Good morning campers!!
The Watson family reached a milestone—we spent two consecutive nights in a tent. And surprisingly, everyone slept. We weren’t sure how we would do it, but it happened (still not sure how to this day).
Here’s our campsite near Lake Tazawa. Similar to the last one, it’s engulfed in dense foliage, with very little space for pitching tents.
Unlike the last one, to our delight, this one had clean, well-maintained restrooms (no surprise bugs in the toilet). The restroom is the building in the background, not the cans in the front.
No time for Mark to change out of his pajamas. He and Alex were up and at ‘em almost at daybreak. Alex is funny when he camps. He wakes up around 6:00 and just has to get out of the tent. First step: go to the bathroom. Second: find some food. He rummages through all the bags and coolers and eats the first edible thing he finds—marshmallows. Later we fed him a more substantial breakfast of french toast with syrup, whipped cream, blueberries, huckleberry jam and peanut butter (not all at the same time).
While I packed up camp, Lyana and the kids walked across the street to this stunning view.
Actually, the view was for Lyana. The kids just wanted to throw rocks in the lake.
They were pretty good at it too. And no one got a rock in the head (ask my sister why I have a scar on the back of my head).
Believe it or not, our family occasionally enjoys a visit to the nearby onsen. I don’t remember how Lyana found out about this one, but it was up the mountain just up from the lake. The left half of the building is a nature/visitor center for hikers preparing to traverse the steep slopes of Mount Ihavenoidea. The right half is devoted to those brave souls seeking out one of Japan’s most curious pasttimes: public bathing. Of course, if you say it that way it doesn’t sound very appealing at all. You have to say ‘onsen’ to get it right. Thankfully, most (including this one) are NOT co-ed. The bathwater for onsens is usually piped from nearby natural hot springs and are full of rejuvinating minerals. The water in these baths was a very opaque, cloudy white. I have no idea what ‘rejuvinating’ minerals were in it, but it felt good. For more information on onsens and how to visit one, check out this post from April: click here.
This is a view from the mountainside overlooking Lake Tazawa in the distance. Can you tell that the lake is in a large caldera (that’s a big volcano crater)?
There’s a little shop and restaurant near the lake called the Bee Café. And they specialize in (guess) . . . honey and jam products. When you go in the shop, there are a dozen or more varieties of honey and jams that you can sample and buy. I’m talking about flavored honey! Now who wouldn’t want a lick of that?
Here are my honeybees:
I just thought of something. I wonder if my children will resent me someday for all the embarrassing photos I took of them.
Anyway, let’s not get sidetracked. Moving on.
Three days of camping equals three days of ice cream. I like this tradition. This ice cream was different, though, because after the lady mixed the ice cream and your chosen ingredients (I picked cashews and cheese while the others had boring old fruit mix-ins), you could top it with various flavored honeys. I think it’s definitely worth the visit, especially if you want something just a little different.
The best part was WHERE we ate the ice cream—in a double decker bus!!
Well, it used to be a bus. Now it’s a dining room with funny no smoking signs.
And funny boys eating ice cream.
While driving peacefully down the road, suddenly I hear a very loud, happy shout (more like a squeal, actually) from the back seat. This was quickly followed by a scream of terror and I hurriedly pulled off the road. Turns out Alex lost a baby tooth (very abruptly, I might add. Perhaps at the hand (or elbow) of his big sister). Anyway, the happy shout was him being excited for finally losing a tooth. The scream of terror was when he noticed the blood coming after it. Two minutes later, with a wad of tissue in his mouth, we were on our way again.
Japan likes its tunnels. I have no idea how many tunnels there are in Japan (surely several hundred), but the kids always like traveling through them, especially the long ones. Some of the tunnels near our home are over a mile long.
Everyone is familiar with Japan’s nuclear power industry, but did you know that only 24% of Japan’s energy production is from nuclear plants? Over 50% comes from geothermal or fossil fuel plants. About 5% comes from hydroelectricity.
Now that you have the context, here is a picture of a hydroelectric dam in Japan. It’s no Hoover, but it’s still neat to look at.
This is neat to look at too.
Okay, let’s see. Context now. Katya was feeling carsick. We stopped at the next parking area (ie wide shoulder). There was a little suspension foot bridge, and this is the view from it. Looks like Montana.
Picture us stopping the car on a very high bridge, and Lyana jumps out and takes a picture over the side. That’s this view.
Okay, here’s what this whole driving business was about today. Our goal was to find Mt. Hachimantai. It took almost 2 hours to get there, but we finally made it. Lyana had researched the area and there was a hiking trail (Goshogake Nature Trail) she wanted to go on, so we drove up the mountain and followed the signs to . . . a parking lot. We looked all around the area, and finally found something that looked like a hiking trail, but we weren’t sure. So we decided that we would just have a picnic and go home. Well, this is where the chain of events started.
1) we got all the food out of the car and went to the picnic table
2) the bees (and they were HUMANGOUS) kept chasing us and wouldn’t leave us alone, so we abandoned the picnic idea and instead had lunch in the van
3) lunch in the van didn’t take long, so we drove back down a couple km to the visitor’s center
4) the bees chased us through the parking lot from the van to the visitor’s center
5) while I walked around with the kids, Lyana spoke/sang charades to a worker there, who then hooked us up with a nature guide
6) this nature guide volunteered to personally take us to the trail that we had been looking for in the first place!!
And here it is—Mt. Hachimantai in all it’s smoky, smelly, sulfury glory. Strangely, it reminded me of Yellowstone (smell and all).
The kids really enjoyed the hike. They didn’t murmur one word of complaint (probably because the tour guide was so entertaining, even though he spoke barely a word of English).
The guide was very impressed that Katya and Alex could read so well . . . in English.
I know what it looks like, and no, Lyana is not holding hands with the tour guide.
The first attempt at this picture, the tour guide (still don’t remember his name) didn’t realize the camera was on ‘movie’ mode. So we have a short film of all of us attempting to hold still for the camera. We figured out the problem shortly thereafter and here’s the retake.
This is the kind of water that is pumped downhill into an onsen. Hot and murky. Wouldn’t you like to bathe in it too?
Here’s the main hot spring ‘pond’ at the end of the trail. This is Oyunuma volcanic pond. 
Another picture. (Can you tell I’m running out of creative captions the longer this post becomes?)
Beauty all around.
This is interesting. At the beginning of the trail (and by extension, at the end of trail also, because you return to the same spot you started from) are several bear barrels. Just bang the attached stick against the drum and you scare away any bears that may be nearby. Alex, Katya and Mark all took turns scaring away all the bears in Japan.
You’ve read (or at least scrolled nonchalantly) to
the end of this post. Therefore, you deserve a special treat. As luck would have it, Alex and the tour guide knew the words to a song about Zosan, or elephant.
Alex and Japanese tour guide singing the little elephant song in Japanese
That’s all for now. Until next time,
Sayonarra.
Robert
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