Leaving Tokyo - Karuizawa

Buckle up, this is a long one.

We woke up at 9 AM, a compromise between leaving early and sleeping in a bit, and got ready for our trip. Most of the packing was done, so we just stuffed a couple additional items into our duffle and set out. At Shinjuku Station, we considered purchasing a JR Pass for V, but I thought we should just get to Tokyo Station first.  That may not have been the right choice.  Tokyo Station looks far on the map, but the express Chuo line gets there in about 15 minutes. At that point we were aiming for the 10:24 Shinkansen for Karuizawa. Little did we know that the JR offices in Tokyo Station are a complete mess.

Shinjuku has one main JR office that handles pretty much everything, so we could have just taken care of everything there. In Tokyo Station, we went through four different offices until we figured out how to purchase the JR East Special pass. Figures that the most small and nondescript office is the only one you can actually buy it in.

It was all worth it though since we casually asked for two and I was able to get one using my passport as well. You are only supposed to be able to get one using a tourist visa and I should have been ineligible.  Note: The JR East Pass and the JR Pass are different.  The JR East Pass can be purchased within the country; it is restricted to travel on the JR East lines and is significantly less expensive than the JR Pass.  Unfortunately, the promotion expires in November.

Using the JR Pass is the polar opposite of buying one. You just show the guard as you pass through the gate and he stamps today's date onto your pass. The Asami Shinkansen to Nagano didn't have reserved seats, so we were just able to pass (rush) through the gates and hop onto the 11:24 train.

We ended up leaving an hour later than planned, but saved a load of money. The train we got on was a super-express as well and only took an hour or so to get there.

The weather in Karuizawa was beautiful albeit a little chilly. Still, I was surprised that they managed to make snow at the resort. As soon as you get of the station, to your North there's the town and to the South there's a giant outlet mall. Celebrities are known to own summer houses in the area and its basically a huge weekend getaway town.

So we got there in the early afternoon with only a handful of hours until the sun went down. Fortunately, it was also Thanksgiving weekend and the outlet mall had some crazy Platinum sale and late hours. Our plan was to hit up everything that required it to be light out early, and then just spend the night shopping. Karuizawa has a handful of hotspots, but they're all pretty far apart. We'd read that renting a bike was the way to go, and there were plenty of options. We found a decently cheap shop in front of the station and got bikes for the day at 800 Yen apiece.

Our course of action was to head to our hotel, Hotel Firenze, drop off ours bags, and then be on our way. Hotel Firenze was located up the main street from the station. A bit of a walk, but not too bad on bikes. It's clean and has a quaint feel.  Well actually, most importantly it was cheap. The location is pretty decent as well as it's towards the main shopping district, but kind of in the middle of the area. Firenze ended up giving us some issues that evening, but I'll talk about that later.

First real stop of the day was Kawakami-an for lunch. V discovered this establishment, famous for one of Karuizawa's famous foods, soba. We know that soba is a big deal there since we saw a soba shop everywhere we looked. Karuizawa also has a lot of European options as well. I think that in general, either because a lot of foreigners come to visit or because the town was founded by a Canadian missionary, Karuizawa has a much more western feel than the rest of Japan.

We started out lunch with tri-color tofu. The dark one is a sesame tofu, another one of them was firm tofu, and I forget what the last flavor was. Super clean taste and really good. I've always liked tofu but I think I've come to appreciate it a lot more now after eating it with just soy sauce all the time.

Since it was cold out, I went with the hot soba. Really good tempura, really good soba, not quite amazing.

The star of the show was V's fried oyster soba. Not only were the oysters remarkable, but the zarusoba was the best I've had so far. Kawakami-an is one of those restaurants that uses organic, locally-grown ingredients and then lets the ingredients shine in simple and fresh preparations. Damn good. Everyone in the store was eating the zarusoba and although the warm one hit a spot, the cold soba is significantly better.

Kawakami-an is actually located in this three way intersection with restaurants and gift stores lining the sides. We hopped back on our bikes and checked out a couple of Hello Kitty items (maybe not a couple) before moving on. Our first sightseeing stop was the Karuizawa Ginza, which is not like Ginza at all... It is actually one of the streets leading out of the aforementioned intersection, a brick-road shopping district, and flush with little boutiques that are mostly sell crafty type items and foods.

Our objective that first day wasn't to check out all the stores. We wanted to take in all the sights after it got too dark out after all. That didn't stop us from stopping by this cow store.

I know my eyes are closed in that picture, but just look at how content I am with Cow. I forgot the name of the cow store, but they had coffee and milk ice cream. We couldn't help ourselves:

Very good, but personally only the second best ice cream I had in Karuizawa; more on that later. What is it with Karuizawa and ice cream anyway? So, we continued up the Karuizawa Ginza hill, window shopping and heading to the famed tennis courts. Biked up the hill all the way to a bridge and a small church where the first settler of Karuizawa, Alexander Croft Shaw, has his bust encased in bronze. We had clearly gone a little far and had to ask an ojii-san where to find the tennis courts.  Turned out they were right around the corner.

Too bad they were also under construction. That didn't stop me from sneaking onto the grounds where the current emperor met the empress (the first not of nobility). Romantic, right? I thought so as I stood there surrounded by piles of dirt.

Our plan had been to climb the hill up to an observation point. We reached a checkpoint at which we had to get off our bikes. Our concierge had told us it would take us 45 mins to climb the slope, but after 25 minutes and no end in sight, we just turned around. One of the better decisions we made all day. It was a nice little stroll though; Karuizawa is quite scenic and is certainly a welcome vacation from the metropolis. V especially enjoyed the countryside.  I'm not sure I know who I married anymore.

Going downhill was super easy and we stopped briefly by a popular small church. This little guy here is a favorite wedding destination for the rich since well, there aren't that many churches in Japan. So we stood where many famous people had undoubtedly tied the knot and we snapped a photo.

V snapped another photo as I tried in vain to ring the bell.

Our second to last stop of the day was the old Mikasa Hotel. The road to the hotel was long and uphill. Starting to notice a pattern here. The 2-3 km trip is lined with summer homes. A lot of the houses were clearly empty at this time of year but still huge and gorgeous. With all the leaves on the ground, people were doing seasonal maintenance by creating huge piles and burning them. We'd been smelling the incense like smoke all day and we finally figured it out when we saw a cloud in the middle of the street from this fire.

Is this really legal? I guess it has to be since everyone was doing it. Sounds like a huge fire hazard though.

The Mikasa Hotel operated from 1906 until 1970. The hotel is particularly special in this country as a Western style artifact. It was converted into a museum and we paid something like 400 Yen each to take a look. From the outside, it's quite pretty but the inside is a repetitive showroom of antiquated furniture. No really, it just looks kind of crappy and old.

Our last stop of the day was Kumoba Pond. We were making an effort to absorb nature and with all our zooming around we certainly took in plenty of the outdoors.

Zooom.

Kumoba Pond is also referred to as Swan Lake. It's pretty. We walked the path around the lake a little bit and soaked in the sunset. Too bad that with the sun going down, the temperature also started to plummet. That's an interesting thing about Karuizawa; it's at a significantly higher altitude than Tokyo and I don't think we were ready for the chill.

The ducks thought so too, as they bundled up. Did you know that ducks stick their bills into their feathers when it gets cold? I had never seen that before.  Do ducks even migrate in Japan? Why are there no swans and only ducks at Swan Lake? It's a mystery I tell you.  V was telling me to let them sleep and leave them alone.


Am I one to listen to my wife? Of course not. But let the record show that she was in fact the first one to touch one. I tried a couple times and missed before I managed to "pet" a duck.

It was about time we got around to returning our bikes, but first we had to track down a convenience store. Actually, we were specifically looking for a 7-11 since I can use their ATM for no fee. I'm really not sure how long it took us to find that goddamn 7-11 (a long time), but we dropped of the bikes exhausted and cold and only somewhat prepared to shop.

Sightseeing done, we had something like three hours to spend at the outlet mall. Too bad we were too tired to really take advantage of that time. We covered half of the mall and bought nothing. The sale was supposed to be pretty huge, but the biggest deals we found were sale items that no one else wanted for another 10% off.

I was a little excited to check out Stussy and the Bape Pirate Store. Didn't end up interested in anything though.  I'm still not totally sure how I feel about Bape. I only half like the style, and every time I try something on it feels ugly. You figure for something so expensive, they'd use quality fabrics but maybe they do and I don't know what I'm talking about. Regardless, I commiserated with this guy outside.


Tired and hungry we hit up the food court for some Japanese style fried chicken. Totally hit the spot. After hours of biking, you stop thinking about calories and buy things like the huge chocolate danish below. I ate pretty much that entire thing in two days. I may have biked for miles, but it's pretty much impossible to burn off that guy.

The trip from the station to the hotel seemed so much farther on foot and in the cold. We got back to our cute hotel exhausted. Spent the rest of the night watching TV, falling asleep, waking up, and messing around again before finally going to bed for real. Unfortunately, it ended up being a terrible night's rest for both of us for one humongous reason: memory-foam pillows. Why?!!! Why can't they just have normal pillows? I woke up with this god awful crick in my neck. Ugh. I guess we could have asked for other pillows but I still find those pillows indefensible. I've historically been intrigued by memory foam, but this experience has turns me into a hater. Never gonna get a memory foam anything.

So we woke up a little bit later than planned as it always seems to happen on trips like this. We originally wanted to check out Shiraito Falls, an onsen, and maybe even Mt. Asama. Instead, we decided to take it easy. First up, we headed back to Karuizawa Ginza to do some real shopping. Found this little cute little animals store on the way. Couldn't help but to buy a flying squirrel.

Flying squirrel looks kinda worried about something.  Next stop: ice cream. It might be cold out, but I had to try this Karuizawa specialty: cornet ice cream. Once I ordered it, the shopkeeper took the cornet bread out of the fridge, deep fried it for a moment, and then filled it with ice cream. End result: crunchy on the outside, soft on the outside, and deliciously filled with ice cream.  Thinking about it right now fills me with longing and pain...sweet, sweet pain.  That's kinda like a French pun...kinda.

We continued on to have more dairy back at the cow store. This time it was a pork bun and a hot milk.

The hot milk was quite nice, but they also had a coffee milk that sounded even better. Maybe next time...

That pork bun though, possibly the best pork bun in Japan (not that we've eaten that many pork buns). Still, it was really that really good, really.

We probably spent more time than we should have in the cow store, simply because we were busy petting the guard dog. He chilled out on the front mat so hard that this lady actually didn't notice him and accidentally stepped on him. Poor guy.

This time around we figured out how to get to the observation point properly. A local sightseeing bus takes you up to the summit from the middle of the shopping street. It's a real good thing that we didn't walk it the day before since the bus just kept on going up that mountain for a solid 15 minutes. Walking that road would have taken over an hour for sure.

Once we got to the top, we checked out the shrine up there first. Nothing particularly remarkable about this temple other than the rarefied air and this awesome tree.  How do trees even turn out like that?


It was pretty clear from the long bus ride that we were pretty high up now.  Tack on the additional hill to the observation point and we had quite the view.  First thing you see is this scene here.


The South view is pretty and unobstructed.  The west view has some trees covering it, but you can catch a glimpse of Mt. Asama, the active volcano spewing clouds.  This observation point is definitely out of the way, but I would definitely recommend checking it out.  Once you get up there, the serenity is unbeatable.



 
Plus you get to straddle the border between the Nagano and Gunma Prefectures.  We were in two places at once!

One thing I majorly regret about our time in Karuizawa is that we didn't do a two-day bike rental.  We just figured we would do a one day and then rent again the next day if we needed to, but it turned out that the rental place was quite far from our hotel and all the ones close to us were expensive.

As a result we wasted a bunch of time just walking around.  In fact, we hadn't eaten all day and were scoping out places to lunch on our way back towards the station, but when you're hungry and tired that's a bit of a painful process.  We finally found Atelier de Fromage, a French place I think.  I say "I think" because the menu had things like pizza and curry along with pasta and salad.  I guess the menu makes it sound more like an Italian place with a Japanese twist.

Both V and I went for a pasta; she got the seafood one below and I got an alfredo.  My dish ended up being a little better, but both were only decent.  The pizza, salads, and curry that were ordered around us all looked really good though.  The baked curry with cheese sounded pretty damn delicious. Well, if you just say baked curry with cheese, it doesn't sound that good.  But if everyone else is eating is and saying, "oishii!" then yeah, it sounds yummy.  Actually, the more I think about it the more appealing it becomes in my head. 


We still had some time left before our train, but all the biking had worn us out.  So we picked up our bags at the hotel and walked it to the station.  We stopped by the outlet mall for a bit, but didn't really have much time to really give things a good look.  Also, we were already exhausted from the day before.

I think it would be nice to take some more time for our trips in the future.  These super rushed trips are exhausting and we never end up seeing everything we wanted to.  Karuizawa was a nice escape and for some reason pretty empty that weekend.  I guess autumn isn't really the right season for it.  We had an awesome time, but missed out on a lot of things.  So, we're thinking maybe we'll come back to check it out again if we do a road trip to Nikko or something.  The thing about a lot of these touristy towns is that it can be difficult to get around without a car.

Hopefully, I can get my international driving permit soon so we don't have to expend all our energy walking and biking.  Still, it was a great time just roaming around.  We'll probably be back.


Karuizawa, abayo.