Kumano Dake

Todays agenda didn’t quite go as planned but probably in the best way possible. The original plan for today was to travel to a small mountain village and then take two cable cars up near Mount Zao and then hike for the last hour to reach Okama which is a volcano with a crater and a caldera in that looked really beautiful!

So we got up at the crack of dawn in order to catch the 7.45am bus that got us there at 10am so we would have plenty of time to explore.

Finding the cable car station we were chuffed to find it empty! Thinking we would have all the views to ourselves and that we had done really well to avoid the crowds we eagerly headed up towards the summit. After stepping off the second cable car at 1,700 metres high we realised why we were the only ones here. Thick cloud covered the mountainside and you couldn’t see more than 20 metres in front of you. Not letting this deter us we began the trail still keen to give it a go until the trail disappeared under a hill of snow. Now the website has said that the hiking trail would be opened around the middle of April so we thought we would be able to do it however I think a live update would have been helpful! The wind whipping around us we tied bandanas around our noses to try keep some heat in. Trying to explore what we could we soon realised it was a bit of a lost cause. It was very cool to be up there in such an eerie atmosphere but not what we came to see and do!

Feeling slightly disheartened we headed back down the cable cars and just began exploring the little mountain village which is a onsen town. This basically means there is loads of natural hot spring bath houses that you can visit. I’ve been putting off going into these as you bathe naked which neither Jacob or I found an appealing experience with a bunch of other people! This was until we came across this tiny little onsen, curious I went to have a little look and the ladies hot spring was completely empty and Jacob checked the men’s which was also empty. Feeling like this was our best opportunity we both went into the hot springs and it was soooooo nice. I got my own little private hot spring to wallow in which was actually incredibly hot- almost too hot! It was lovely and I’m so happy that we got to do it as I really wanted to but I didn’t want to go in naked with lots of strangers!

After enjoying our private hot springs we met up outside and headed to catch the bus back. So not the day we had envisioned and it was a shame we weren’t able to see the volcano but it worked out pretty well in the end with quite a special onsen experience!Read more