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    • Asia 2023
      Day 33

      Kurobe Gorge

      September 2, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 28 °C

      Tijd voor een nieuwe dag in de trein. We pakken de Shinkansen en we razen langs de zee en vooral door veel tunnels. We komen aan in Kurobe-Unazukionsen. 🚅 Daar pakken we de Toyama Chico spoorlijn naar Unazuki. 🚃

      We belanden hier aan het begin van de Kurobe kloof. De kloof is diep en groen en bovendien erg geschikt voor de constructie van een dam. Dat hoef je Japanners geen twee keer te vertellen dus die dam kwam er ook. Ter ondersteuning van de bouw werd er een spoorlijntje aangelegd. Na de constructie van de dam is de spoorlijn een toeristische attractie geworden om met smalle lange treintjes door de kloof te zigzaggen. 🛤️

      Dat hebben we natuurlijk gedaan en het was absoluut de moeite waard. De uitzichten waren adembenemend. In de open wagons konden we alle kanten op kijken en genieten van het uitzicht. 🏞️ We slingeren langs afgronden, over bruggen en door tunnels. Bij Keyakidaira stappen we uit en pakken we een goede lunch mee. We hebben hier ook mooie uitzichten en kunnen afdalen tot op de bodem van de kloof.

      De terugweg met dezelfde trein is opnieuw fantastisch en deze keer zien we zelfs een flinke groep apen 🐒 die vlakbij het spoor vertoefden.

      Met de lokale trein 🚃 vervolgen we onze terugweg naar Kurobe-Unazukionsen. Daar stappen we weer op de Shinkansen naar Nagano. Maar niet voordat een andere trein met veel "geweld" het station passeert. 💨

      Teruggekomen in Nagano drinken we een biertje bij een leuk tentje om de hoek. We worden aangesproken door een Japans duo dat erg benieuwd was naar onze trip in Japan. Van Nederland wisten ze vooral Kinderdijk 🇳🇱 te benoemen.

      Daarna besluiten we te gaan eten bij weer een lokaal restaurantje. De tafel naast ons blijkt van Chinese 🇨🇳 afkomst te zijn. Zonder gesproken taal maar vooral met handen en voeten wordt duidelijk dat ze uit Beijing en Harbin komen. Ze stonden erop dat we een drankje van ze zouden aannemen. Wij stonden erop dat we dan een foto 📸 zouden nemen met z'n allen.

      Wat een dag! 😄      Read more

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    • TravelerEscaping Winter
      2111115
      Day 27–30

      8. Stop - Toyama

      October 8 in Japan ⋅ 🌫 19 °C

      English below

      In Toyama angekommen, wurde das Wetter nach und nach wieder besser, sodass wir einen Nachmittag sogar kurz an den Strand in der Bucht von Toyama gehen konnten.
      Die Stadt selbst ist nicht sehr touristisch. Das kleine Altstadtviertel am Meer und die Burg von Toyama waren schnell abgehakt und wir sahen kaum andere (westliche) Touristen
      Da unser Hotel jedoch auch einen großen Sauna- und Ruhebereich mit Massagesesseln hatte, gönnten wir uns auch viel Zeit zum chillen und relaxen.

      Außerdem wurde uns von einem japanischen Elternpaar aus Florians Kindergarten empfohlen, in Toyama Sushi essen zu gehen, da es das Beste in ganz Japan sei. Gesagt, getan.
      Wir gingen in ein sehr kleines, Izakaya-ähnliches Restaurant (Izakayas sind kleine authentische Bars, in denen nur 4-8 Gäste Platz haben), wo uns der alte Sushi-Meister wirklich großartiges Sushi servierte. Er war auch sehr an uns interessiert, vor allem, als wir erzählten, dass uns das Sushi in Toyama als das beste Sushi Japans empfohlen wurde. Das brach wirklich das Eis und die ganze Erfahrung war ein echtes Highlight! 🤩😊

      When we arrived in Toyama, the weather gradually improved, so that we were even able to go to the beach in Toyama Bay one afternoon.
      The city itself is not very touristy. The small old town district by the sea and Toyama Castle were quickly ticked off and we hardly saw any other (western) tourists.
      However, since our hotel also had a large sauna and relaxation area with massage chairs, we used the opportunity to chill and relax.

      A Japanese couple from Florian's kindergarten also recommended that the sushi in Toyama was the best in all of Japan. So, off we went to a very small, Izakaya-like restaurant (Izakayas are small authentic bars that only have space for 4-8 guests), where the old sushi master served us really amazing sushi! He was also very interested in us, especially when we told him that the sushi in Toyama had been recommended to us as the best sushi in Japan. This really broke the ice and the whole experience was a real highlight! 🤩😊      Read more

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    • TravelerEscaping Winter
      4
      11
      Day 27

      Kurobe Alpine Route

      October 8 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 8 °C

      English below

      Eigentlich sollte die Überquerung der Japanischen Alpen über die Kurobe Alpine Route eines der Highlights unserer Japanreise werden.
      Mit dem Zug ging es früh morgens von Kamisuwa über Matsumoto nach Shinano-Omachi. Dort nahmen wir den Bus nach Ogizawa, wo die Alpenüberquerung mit einem Elektrobus durch einen langen Tunnel beginnt.
      Doch wie schon am Vortag befürchtet, hatte das Wetter beschlossen die Berge in einen dichten, kalten und verregneten Nebel zu hüllen. So konnten wir zwar den Korubedamm besichtigen, doch sonderlich viel Alpenpanorama und Herbstlaub war leider durch den Nebel nicht zu erkennen. Wir machten das Beste draus, aber vor allem die letzte Busfahrt vom Berg Tateyama hinunter zu letzten Bergbahn (wo sich im Winter und links und rechts meterhohe Schneewände auftürmen) war aufgrund der weiß-grauen Nebelwand echt enttäuschend... Wirklich schade, aber das Wetter kann man nicht planen. 🤷‍♀️🤷
      Aber! Dafür haben wir vom Bus aus zwei Affen gesehen! 🤩

      Crossing the Japanese Alps via the Kurobe Alpine Route had been planned to be one of the highlights of our Japan trip.

      We took the train early in the morning from Kamisuwa to Shinano-Omachi via Matsumoto. There, we took the bus to Ogizawa, where the Alping Route begind with an electric bus through a long tunnel.

      But as we had feared the day before, the weather had decided to cover the mountains in a thick, cold and rainy fog. Though we were able to visit the Korube Dam, the fog unfortunately prevented us from seeing much of the Alpine panorama and autumn leaves. We made the best of it, but the last bus ride from Mount Tateyama down to the last cable car (where meter-high walls of snow pile up to the left and right in winter and spring) was really disappointing due to the whitish-gray wall of fog... It's a real shame, but you can't plan the weather. 🤷‍♀️🤷
      But! We did see two monkeys from the bus 🤩      Read more

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    • TravelerJapan 2024
      1221
      Day 14

      World Heritage Suganuma Gassho-zukuri Vi

      September 19 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C

      We woke up to thunderstorms early this morning, which was promising as it might cool things down a bit. Gayle made us scrambled eggs for breakfast with a good pod coffee.

      We headed off in our mighty Nissan highway star, into the mountains east of the city, to Suganuma. It's a world heritage listed site of traditional thatched or grassed roofed buildings. The drive, whilst only less than 60kms, took well over an hour. The roads were quite good but winding and narrow in spots. The scenery was amazing; it's so verdant with thick vegetation over towering mountains with low hanging clouds. It's green for a reason as we got batches of rain showers during the trip. It's a much more pleasant 26c, which was a relief.

      It stopped raining just long enough for us to wander around the World Heritage Suganuma Gassho-zukuri Village. Cars arrive at the top of a hill, and there's an elevator that takes you to the bottom of the valley where the village is located (of course, this is Japan, after all). It's a mix of original restored houses with others relocated there for their preservation. There were hardly any tourists there, which was awesome - not an instagram influencer in sight!

      The road trip also included some impressive tunnels that burrowed through mountainsides for kilometres, and these were the back roads. Driving in Japan has been surprisingly easy, once you get the hang of the GPS 😄 🤣 The speed limits are low and drivers seem quite courteous so I'd recommend it to others. The best thing was being able to easily get to the hard to get to places!

      We could also drive to a Mos Burger for a late lunch, yum.      Read more

    • TravelerJapan
      Day 48

      Day 47-48

      April 17 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ -3 °C

      Day 47

      So we’ve been trying desperately hard to plan a day trip into the Japanese alps as it feels like it would be SUCH a mistake to miss them. The only problem is that without a car they are almost completely inaccessible. We even looked into staying in the alps and just taking the hit with having to cancel a different booking but the prices were outrageous and the lodges completely inaccessible. We were feeling at our wits end a little as it seemed that our dreams of visiting the alps were becoming more and more impossible to fulfil. Until I found the alpine route. This is a route through the mountains that starts in Nagano in ogizawa and ends in Tateyama in Toyama prefecture. It’s a popular route by car and also for hiking but we still had the problem of no transport until I found a website entirely in Japanese that offered a day ticket through a pathway in the alpine route using only public transport. Absolutely thrilled and seriously surprised that it wasn’t more advertised as it took quite a lot of hunting to find to it we booked it!

      When the alarm blared at 6.30am I groggily got up and got dressed before we grabbed a quiet bite before taking a bus all the way to ogizawa. Luckily the lady at the bus terminal was a saint as we were struggling to find tickets and where the bus went from and she recommended to go to the stop before the station and just as well as we wouldn’t have got a seat on the bus otherwise and then we would have been screwed!

      After 1 1/2 hours we started winding up through the alps with blinding snow on either side the bus pulled into this tiny little bus station literally on the mountainside with nothing around it. Getting off we managed to get a physical copy of our ticket from a vending machine and then began to look for our tour guide. After a while of looking around we couldn’t find one, just the other passengers there. Slightly confused we went back onto the website and translated it all and managed to work out that we didn’t actually have a guide, it’s basically a ticket that secures you a spot on the public transport route but the rest you have to work out yourself! Managing to find a map I felt a little more confident that we knew what we were doing but in truth we made it up as we went along quite a lot!

      We started by taking a cable car through a tunnel in one of the mountains. Climbing out we climbed the 220 steps to the view point which was absolutely spectacular and actually probably the best view of the whole day! A gorgeous frozen dam winding in between the snowy mountains it was just breathtaking, the pictures don’t do it justice we literally stood there in awe it was incredible. Seriously a view of a lifetime. What’s also special is that apart from when your on the public transport it didn’t feel as though there were many people there as everyone dispersed at the viewing points so it didn’t feel really touristy or over crowded. Once again, we were the only western people there, everyone else was Japanese which would explain the Japanese only website but it just seems bizarre that it wasn’t really advertised to the western tourists!

      After this we took a long Ropeway even higher into the mountain range and the highest we went was 3000 metres! It honestly felt like we were in a different world, with no real civilisation in sight just wilderness it was really really special.

      We took a few more buses through the alps before reaching our last stop- the snow wall. Now this isn’t the famous one in Aomori prefecture but it’s just as impressive and I’m sure less busy. The snow wall accumulates in drifts and creates 20 metre high walls of snow. For most of the year the route is inaccessible but from mid March-June they bulldozer a route through the snow creating the snow walls! Wandering through glancing up in awe it’s hard to imagine this level of snowfall it’s just insane. You definitely wouldn’t want to be any where near these mountains in a snow storm! It’s so compact that it’s almost ice now it really is quite the sight and this was probably one of my favourite parts of the day trip!

      The last public transport was an hour bus that slowly made its way down through the mountains with amazing views before ending up at a train station. We took two trains to get home and had a quick dinner before crashing and going to sleep as we had been out of 13 hours and I was shattered but completely and utterly worth it! Amazing day and definitely one to remember.

      Day 48

      Today is our last day in Nagano so we decided to have a relaxed day just exploring the city as we haven’t actually done this yet! Having a yummy breakfast we walked through the city for about 30 minutes before arriving at Zenkōji temple which is a massive temple with a few very large gate entrances and lovely grounds. Sitting in the sun we enjoyed the birds chirping away and took a few photos of them. Jacob got very excited taking photos so I found a nice cherry blossom tree to sit under whilst he wondered around taking photos. After a while we slowly weaved our way through the streets of the city and browsing in shops and stopping for a quick lunch. We explored the city for a few more hours before walking back and having a relaxed evening getting all our things in order for the move tomorrow.      Read more

    • Japan
      Day 7

      Gokayama und Shirakawago

      October 28 in Japan ⋅ 🌧 13 °C

      Die beiden historischen Dörfer stehen unter UNESCO Weltkulturerbe. Die Dächer dieser Häuser sind aus Stroh und so steil gebaut, damit der Schnee schnell abfällt, um im obersten Stock auch im Winter Seidenraupen züchten zu können. Die Häuser sind noch bewohntRead more

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    • TravelerA Curiosity Ride
      Day 213

      Ainokura Village & Old Town of Kanazawa

      October 24 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

      Today, I cycled back to the mountains to visit the traditional mountain village Ainokura which is located on a high plateau. The village is inscribed on the World Heritage List because of its unique gassho-style. For those of you who are further interested, here’s the citation of the description board: “The Gassho-style house is defined as one which has a thatched gable roof, with a truss-like structure and a roof slope steep enough to proyide adequate space for active use inside the roof volume. This type of farmhouse is very unique and not found in any other part of Japan. The large steeply-sloped roof is constructed to bear heavy snow loads as well as to provide several interior attic levels which could be utilized for sericulture. The Gassho-style house is the most rationally designed farmhouse type in Japan.“ Nowadays, the village is still inhabited and lies between some modern Japanese houses where local handicraft is made.

      I left the village right at the moment when the rain started. A few tunnels through the mountains allowed me good speed and kept me mostly dry. Since the day was still young, I decided to cycle until Kanazawa. There, I visited the old town. It was the first city where I met lots of other tourists and actually strolled through a lovely pedestrian zone. Dozens of craft shops and Japanese restaurants enrich the lovely district.      Read more

    • TravelerThe Wow Travels
      Day 74

      Yakushi Trekking Part 3

      October 14 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

      3am, the night sky full of stars, we got ready and started hiking up to the main character of our trip: Mt. Yakushidake.
      Hiking when it's still dark sometimes brings out a new perspective. You don't know what the path looks like, only the part your head torch is reaching. And if you are like me, you don't realize that you put your head torch on too tight and get a headache.
      I also had to fight with my stomach, as it didn't like me hiking up for two hours without any food and only ice cold mountain water. Additionally, I was sweating and still cold at the same time, as it was windy, my face burning and my hands were numb.
      It was awesome (call it a toxic relationship).

      We reached the peak in time before the sunrise. We made breakfast while we were waiting and I was able to warm my hands at the burner, that was heating up the water. There were other people on the peak and one elderly woman asked me if I was "Ariana-san". I do not know if she meant a random Ariana or Ariana Grande (I do not look like Ariana Grande, certainly not with a red face from the cold wind and two nights sleep deprived eye bags).
      Yoshi thought that was funny, but he was also the guy who said he thinks I look like the goddess Nike, which, when we googled what she looks like, was this very famous statue that has no head. At least Ariana Grande has a head.

      We made our way down to camp again, and even though it was the same way we came up, it still felt new, since I didn't really see it when we went up.

      We packed up our camp and had some early lunch in front of the hut close to the camp.
      Some people might know that I do not smell that good anymore due to a little accident I had some years ago. Which also dulls my taste. Drinking tea in the mountains therefore never really tasted like anything to me.
      I really wanted to taste the tea that we madey though, and that's why I put the used teabag in my mouth and sucked the remaining liquid out. It was bitter, but I was also able to actually taste the tea, which was very nice.

      Then it was time to pack up and we made our way down to the car.
      It was 11:50am when we arrived at the car.
      Our camping trip ended with a visit to an onsen, an early dinner at a yakiniku place and an 8h drive (traffic jam) back to Tokyo.
      Yoshi and I arrived at home 11:30pm.

      Nice trip, 10/10, would do it again. Wow!      Read more

    • Rieke DietmannJapan
      Day 10

      Onsen Besuch

      April 15 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

      Auf dem Weg Richtung Kanazawa machten wir noch Halt an einem Onsen, das an einem der vielen Stauseen gelegen ist. Da wir die ersten Besucher des Tages waren, waren wir zunächst ganz allein in unseren jeweils getrennten Bereichen und ich erlaubte mir, ein paar Fotos zu machen. Das heisse Thermal-Wasser wärmte uns gut auf und die Dusche tat mehr als nur gut! Auf unserer Camping-Tour sind die Onsens bisher die einzige Möglichkeit für uns, zu duschen…Read more

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    • TravelerJapon
      Day 33

      Kanazawa + Takaoka

      April 17, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

      Sushi pour le petit déjeuner. Première visite de Kanazawa, surnommée la petite Kyoto en raison de ses nombreux temples et rues de geisha et samuraï. Avis un peu mitigé, en même temps il est difficile de détrôner Kyoto qui reste l’un de mes endroits préférés au Japon. Déjeuner curry de Kanazawa puis, l’après-midi, direction Takaoka pour y voir notamment une grosse statue de Buddha.
      Encore des sushi pour le dîner car c’est la spécialité de Kanazawa et ils sont vraiment excellents ici !      Read more

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    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Toyama-ken, Toyama, 富山県, 도야마 현

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