Sightseeing

First things first: Even though I’ve been adding blog posts detailing every day since we landed, this pace is only going to be held for the first week, until we arrived in our now-home of Hakodate. Please don’t worry that I’m stuck in a prison of blogging about every day of our adventure.

The 25th was an exhausting day. We woke up at 5:15am and left the hotel 30 minutes later. Jet lag comes in handy sometimes.

Our goal was to get to the Akechidaira Ropeway before the rush. The one-way road up to its parking lot apparently gets really crowded as the day progresses, and we didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. Since the ropeway doesn’t open until 9am, we’d make a brief stop at Lake Chuzenji and hike our way up to the Hangetsuyama observation deck to kill some time. With me? Good.

It didn’t work out that way.

Well, it sort of did. We definitely beat the rush to the ropeway and found our way to the lake. However, the road to Hangetsuyama doesn’t open until 7am, and we were there about 30 minutes before that. Fortunately, the lake and surrounding mountains, like Mount Nantai, are beautiful and gave Seri a good excuse to take a lot of photos. We even met a more… “well fed” corgi than Einstein in the parking lot at the lake.

By 6:45, cars had begun to line up to make their way up the road once it opened, so we fell in line. I was a bit worried that there were already cars this early in the morning, and hoped things would be better back at the ropeway after our hike.

Fortunately, the drive to the parking lot of the Hangetsuyama observation deck was a breeze, with a few slower cars even pulling out into a parking lot halfway up to take photos of the lake. When we started the hike, we were the second set of people to make it that morning.

Two fun facts about me:

1. I’m not what you might consider “fond” of hikes;
2. I’m afraid of heights.

The start of the hike was fine. A bit steep at first, and the mountain air stung as we climbed, but the view behind us was great so I didn’t mind much.

Then the terrain changed. A muddy ground and narrowing paths with steep dropoffs and fewer trees to hold onto/brace against gave my brain a bunch of reasons to turn against me, and I almost abruptly turned around without reaching the top. Quick storytime diversion: One time, Seri and I visited Sedona in Arizona and hiked to the top of the Devil’s Bridge. I was already not doing well with the height, but when Seri tugged me towards her for a photo op, I kinda lost it. We didn’t get a very good picture together that day. Anyway, we eventually made it to the deck, took some selfies, had some nice people take photos of us, and headed back down the trail.

Right. Time to leave. I slipped once on the way back down but I was in “get the heck out of here” mode so although it wasn’t a great feeling at the time, I just needed to press on. We got back down to the car and headed back towards the ropeway.

Our plan was to park in the ropeway’s parking lot. By the time we got there, it was already full, with multiple cars waiting for a spot to free up. OK, new plan: Let’s drive back towards the lake, park near the Chuzenji Onzen Bus Terminal, and find a taxi to take us up to the ropeway. Simple! Well, no. For whatever reason, taxis don’t really hover around that area like they do in big cities, and we were told it might take an hour for one to arrive. Alternatively, we could walk about 30 minutes back up the highway to the ropeway, and take the bus back to our car (the bus only ran from the ropeway, not to it, for some reason). So we started our walk on the “Nihon Romantic Highway".

We eventually made it to the ropeway and Seri bought me a soft cream for being such a trooper.

The ropeway runs every 10 minutes and although they try to stuff as many people as they can into the cable car, it still took a little over an hour for our turn. Once we got to the observation deck, though, you realize why people endure the wait.

Fortunately, things went pretty smoothly once we got back down the ropeway. The bus arrived after a short wait, we made it back to our car, and headed back to the hotel and Einstein. It was nearing lunch time, and Seri found a nearby restaurant that allows dogs called Ryuuou (I’ve tried saying that a few times and fail every time). There was also a short hike to a bridge that runs over the river. A nice woman warned us to check Einstein for leeches in the muddier parts of the walkway. LEECHES. COOL.

We took some photos, headed back to the hotel and took a quick nap before our scheduled massages at 4:30.

Our masseuse was really nice. He actually lived in Concord, CA for a couple of years so he spoke more English than a lot of people we’d so far interacted with. He was taken aback when we started talking about housing prices in the Bay Area – this seems to be a common theme when it comes to price disparities in general between the Bay Area and Japan. I didn’t take any pictures of our massages, because I’m not weird. I did, however, take one of a helpful guide in our hotel’s guide about prepping for the onsen/ofuro.

Dinner was at the resort again (breakfast and dinner were included in the resort fee), and we had another collection of small plates. Some (trout tempura) were better than others (“sea urchin agar”), but it was nice to finish the long day in a relaxing fashion. As with yesterday, sleep came quickly after we finished dinner. I was exhausted.

Until next time!