Many of the trains in Tokyo have video screens over each door which play advertising (and occasional news updates) – this is alongside the screens with next station information and such. One ad which popped up frequently when I was there earlier this week is one for a “jet washer” for your teeth – uses a jet of water to clean between. It’s demonstrated by showing a woman smiling while holding it, a close up of it being used to clean blue goo from between some plastic teeth, and then back to the woman. I notice what they don’t show is the woman using it while drooling water from all sides of her mouth, because when you’re constantly shooting water into your mouth, it’s all gotta go somewhere. Can’t imagine how you’d use that neatly. Gotta love advertising.
In any case, today dawned almost sunny – the rain that was forecast today wasn’t due to start until the evening, and in the meantime there were actually patches of blue sky. Though there were still clouds drifting between the mountains very ethereally. With all the rain yesterday, the river was definitely running higher than it was when I arrived here.
Anyway, started with breakfast, as one might expect.
Then it was time to finishing packing and check out. I’d hoped to leave my luggage with the hotel while I sightsaw today, but all of the staff had completely vanished besides the cleaning lady who took my room key from me as I left my room. I wandered to the station, and decided to ask at one of the two “Taxi Reservations and Visitor Information” booths by the side of the station building where I might find somewhere to leave it (coin lockers in the station were definitely too small), and the staff there immediately hopped up and offered to look after it.
So, freshly unencumbered, it was off to complete the displaced itinerary from Wednesday. My first activity: explore the town to kill some time while I waited for a restaurant to open (and also let breakfast get a bit more settled). As demonstrated in Yuru Camp, one of Minobu’s (and indeed all Yamanashi Prefecture’s) specialty dishes is houtou – flat udon noodles and vegetables stewed in miso soup. I definitely couldn’t leave without trying some, and I’d found a restaurant on Google Maps that served it, but they wouldn’t open until 11. So, killing some time.
First I went to try a different Minobu specialty: Minobu manju. Manju are steamed buns filled with red bean paste – these ones have “Minobu” stamped on them. They appear in Yuru Camp, of course, and are a particular favourite of Nadeshiko, but a scene of the three Outdoor Activities Circle girls sitting on the bench outside eating manju is one of the more iconic scenes of the series. So naturally I sat on the bench too. I’m not usually a big fan of red bean paste – the taste is fine, but the texture is a bit bleh – however, I don’t know what they do differently, but these were very tasty.
Next I headed across the train tracks to see a little shrine opposite my hotel that I’d spotted on Pokémon Go. It was only a little shrine, but it stood under a large sakura tree.
My next activity was to cross over the river on the town’s main bridge… and visit the convenience store on the far side. Don’t get me wrong, this was definitely for the journey as well as the destination, but I needed to buy a new charge cable for my phone for when I’m out exploring – my current one is starting to show signs that it’s about to fail. It was a nice stroll over the bridge, and on the far side, the road goes through a tunnel under a ridge – the pedestrian path continues through the road tunnel, but there’s also a separate tunnel just for pedestrians, so I used that. And saw another little shrine.
I got my charge cable, though also wound up getting a bunch of different snacks I possibly didn’t need, considering I’m mostly here passing the time until lunch. Convenience stores here have such a great range. Maybe on some future trip I should challenge myself to subsist entirely on food from convenience stores. Though perhaps I should also allow bento and ekiben stores. And possibly regional specialties? Anyway, one of the things I bought was chocolate, so I wound up eating that for fear it might melt.
I wandered back down the road, through the tunnel and over the bridge, then down the riverside path. (Well. Riverside-ish – it’s a fair way above the river. One does wonder if the whole river channel ever gets filled, because that would be a lot of water.) Reaching the restaurant… I discovered to my dismay that the whole place had been reserved for a private function. Not good at all. Resolving to definitely try houtou later in my trip (I’ll be in Yamanashi Prefecture for a bit longer), I wandered over to the place next door (named “Apple”, the English word, but written in hiragana, “appuru”) to peruse their menu – still need something for lunch, after all – … and discovered they sell houtou too. So straight in I went.
They had a room with tables on the road side of the restaurant, and a tatami mat room on the river side. I still don’t really have the knack of sitting on the floor at a table, but I did want to look out over the river while eating, so tatami mat room it was. And I wound up being the only person there my whole meal, even though I could see several groups in the tables-and-chairs side.
I ordered their houtou set, which comes with rice, picked vegetables, yuba (another local specialty), and potato salad. As he left to take my order to the kitchen, he told me it’d be fifty minutes’ wait, in both Japanese and English. That was a little bit disconcerting, but I did want to try houtou, so I pulled out my phone to check if I could adjust my afternoon’s activities to work with the next train on the timetable, and settled back to wait… only for him to walk in with my food fifteen minutes later. Turns out I’d misheard him. In both Japanese and English. It was, however, most tasty. Definitely worth the wait. Fifteen or fifty minutes of it.
Done eating and feeling quite full, I headed over to the train station with still a few minutes to spare before the train I’d originally planned to catch. Hopped on the train and headed south today, hopping off two stations later at Utsubuna Station. In Yuru Camp, this area is the home of the Kagamihara family – Nadeshiko is shown getting off the train at Utsubuna Station more than once. Unlike Rin’s house, Nadeshiko’s house is entirely fictional – I’d already checked on Google Street View, and it’s just an empty site, shown in the third photo below – but I decided to stroll there all the same. Partially because it meant I could cross over river on the Nanbu Bridge for some nice photos (which was much longer than the manga had given me the impression, for some reason), and partially to sorta re-enact a scene from the manga.
A recent arc in the manga has involved the characters independently travelling around enjoying various sakura viewing sites in the area. As it’s set on April 1st, and today’s only March 24th, I rather thought during planning stages that I’d be here too soon (and the JMA sakura forecast concurred), but well, with the whole schedule being moved up, that’s no longer the case. The arc is kicked off by Nadeshiko, standing outside her house, noticing a grove of sakura trees blooming atop a small mountain across the river and going “huh, what’s that?”.
“That” in this case, was Utsubuna Park, my next destination. Walking back over the river and across the railway lines, I arrived at the bottom of the road leading up to the park, and also the base of a loooong flight of stairs. There’s a running joke in Yuru Camp that Nadeshiko is absurdly athletic – in this scene, she elects to run up the stairs, to race her sister, who is driving her car, to the top. Nadeshiko loses, of course, but she still makes the run look easy. I could have done with some of that athleticism. I didn’t count the steps, but I did sing “The Ants Go Marching” to myself as I marched up, and given the number of verses I got through and the number of beats per verse, I’m calculating somewhere around 260 steps.
In any case, the stairs belong to Naisen-ji, a very serene temple with a number of sakura trees blooming. Google’s telling me it’s a Nichiren temple, which is not too surprising given the proximity to Kuon-ji. Incidentally, “Naisen” and “Utsubuna” are written with the same kanji, just the former uses the imported Chinese reading, while the latter uses the native Japanese reading. (The same trick applies to Senso-ji in Asakusa, which I visited back in 2017.) There were no people in attendance, so I just had a good look around and moved on. Clambered up to the top of the steeply-sloped graveyard for a look at the scenery too.
Unfortunately, I was now on a different summit to the one containing Utsubuna Park, so I had to walk down to the saddle between them and clamber back up again. Headed in on the entrance road, and decided to walk up the pedestrian path, which quickly climbed high above the road… only to descend back down a flight of stairs halfway along. So that was a big ol’ hill walked up for nothing. Soon, I reached the car park. And a mallet golf course, winding all around the mountainside. Would have been nice to give it a try, but I didn’t have a mallet. Or a ball. Or the time. Or, indeed, the knowledge of exactly what “mallet golf” actually is. But aside from that, I had everything I needed.
But there were also sakura trees. So many sakura trees. And another hill to climb up, but reaching the top I found sakura trees on all sides. Not quite dropping petals in earnest yet, so I wasn’t getting the sakura snow effect, but everything was very pink. (It also briefly tried to rain for a bit, a few hours ahead of schedule.) Tragically, my phone timer went off shortly after I arrived, telling me it was time to start heading back to the station for the next train. I decided I’d walk down the pedestrian path on the other side of the mountain, and take the pedestrian exit out to the road on that side.
There was no pedestrian exit out to the road on that side. The path just ran out, giving me the option of bush-bashing down a near-blind gully, jumping off a near cliff… or retracing my steps back uphill. I went with option three, for obvious reasons. I’d started the walk down with plenty of time to spare, but the time taken to walk down, walk back up, and then walk back down the right way meant I was almost certain to miss my train. The first time to miss my intended transport this trip. I decided to power-walk it anyway, and as I neared the station Google revealed that its estimates of my arrival time were a bit pessimistic, and I now had a few minutes spare. Even so, I could see a train waiting in the station, so I ran the rest of the way… only to find it was the train going it other way, which was waiting for my train to arrive. So now I was all drippy with sweat again, but at least I’d made the train.
Arriving back in Minobu, I exited the station to find the bus I needed to catch already in the station, so I briskly walked over to the taxi booth, and the woman saw me coming and brought my luggage out for me, so I was able to hop straight on the bus. Good thing I left the luggage by the station instead of back at my hotel, then, or I definitely would have missed the bus. Remembered to have my Suica card on-hand this time.
So, where am I off to on the bus? Why, off to Minobu-san, again. This return was why I was kinda reluctant to switch Wednesday’s and Friday’s plans – under the original schedule, I’d have spent a leisurely Wednesday afternoon exploring Utsubuna, to finish with dinner and a bath at an onsen I’d found in Utsubuna, and finally catch the train back to Minobu whenever I felt like I was done. Then I’d make one single trip to Minobu-san on the Friday, spend a leisurely day exploring Kuon-ji and surrounds, to finish with dinner at my hotel nearby in Minobu-san. Swapping the plans left me with no dinner options for Wednesday, and having to rush around to make the train today. That said, it was still just cloudy enough today that Fuji-san probably would not have been visible from the top of the mountain, so swapping was probably still the best course of action.
Tonight, I’ve finally managed to book a shukubo – a temple lodging. I’ve tried to find one a few times in past trips, but things haven’t managed to align until now. Kakurin-bo, part of one of Kuon-ji’s subordinate temples, is apparently one of the oldest in the area, and was originally constructed to accommodate visiting priests and novice monks. I think this first caught my eye on Google Maps, but it was also mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Traveller section a few months ago. Some aspects of it feel a shade less than traditional (like the website advertising things like the “Sakura Terrace” where you can sit and drink cocktails, or the “try our traditional wedding kimonos” or the baths scented with locally produced “wine bath salts”), but the standard invitation to join the morning service after a night’s stay is still in place – though the service in this case is the one at Kuon-ji.
So I walked there from the bus stop, dragging my suitcase behind me (popping by the shop with the Yuru Camp gachapon machine on the way for another shot – I got Chiaki this time, who’s admittedly not my favourite character).
I’d practiced much of the walk on Street View, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite cover the whole route. So I headed in via the marked pedestrian entrance, which was a steeply sloping ramp. Reached the top of that, and turned the corner to find… an even steeper ramp, and another corner. At the top of the third leg, almost hauling myself up by my hands, I found… stairs. Almost entirely covered in moss, like they hadn’t been used in a long time. I couldn’t really face walking back down that slope, so I hoisted up my suitcase and started climbing. Through a grand old gate… which had a sign above reading “Gyogaku-in” rather than the expected “Kakurin-bo”, so now I was starting to really get uncertain. Inside, was another flight of stairs, just as mossy. And at the top of those stairs, to my intense relief, was a guy going “Welcome!”. And just in time, too, because it was starting to rain, right on schedule.
I had considered in planning stages getting my luggage shipped from Minobu to my next hotel by delivery service, and just bringing a change of clothes to Kakurin-bo in a backpack, both for the convenience of coming here today and my sightseeing plans tomorrow, but the cost was so high that I could’ve used a coin locker to store the suitcase about six times and still spent less. After that ordeal, though, I was reconsidering the wisdom.
I went through all the check-in procedures, trying not to drip sweat on too many things. The woman asked me if I wanted her to speak English or Japanese, and I didn’t want to be a tourist-type and go “all y’all should speak English”, I replied “well, I can understand Japanese a bit…” but my brain completely failed to process the very first thing she said (which was “dinner is at 6:30”) which I think she was fairly unimpressed by, because she switched to English right after. (She was telling me “roku-ji sanjuppun” = “six o’clock and thirty minutes”, but for some reason I was hearing “roku ji-san juppun” = “six old men… something something?”) She gave me the tour of the facilities (and also booked a time slot in the bath for me – I decided to go before dinner) and then took me to my room.
It’s possible my room is the only single-occupancy room, because it felt a little bit tacked-on to the building. It’s at the far end of the hallway with the other upper floor rooms, but it opens out to the amenities area and faces the toilet room door. Also where the rest have decorative wooden doors, mine’s got a shoji screen door. Not opaque. Also it’s numbered “New Eight”, whereas the rest are just “One” through “Ten” – including an “Eight”, so I don’t know where “New One” through “New Seven” got to. Also, a full-height blind in one corner turned out to be covering an exterior door – my room is the emergency exit for this floor. (Second photo here is my room’s door on the right, with the door to the toilets on the left. Third photo is the hallway with the doors to the other rooms on this floor.)
Well, it was nice enough anyway. Headed down to the bath for my allotted time – tried to take some photos (as it was just me in there) but the camera kept fogging up. It was a rather relaxing bath, though. Put on a yukata afterwards and headed for dinner.
Meals here are “shojin ryori”, vegetarian cuisine originally derived from the dietary restrictions of Buddhist monks. Though possibly a little more western-influenced than your typical shojin ryori, judging by the look of a few of the dishes. The guy who served me described all of the dishes, but honestly I didn’t catch some of them, and forgot the rest. Lots of yuba, which is the local specialty. Quite tasty, though. Also, the dining room looks out over the central garden, which was designed by Muso Kokushi (1275-1351), a famed Zen master, calligraphist, poet and landscape gardener. It’s officially recognised as a “local cultural asset”.
After dinner, it was straight to bed for me. The dawn service starts at 6am (or 5:30am from April to October, so it could be worse, haha) but I still need to get up to Kuon-ji before it starts so, bright and early start.
Today’s photo count: four hundred and nineteen.
Today’s step count: 15,616 steps, for 10.7 km. 56 flights of stairs.
J³: The Next Generation 
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