Ippoippo

… but not just here in the UK. Looks like they are having a bit of fun with it in Japan in Fukushima (just north of the area we visited this year).

Truck Mishap
300 People Stuck (Japanese, 日本語)

It’s been a cold, cold December. Successive UK governments have done a great (i.e, not very) job of ensuring that the energy distribution and storage system can handle ‘extreme’ weather conditions.

The powers that be, and the mainstream media don’t seem to be saying much about this, but based on the freely available public data, it seems the UK is in a bit of a mess.
January and February should provide a nice little wake up call.

Take a peek at this blog entry, which has done the hard work of making sense of the data – Peak Oil Update: Will the UK run out of gas in February 2011?

Blimey!!

Mind you, it was rather pretty this morning at sunrise. Got rather carried away with the camera.

As usual, a bit late updating this blog. Anyway, this time this posting is about our recent(ish) trip back to Japan.

Up North

The plan this year was to head up to the north first (somewhere I haven’t been to) and work our way back down. We’d start in the north because we figured the autumn colours would be there first and move down during the next two weeks. What we hadn’t counted on was that it’s been a very hot year in Japan, and it was still pretty warm during the last week of October. In fact, it was most bizarre when we arrived in Tokyo because we found ourselves needing to walk around in just a t-shirt, whereas the locals were starting to wear their jumpers and coats. That said, an element of that was your typically “It is now autumn (according to the calendar), so I will wear autumn clothing despite the fact it’s 25 degrees C outside!”.
So, early on a Tuesday morning (having arrived on Sunday and spent some time on Monday in Tokyo) we left the in-laws and headed down to Yokohama to catch the Shinkansen up to Akita. It was a wet morning, but not that cold.
About 3 hours later, we were in Akita (well, Tazawako). Whoops, should have brought some jumpers with us. We were equipped with light jumpers and jackets, but decided we probably didn’t need our hats and thick jumpers. Big mistake, as it was rather cold.
As we boarded the various buses and headed up into the hills towards our destination of Tsuru-no-yu Onsen (鶴の湯, Part of the Nyuto Onsen set of onsens), the first snow of the year arrived. In fact, it seemed like early autumn had jumped straight into winter, as not many of the trees up there had changed colours yet.

The onsen itself is quite well known, and there are rooms in a modern ryokan building, plus the opportunity to stay in an old lodge which would have been rather cold. Glad we stayed in the new building. The other interesting feature was that as well as the separate male/female baths, there was a mixed bath outdoor bath. So that was an interesting experience, sitting outside in the water, with the snow falling on my head. Yuko then came across from the female changing rooms and joined me. I think she was the only woman there in the mixed bath (at that time anyway). This would have been OK normally, except for the very loud group of Taiwanese tourists who decided it was perfectly acceptable to get their (fully-dressed) buddies to come into the bath area (which is fenced off from the public areas) with their video camera and film cameras. OK, they weren’t filming us or any of the other guests, but it was a disturbance nonetheless.

Generally, we had a mixed time there. The food was pretty good, and it was great to taste local, Akita food as well. Very hearty, homely food which was great to go with the snow. The staff and people in Akita were a little difficult to work out. Whilst never being rude, they were slightly stand-off-ish, and never really made us feel welcome.

The next morning, it was time to venture about and head back down the hills so we could catch the Shinkansen and work our way down south a bit.

Fukushima

Next stop was Kōriyama (郡山). We didn’t plan on staying here. Instead, the plan was to pick up a car and then drive it down to the next place we’d be staying the night.
This was the first time I’d driven a) an automatic car and b) in Japan! (Yep, never ever needed to drive a car when we used to live there). Generally, it was fine. The only two annoyances I had were 1) the stupidly slow speed limits (which everyone else ignores but I really didn’t fancy getting unlucky and pulled over) and 2) the position of the traffic lights (when compared to their position in the UK).
We pretty much kept to the quiet roads and we got to see a fair bit of Fukushima prefecture countryside.

Our destination was to be Kashi Onsen in Nishigo ‘village’, which was just west of Shirakawa.
Ohhh my God, this is much better. Again, this onsen had a mixed bathing bath (though indoors this time), as well as a number of men and womens baths. The leaves had just started changing colours (up the hills, the colours were starting to come out, it was still pretty green for most trees further down into the valleys). In fact, Yuko and I wished we’d been here a week later as we reckon the colours would have been perfect.

So, we checked in and were helped to settle in with some very, very friendly and kind staff. Now, this place isn’t exactly a small, family run place. It’s pretty big and busy, but the staff still took the time to look after us. Fantastic!

So, after some serious soaking and relaxation, we went back to our room to have food (this being ryokan style, it was food in our room). Again, local food, so this time it was Fukushima food. Fukushima itself is relatively well known for it’s beef production. When you drive around, there are some very British style rolling grasslands that separate the low-flat lands where most of the cities/towns are, and the wooded mountain areas. Perfect for vegetables and cattle.
The nearby woods and forests at this time of year are full of various kinds of wild mushrooms, so they featured heavily in our meal too.

Exploring

As well as just wanting to do the tourist thing and exploring somewhere where we hadn’t been before, another reason for coming up to Fukushima was to explore the place as a possible place to move to to live. Is this a place for us to settle, and have a change of career!?!
The next day was a bit unfortunate because it rained all day. So, we decided to venture south across the prefecture border into the Nasu region.
Its quite a well known area because the summers here are relatively cool and less humid. It’s very much a place to escape to in the summer. Hence, there is a massive amount of second homes up in the hills. However, as we drove around, Yuko and myself didn’t find the place that great. It all seemed a bit ‘fake’ and ‘Disney’. The attractions and buildings were all rather tacky looking and it just didn’t feel homely.
Mind you, it was good that we did explore there.

Shirakawa

The next day, it was time to explore Shirakawa. The weather had improved, which meant the sky was a fantastic clear blue colour. The plan was to do a bit of sight seeing in the morning. Shirakawa town centre itself is rather unremarkable. In fact, it’s not very appealing at all. There are no well know stores there, and what other stores that are there are not very nice looking. Most of the decent stores where you could buy day to day things seemed to be located on the outskirts near the Toll-road motorway (IC). However, the two main tourist attractions are very nice. First up was Nanko Park, which included a very calm and relaxing tea house. Second up was the castle.

After a raman lunch (I ate far too much raman on this trip!), we met up with some people who work for a Non-Govermental-Organisation (NGO) promoting living in the area, providing advice on the housing and business side of things. They had a chat with us, got to know our ideas and showed us around a bit. Although we have a fair bit of work to do to calculate various options, it was a very productive meeting. Again, the people in Shirakawa and Nishigo area were very friendly and helpful (even with me the foreigner!).

That night was our last night before catching another early morning Shinkansen. This was the view though before we went in search of food in Shirakawa. This is looking out towards the hills by Nishigo.

Back down south

In fact, it was very far south. We caught the Shinkansen, and headed to Tokyo. But then, we kept going on all the way towards Yamaguchi in the south. It was rather tiring, but this was a chance to visit family down there, and to pay our respects for a Great-Aunt we never got to meet that one last time before she died (she died a couple of weeks after our last visit to Japan, when we didn’t have time to go to Yamaguchi).

Having done that, the next day it was back up to Tokyo to “Hotel In-Laws”! For the rest of the time in Japan, it was time to catch up with friends and relatives. One nice little day trip though was going to and climbing (hiking) up Mount Takao. From there, you could get a good view of Tokyo, and from the summit you could see across to Mount Fuji.

Next thing we knew, it was time to come home. Next visit to Japan??!!?? Who knows. However, we’d love to visit and explore more of Fukushima again.

Japan Trip 2010 Image Collection is here on Flickr.