Haguro-san and Naruko Onsen: climbing and bathing
Trip Start
Mar 22, 2009
1
30
43
Trip End
May 03, 2009
Naruko Onsen,
Tohoku,
Japan
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Anyway, we were rather lucky this morning as we arrived at the mountain during a couple hours of no rain, still cloudy though. I have to say, despite being really tired, the climb was really good--all 2400 steps of it--they're little steps unlike Mizen on Miyajima. The mountain is totally empty--too early in the season and no one really goes to Tsuruoka. The trees are huge conifers that tower over you and a 1000 year old undecorated pagoda sits in a grove of them, totally camoflauged until you get close enough. The top, unfortunately, is the antithesis of the climb--the temples are showy and orange, and way more glitz. I think I rather appreciated the minimalism of everything else--just stone steps up through thick woods. But that's the modern day sentiment shining through; we're a generation that don't have highs or lows, just variations of middles. And ostentation is generally regardes as cheesy unless done in an ironic way, which then makes it cool. So hike up--totally cool, in a bare, non ironic way, and the top complex, totally uncool in a trying to hard to fit in way.
After the climb and subsequent descent where I slipped on a step and fell on my ass down a couple of stairs, caught a series of trains to Naruko Onsen, a small spa town in Miyagi prefecture in dead center of northern Japan. I actually ended up on an express train that stopped only at onsen towns in Miyagi, which tells you how fond the Japanese of their bathing.
You can tell Naruko is an onsen town the second you step off the train--the air absolutely is saturated with sulphur. It's raining hard when I arrive, but you can still hear the steaming sulphurous water bubbling down the drains underfoot, and the steam rising from random streams along the hills. As a town, it's not much, just a bunch of ryokans and hotels standing on hot springs, and a bunch of souveneir shops--the main souveneir is a kokeshi doll, which looks like hald a rolling pin with a girl's pig-tailed face painted on the handle. Vaguely terrying kinda.
So after climbing and still being sleep deprived by the overnight train, I though I'd take advantage of the old onsen, Taki no yu, which is supposedly a really nice bicarbonate, sulphurous spring, and then eat lots of good stuff at a local joint. Turns out both places I wanted to go to were closed, so a big bust. Did get some soba, which was quite good, but not the same I think, and did bathe in the ryokan, but again, not the same--the water is much clearer and less atmospheric, if that's possible.
But, as it is a ryokan, got an awesome room with tatami mats and overlooking a lit up cherry blossom tree in the backyard--I can't seem to escape the sakura in this trip. Watched some TV, which seems to have lots of non-sensical variety shows. Some are educational, I guess, like celebrities competing in kanji writing, or guessing how much food costs, and other are weird, like a comedy competition that involves getting random members of the audience to laugh, or just unintelligible, like one with a panel of celebrities who just talk about some random topic at will. Lots of 'sou desu ne's and I'm done for the night. Tomorrow, I'll try to see the damn gorge--which we can't hike just yet--and then try that bath again.
Tomorrow: Taki no yu part 2, and Sendai/Matsushima
-mike
