pickled EVERYTHING!

Well, once you are buying stuff that needs declaring at customs (something we usually avoid like the plague!), you may as well have STUFF to declare at customs! So in for a penny, in for a pound, I stocked up on pickles and am now free to peruse the Japanese marquetry too. Bonus! 😀 If we are going to be standing in the queue at Sydney Customs with pickles… may as well stand there for timber products too!

Just outside the pickle house was a steamed bun shop making miso steamed buns. Thankfully, they warned us that ’1 is cool for one person’, and as we were only after a wee snack, we decided to share a stick, rather than have one each. Delicious, burnt miso flavours; but rather starchy.

I loved this little guy on the bridge that crossed over the river to the temple area of town… good thing they don’t sell big stone painted Daruma like this one or I would want to take one home!

When we arrived at the Shorinzan Daruma Temple, the first thing that we were met by near the car park was a cemetery… complete with a little booth containing a sales representative that was ‘selling plots’. Hmmm… I’ve long been looking for a place to sprinkle my ashes, maybe this is the place! 🙂

The Shorinzan Daruma Temple is a small temple not far from the Kannon in Takasaki. It was built originally in 1697 but the Obaku Zen Buddhists as a school. It is known as the original birthplace of the Daruma and it is believed the original Daruma dolls came from this region. Legend has it that the Daruma of Shorinzan are especially lucky, so much so that the city of Takasaki has been leaning on that reputation and Takasaki is known as ‘The Lucky Town’.

Originally the temple was believed to have been built for the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, but int he Meiji era was converted to the Obaku sect. In the late 18thC, the 9th generation Zen Master of the temple offered aid and comfort during the Great Tenmei famine, for whatever reasons, he taught them how to make papier-mache dolls based on the Daruma dolls. These become known as the Shorinzan Nanakusa Taisai Daruma Market Festival which is held every January. In more recent years, the festival has attracted thousands of visitors who come to buy new Daruma dolls and burn their old ones as offerings.

The Daruma dolls are often associated with the phrase, ‘Nanokorobi yaoki’, which means: ‘seven times down, eight times up’, which speaks to the resilience of the dolls – the Daruma are light due to their papier-mache construction, but they are weighted in the bottom so they always bounce back up to an upright position when they are tilted or rocked over. In Japan, these are called ‘okiagari’, which means to get up (oki) and rise (agari). They symbolise the ability to overcome adversity and recover from falls or find success and uprightness.

The eyes of the Daruma are often blank when people buy them. They have large oversized symmetrical round white eyes. The purchaser is encouraged to paint in one of the eyes, and focus on a goal. The aim is to complete the next eye when one meets the goal or finishes the big task in mind. They are commonly given as gifts at the beginning of the year or to students, and the recipient of the doll will fill in one eye upon setting their goals, then the other upon fulfilling it. This way, every time they see the one-eyed Daruma, they remember the goal and hopefully work towards it… steadfastly in spite of possible setbacks.

When dolls have both their eyes filled in, marking the completion of one’s goals, some people return them to the Shorinzan Daruma-ji Temple… hence the large collection here at any given point in time. (I wonder if they are cleaned out once a month, like locks on a Florentine bridge or coins from the Trevi Fountain).

After the temple visit we stopped at a konbini to grab some saké and beers – as you do! And I was curious to know what was in these steamed buns… gotta love Google Translate. It comes up with some real corkers.

Another quick and accessible sight in the Takasaki area are the Doukutsu Kannon Caves. These are a 450m deep man-made cave system that have 39 statues of the Kannon Goddess of Mercy on display. Each piece of sculpture is an artwork by the sculptor Rakuzan who devoted his life to creating this unique gallery. The caves appear to be a philanthropic project of a wealthy kimono maker and trader named Tokuzo Yamada. He was apparently quite generous with his fortune and spent half his life on this huge undertaking with the goal of making Takasaki a pilgrimage destination, such that visiting the Doukutsu Kannon would confer upon visitors the same blessings as visiting prestigious temples.

Tokuzo was reputed to have been quite knowledgeable in the design fields and was heavily involved in the layout and design of the Doukutsu Kannon statues he commissioned from teh sculptor Rakuzan. The statues and their posture and clothing are very similar to the aesthetic used in Buddhist art to this day. The entire cave system is considered a masterpiece of modern Buddhist art.

Usually depictions of the Buddhist goddess, Kannon will depict her with a varying background – among rocks, waterfalls, upon mountains, in the snow…. the Doukutsu Kannon created by Rakuzan and Tokuzo are the only Buddhist artworks where the ‘world of the gods is made real’. That is the backgrounds are created by using materials like local Gunma Prefecture volcanic rock and Sanbaseki stone, to create entire environments to glorify the Kannon.

Some of the statues and their vignettes are said to have take the artist more than a year to create.

The work on the caves and their artworks continued until Tokuzo passed away in 1964. The goal had been to make a 800m deep cave, but encountered limitations when they discovered hard ground, which hindered the continuation of the project. They current walk through the caves is 450m and is completely accessible… very unusually for a manmade cave system, it has not steps, but rather is cut into an existing mountain.

This wall may exemplify the difficulty that was found with the tunnelling project.

Right by the caves are the Tokumeien Gardens – considered one of the best Japanese gardens in the northern Kanot region and covering a 20,000sqm area. It is built on the slopes of the Kannonyama Hill using a large amount of the of rocks, soil and sand that were excavated during the creation of the cave.

The garden was designed by Yamada Tokuzou and the master Japanese architect, Kaneko Seikichi. The landscaping was completed by Goto Sekisui II, who was also involved in the beautiful gardens surrounding the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.

The garden is a beautiful relaxing space filled with giant Sanbaishi stones, a huge amount of lava stones transported from Mt Asmara, red pines, Niigata black pines, and seasonal plants.

Sadly, the autumn foliage is late this year – like, concerningly late. The predictions have been put down to a particularly hot and unusually long summer. The tourism industry each year tries to predict the turning of the leaves in Japan, much like they do for the sakura – cherry blossom season, but thanks to climate change it is getting harder and harder to predict.

The garden should have been full of deep orange and red colour at this time of year, but hardly any of the leaves have turned at all. I have heard news reports that the tourism industry is fearing that the leaves won’t turn at all, but that the weather will turn cold so quickly, the leaves will simply fall dead from the trees rather than give the month long colour people come to see.

The gardens were lovely – though unfortunately, not the vibrant colour way that you can normally expect in November. Below, November pic of the gardens stolen from the internet:

After this we opted for a quickie late lunch. Now, we have been in Japan a number of times, but have never been to a regular ol’ sushi train. So we thought we seek one out. Kura-Sushi is a reliable and well known chain across Japan.

It was exactly what we were expecting! Fantastic (and cheap!) food, quick service, hardly any interactions with the staff at all. It was also super noisy because today was Culture Day, which is a public holiday, and there seemed to be lots of families out who would probably normally at school and work. Was good fun though; I’d go again… lunch for two including drinks was barely AUD$30, and we were trying all the strange things on the menu.

Not a bad morning out – now back to work!