Thursday, 6 November 2025

So I am here at a fancy resort onsen (Japanese spa), not because I like resorts, and the onsen wasn’t a priority either but it is the closest hotel to the Oirase Gorge and this trip was basically built around being here at the approximately correct time for autumn leaves. I had to book this hotel long before I had an itinerary (or an autumn leaves forecast) so with the two days here everything else was built around getting here on time or doing something afterwards. I do have some other things that have time constraints but this was the biggie.

So how did I do? I think I’m a week late, which is fair enough since rooms here a week ago were a lot more expensive than this midweek stay and I was maybe a week early in Sapporo. Biei and Juniko Lakes were pretty good so I’m not complaining. Also today was pretty much a perfect day until a few moments ago when it started raining. I have enough stuff to carry and I ditched the umbrella for a tripod so no rain today when I was out on the trail was excellent.

Speaking of the trail, it’s basically a separate dirt/mud path, with inclines and steps, that runs close(ish) to the road from close to my hotel to Lake Towada just over 14km away. I left the hotel about 7:45am and reached Lake Towada about 3:40pm, just in time for the last bus to come back.

As I have a lot of images today it’s just random selection time as I’m not going to seriously look at them tonight, so without any more waffle here’s my day.

the hotel

This is the western entrance, handily I’m staying in the western wing. The bus in front runs to about the half way point every hour until 3pm. Not particularly interesting to me except as an emergency pickup.

long and windy road

Nice road you have here but where’s the path? It did start earlier but I missed it, typical.

bit of colour

Nice foliage you have here. Note it isn’t all like that but I don’t typically take photos of bare branches if I’m looking for autumn colours.

the stream was flowing strongly away from the lake

more colour

Yes that’s the path on the left. This was the standard for the first half. I suspect that most people don’t walk this bit. In fact most people are in coaches that get dropped off, wander for a bit, and then get herded back into the coach for it to be repeated somewhere else.

it’s a forest

a path through the forest

And I met a bear, well actually he was travelling with me and he’s from the George Hotel in Christchurch. If you stay there you meet a George Bear in your room and they like it if you share his adventures with them. There was a sign saying there had been a sighting of an actual bear in the area but I figured it would be a desperate bear that came too close to all these people, coaches, cars, etc.

no idea

it’s more river than stream

a very pretty river

I love rapids

trees optional

a waterfall

sometimes the path gets close to the river

more colour

choshi otaki falls

last look back

lake towada

heading back

Mission accomplished! Tomorrow can be a free day and it might need to be if the rain continues.