Saturday, 3 November 2012
The hot spring onsen experience might be one of the major draw cards to the area, but there's no doubt that most of the visitors are there, at least partly, to ride the rather wonderful little railway that runs out of Unazuki Springs.
Operating from mid-April to November every year, the Kurobe Torokko Electric Railway was originally used to carry workers to the construction sites for the hydroelectric dams in the Gorge. It’s just over twenty kilometres from Unazuki to the terminus at Keyakidaira and the trip takes around eighty minutes each way.
Along the way the railway passes through the steepest V-shaped gorge in Japan, crossing twenty-one bridges and snaking through forty-one tunnels, passing a number of hot springs, including Kuronagi and Kanetsuri, and around the terminus at Keyakidaira there are a number of scenic options including the Sarutobi Ravine and the Man-eating Rock and Meiken Hot Spring.
That, however, is getting ahead of the developing narrative.
We'd bunked down rather early the night before, with Hughesy claiming major fatigue as a major contributory factor to Friday morning's condition, and I was definitely a candidate for a big night on the futon and under the doona. I reckon there was a good eleven hours between when I drifted off and when I emerged from a deep and restful slumber, though I wasn't looking forward to what I was likely to find when daylight arrived.
This, I'd been warned, was the day when the entire array of warm clothing would be called into play, since the absolute best scenario involved a maximum of around 10 at Unazuki some time in the early afternoon and a temperature that would probably be in the low positive range when we hit the train and made our way up into the mountains.
Breakfast was another take on the Viking, though it featured almost nothing recognizable to the Western eye apart from the pastry and coffee options, but I managed a hearty enough start that fueled the day's activities and got me to dinner time without the need for further nutrition.
Breakfast done, it was a case of dropping the Black Monster and Madam's back pack at Reception, checking out and making our way a mere couple of hundred metres along the street to the headquarters of the Kurobe Torokko. The sight of a couple of traffic wardens waving batons and directing private vehicles and tour buses into their respective parking areas was enough to confirm that we were going to be dealing with significant numbers of fellow travellers.
We were booked on the second train for the morning, departing at 8:18, and the crowd for the 7:57 were queued up behind the barriers as we arrived. There's an interesting little variation on the booking side of things on the Torokko, in that your reservation gets you a seat in the carriage, but as far as which seat is concerned, it's a case of first in, best dressed.
They open the barriers about ten minutes before the scheduled departure time, and what follows isn't quite a stampede, but by the same token it isn't the casual stroll you'd be taking if you knew you had a pair of guaranteed seats either.
The actual journey starts with a climb through the first of many tunnels, emerging just before the 166-metre long Shin-Yamabiko Iron Bridge, the longest bridge on the route, and the red painted structure they use for the publicity material, then passes the Unazuki Dam, the first of the structures that brought the line into existence.
As you proceed from there there's a rather impressive castle-like structure that presumably fulfils some purpose related to generating electricity, though just what that purpose might be remains a mystery to this particular observer. The rest of the structures en route are predictably utilitarian.
Apart from the autumn leaves, which were the main reason for the crowds being there, and quite magnificent they were, as the images hereabouts illustrate, there are plenty of items of interest to catch the keen observer's eye. There are branches running off the main line, for example, and a long subterranean tunnel built to allow workers to get back down the mountain when winter snows remove the train from the transport equation.
Suspension bridges across the gorge at a couple of points allow workers and, presumably, trekkers, to cross from side to side, though one of them doesn't.'t have hand rails. That one's for the monkeys.
High above the lot, snowcapped mountains tower over proceedings, rather uncomfortably close in appearance (Hughesy prefers his snow clad peaks in photographs, not clearly visible through the windows on a day where the temperature's hovering unpleasantly close to zero), with its beautiful emerald green surface.
The mountains climb higher after you cross the Moriishi Bridge and the train passes a couple of isolated onsen establishments on its way to the terminus at Keyakidaira, where there are a couple ofvwalking tracks that allow you to get up close and personal with the coloured leaves.
Given the threat of rain, and the temperature, I wasn't the most enthusiastic participant in the up hill and down dale ramble that took us to the lower observation platform, and,in any case, my eyes weren't holding up that well faced with a continuous display of coloured leaves. sure, they're a magnificent sight, but after a couple of hours they threaten to become overwhelming.
Still, the walk gave me the chance to see one of the stranger sights I've come across in a country where there's plenty to baffle and bemuse a Western observer. I rounded a corner to find a Japanese father doing up an eight-year-old's shoe laces. Well, maybe the kid wasn't quite eight, but he definitely looked old enough to be able to accomplish that everyday task without parental assistance. The incredible bit was that, while the concerned parent was getting those laces under order (we don't want anyone tripping now, do we?) the kid was nonchalantly playing a computer game.
I'd passed the camera to The Supervisor on the grounds that I didn't think I'd be needing it, which was just as well, since I suspect an attempt to snap the scene I found before me would more than likely have produced an ugly incident.
As we made our way back to the station, construction work produced a navigational mistake on Madam's part that took us down to a platform just above the river bed where there were more coloured leaves to see and a thermal foot bath for tired feet. I wasn't in the market for a foot bath, and wasn't looking forward to the climb back up to the station, so I wasn't impressed at all by the situation.
The definitely not gruntled but not quite disgruntled factor continued as we made our way across the bridge, headed towards the Man Eating Rock, largely due to the fact that the trail meandered along for what looked like several kilometres, the weather continued to threaten precipitation, and the back pack was a bit of a load to carry. The key point was that there wasn't an obvious turn back point on the map, and I dreaded the prospect of let's just see what's around this corner.
I knew, more or less, what was around the corner, and was sure there was a similar view around the next, the one after that and the one after that. all quite magnificent spectacles, but I was more or less spectacled out.
In any case I would have liked to see whether we could switch to an earlier train for the descent, since the switch to the night's accommodation in Nagano involved a couple of rather tight moves between connecting trains. As it turned out we'd just missed one that may or may not have had room, the next was a workers' train, and we had no option but to stick with the original plan, which gave us six minutes to alight in Unazuki, collect the luggage, make it to the station up one flight of steps and down another onto the platform, negotiating the purchase of tickets along the way.
Had it been a JR line, the ticket purchase on a local line would be unnecessary. Wave the rail pass and you're fine.
In any case, after a rest and a refreshing drink the descent was just as spectacular as the ascent, we managed to be first into the carriage, which got us a premium position for alighting at the other end, the bloke manning Reception at the hotel produced our bags as soon as he sighted us and we made it to the ticket office at the station just as the train was about to depart.
A couple of substitute tickets from a friendly conductor upstairs, a mad scramble down the stairs and we just (literally) made it as the train door closed. There was another train we could have caught half an hour later, but that would have produced the mad scramble at the other end as we transferred ourselves from the Toyama Regional Railways line to the JR one.
Actually, as it turned out, we sighted the later service while we were waiting on the platform at Ouzu, and our Hayate service was, as things turned out, running late.
Once we'd boarded the Hayate there was a comfortable stretch retracing part of the previous day's route, followed by a switch to a local service that delivered us into Nagano just after six. There was some slight confusion about the location of the hotel, which seemed to have changed names recently, but nothing major and by seven we were booked in and back downstairs scoping out the eating options.
Given the number of options in the immediate area and the lack of any commitments, deciding on a particular eatery wasn't as easy as it might sound. In most other places along the way there was either an obvious choice, or some other factor that made things a done deal, but here we had a number of possible options, and it was down to what we felt like.
Madam had flashed through a couple of options on the iPad before we left, and we'd decided the preferred option was a Japanese-Italian drinking place (drinks with plates of nibbles), noting a number of other possibilities as a fall back.
Complications set in when we found another couple of options just down the road from the hotel, a meat on skewers barbecue place and a relatively pricey French restaurant, but we pressed on, locating the preferred option only to discover it was full except for a couple of places at the bar, which might have suited someone else, but didn't appeal to us.
Across the road there was a Vietnamese place, where the menu in Japanese and mutual unfamiliarity with the ins and outs of the cuisine meant we weren't sure about that one's, so we were off in search of others. Recognized another fusion place from Madam's iPad info we were about to head inside when Madam noticed the Closed - Private Function sign and we ended up in another fusion place that was, as far as She could make out, a young people's drinks and nibbles hangout.
If that was the case, I found the all-Beatles soundtrack bemusing, to say the least.
What followed was a succession of little platters - Vietnamese style salmon and prawn spring rolls, a pasta marinara, char sieu pork finished off at the table with a blowtorch were three of them - that added up to a substantial meal and went down rather well with a couple of Suntory Premium Lagers.
From there we meandered back to the hotel, not quite replete, but definitely in a neighbouring post code, and for Hughesy, at least, it was a matter of another early night, followed by an early morning catching up on the Travelogue.
No comments:
Post a Comment