Spring 2020 camping trip

On Monday we went on our fifth Spring camping trip in Japan. The first one, in 2013, was on our own at a citrus and dairy farm on the Pacific coast of Chiba Prefecture. Since then we've camped four out of the last five years during CAJ's Spring break with the same family. It was our sixth camping trip with these guys, so we've got things down pretty well. They cook two meals, we cook two, and we do our own lunches. If you don't cook, you help with clean-up. 

We went to a new campsite again this year: in Chichibu, west-north-west of home. Only about 80 km by the slow road, meaning speed limit 40 km/h or less. So it took us about three hours to get there!

Red arrow = home
Blue arrow = campsite

Our strategy for finding new campsites is Google Maps. We find an area we're interested in visiting and type in "camping" and explore the options. Mostly going for places that have a website with financial information on them. Many campsites here seem to have hidden costs: like not just charging for the site, but also per head, or per tent, or both. A common charge is showers. The campsite we visited this time had four-minute showers at 200 yen a pop, which quickly adds up for a family. Thankfully we took our own bags for rubbish, they would have charged us for that too.

Only this time our strategy got derailed a little. When we arrived at the place we thought we'd booked, they told us to turn around and drive back a couple of kilometres back to a different campsite. We weren't sure what was going on, but I kept repeating in my head, "It's an adventure..."

We found an empty campsite, but a very excited owner. He welcomed us warmly, with a torrent of words and we quickly figured out what had happened. The valley had been damaged during the typhoon last autumn. It turns out that there were two campsites in the area that were owned by the same people and those people were more concerned about restoring their flooded sites than updating their website. They had changed the first campsite we went to into a bungalow-only location and switched all the camping to the other location they owned. One phone number for both locations!

The campsite had been busy over the long weekend just past, but we were the only campers from Monday to Wednesday. Initially my heart sank as it looked like a gravel car park with not a blade of grass in sight, but we found an area down the hill that was a bit more attractive and set up a very comfy and spacious camp. The toilet and shower facilities were all new. Showers possibly a little too well ventilated for the chilly weather we faced, though. Only one of the eight campers braved a shower!

The location turned out to be gorgeous: right next to the Arakawa river, though to get to it you had to walk down a steep path. Once there, though, it was a fantastic place to ramble around. Thousands of loose rocks of all sizes. The kids were old enough to go down there on their own and spent hours exploring, climbing, throwing, building, and taking photos.

The track down to the river from the campsite.

Monday night (in fact both nights) the temperature dropped down to about zero fairly quickly. Most people were in bed before 9pm on Monday. Having camped at temperatures like this before, we were well equipped with fairly basic stuff (not expensive winter-camping equipment). Just lots of warm clothes, long underwear, and blankets. So bed became cosy pretty quickly. It wasn't easy to get up and face the next morning, which was cloudy and blustery.

We typically had a lazy camp. Tuesday was too cold to sit around a lot, though (9C), so we all wandered along the river in the late morning. After lunch many of us retreated to warm tents for naps, books, or games (yes, shelter from wind should not be underestimated when you have at least intermittent sun). Almost all the kids disappeared mid-afternoon with one of the men who had found a couple of caves to explore. Those of us left behind started up a fire early as a way to keep warm, before we started on dinner prep.

We spent a long time on dinner on Tuesday night because I got a bit ambitious with the food, but no one complained. It was fun to play with the fire and generally just hang out. Oh, and the food was good too (campfire pizza is yum, but it does take a while, as do chicken "legs" and chocolate banana boats).

Because the night was still young, we built up the fire after dinner and sat around it for some time. A bit of singing, one poem recited, some Australian history/literature/culture explained to our US friends. Fire was a fun part of this camp. The owner had welcomed us using any sticks lying around the place, and we found plenty (and burnt it all). That's pretty unusual at a Japanese campsite.

March for us has been very different to what we thought it would be: same as for many of you. We've been doing distance learning all month (thankfully driven by the school, not me). Most of the things we'd looked forward to were cancelled, including a week of field conference in Hokkaido at a hotel with all you can eat breakfast and dinner, plus multiple swimming pools. So it was fantastic to have one plan not get cancelled. And being away from the craziness of living closely with 30+ million other people. All of you will identify with the challenges of living with the current uncertainty. Staying home just seems passive and not how you should face a threat like we've got. So going out and doing something away from others was incredibly refreshing, even if we weren't totally disconnected from the world (I didn't take a photo of all the phones being charged on one crate on Tuesday afternoon!).

Anyway, here are some photos for your enjoyment. Some taken by me, some by my 14 y.o. son.

We really want to try this campsite in the summer. Looks like some great
water fun could be had...

Our youngest son did this! And took the photo.

He also threw this rock, then photographed the result!

The rock formations were fascinating.

I was on bacon and eggs-duty for Wednesday breakfast. Lots of fun.

Three tents (only two visible) plus our usual "annex". Ostensibly the kitchen and
wet-weather living room, except we had no rain.

We decided that our bigger tent would be more comfortable with only
our double-bed airbed and one single mat. Worked well to
borrow this little tent, although the occupant of it didn't
agree 100%. He enjoyed the independence, but the logistics
of living in such a small tent are different to one you can
stand up in!

Can you spot the flowering cherry blossom in the middle of the photo?

That rock retaining wall provided lots of climbing fun. Across the road there were
a couple of artificial climbing walls as well as a flying fox that some enjoyed.

Not many buds on this baby cherry blossom tree. But we really did do
three days of "hanami" (Cherry Blossom picnicking).

Rambling along the river on Tuesday morning was fun.

So glad we got to do this trip. Great memories. Also reinforcing how good it is to have solid shelter, electricity, internet, beds, cupboards full of food, etc. We really don't have anything to complain about.