In which Sid and Doris drive up, down, over and under most of the Japan Alps.
It is easy to become disoriented (pun) on an event like this where the navigation uses tulip diagrams and the roads have many hairpin-rich mountain climbs. There is no sense of the direction of overall progression, although the individual views are marvellous and the driving is great fun.
This event takes 28 days to get from Sapporo to Fukuoka, a journey which Mr G Maps reckons can be done in 27 hours (non-stop) including a ferry. So the point of the whole thing is to have fun and explore the place.
Karuizawa (the hotel stop approximately in the centre of this screenshot) sounds like the Tokyo equivalent of Royal Tunbridge Wells, a shabby-genteel spa town away from the hurly-burly of the capital but still very reach-able. We spent two nights here, but did not take the opportunity to investigate the hiking, which is said (by the guidebooks) to be truly excellent.
Which made it interesting to chat to a young man in his late 20’s who had come for a holiday from Portsmouth (England) “because Chat GPT recommended it, for the hiking”. We would have talked more but we were diverted by some sort of dog fetish convention where people were walking around with small dogs, dressed in outfits, in dog strollers. One shop offered “bridal outfits for dogs” (we sincerely hope that they were flower puppies rather than bride and groom) and people were seen with dogs in nappies, and wiping their dogs’ bottoms.
We walked back to the hotel through an expensive-looking residential area in a well-groomed forest, where the lawn plant of choice appeared to be moss. Many shops are closed but we are possibly between-seasons right now, as the town transitions from a “cool temperature in summer” place to a “cool place to be for skiing” winter base.
Onwards with the event. The Mini poses for a well-earned break at 2,100m+ on Japan’s “high-est public through road”, the Shiga-Kusatsu Kogen Route.
We thread our way onwards through various bits of scenery which will not make an interesting blog entry, pausing to visit the (s)no(w) monkeys. The park is apologetic but very up-front about the fact that the monkeys only come down to the hot springs when they are cold and hungry (the park puts out food), and in the autumn they are busy filling their tummies as fast as they can on the nuts and berries up in the mountains. Basically, if it ain’t snowin’, there ain’t no snow monkeys. For some inexplicable tourist reason we pay the money and go in anyway.
We are driving down some “musical roads” where the road has lines laid across it to harmonise with your tyres and sing a song, buzz, buzz, buzzbuzz! Did you recognise Tulips of Amsterdam there? No, neither did we, sadly the tune is almost complete drowned out by the OTHER WEIRD NOISES generated by a rally car of a certain age.
But this gives us an opportunity to look at our average speeds on the road. A useful rule of thumb in the UK when doing rallies is to allow 40mph (60kph) if you need to hurry on a road section. Here the speed limits are lower, many areas are at a blanket 50kph, and then people drive at around 33kph down the easy straight bits and much lower round the corners. When we are asked to do 60km in two hours this is becoming challenging rather than risible.
Enough grumpiness. Time to re-channel our inner Buddha and say that when anger is offered to us we do not accept it. Instead the route takes us through some deciduous woods with shrubbery that looks strangely like parts of Surrey.
Two more pictures that are Very Japan. This one shows how the people live in (or cultivate) the Flat Stuff and the trees get the Slope Stuff.
And this shows the micro-scale of all the agriculture we have seen so far. Can all the rice eaten in Japan (apparently over 9 million tons a year) be grown on these tiny little fields each about 1 hectare? Mr Wiki has a very interesting entry here which you should certainly click on (plot spoiler: the answer is Yes).
As this is a Cultural Trip we divert to a local Shinto shrine where our cars are blessed, amulets with irritating bells are provided to hang from our rear view mirrors, and we are given the fantastic opportunity to BANG VERY LOUDLY on some drums. Wowee this is tremendous fun, I am sure our neighbours in Salisbury will love it when we ship some back with the Mini, we will need to buy a roof rack for them. DOOM DOOM DOOM the drums in the deep.
We are now well up in the Japan Alps, and descend into Nagano which was the headquarters for the Winter Olympics in 1998. The day finishes with a caption contest for this picture of Princess Anne:
“Your Royal Highness, it seems we have been asked to stay on here in Japan for three extra days.”