Camping in Tokyo again

It's been a week since we got back from our latest camping trip, so it's about time that I wrote about it. My days have been a bit crazy since then—I've visited the Australian embassy to renew a passport, plus I spent a morning taking my son to a medical appointment and a day packing magazines; not to mention time spent organising various other things related to our mid-year trip to Australia. After taking three days off to camp last week, it's not a surprise that my usual work has been pushed to one side a little bit, so I've been trying to catch up on that too. 

But the camping trip was worth it, as usual. It was also much anticipated, after we failed to secure a campsite last autumn. I still have this lingering feeling, though, that things we plan will get cancelled, so it was hard to get excited up until the actual day that we left.

We were a small group: just me and David, with two friends and two of their kids. It's a bit different camping with just six people (last time we camped with 11, three of which were teenage boys with big appetites). We're thinking about the future, though—for Christmas we bought a tent-for-two, which we enjoyed trying out. We also used less equipment, including a scaled-down kitchen setup.

Our new tent is lower in profile and includes an entry area which can be enclosed on all sides. It made getting in and out easier in the rain. The main challenge was figuring out how to get our bottom halves dressed when our airbed took up almost all the floorspace inside.

The campsite is only 46 km away (still within Tokyo Prefectural borders), but in typical Tokyo fashion, took over two hours to get to. Upside was that there were no toll roads involved, so it was a cheaper journey. In fact the campsite itself is super cheap as it's owned by the Tokyo government. This is actually the very first campsite that we ever used in Japan, back in 2011. We camped there one more time in 2012, but haven't gone back since, for a few reasons. It was fun to return, even if we didn't have our boys with us this time.

It was chilly, though. The forecast on Thursday, our only "whole day" there, was 20C, but I reckon if it made it that high, it was only for about 30 minutes. Mid morning the temperature started dropping and rain set in by mid afternoon and continued all night. We narrowly missed getting snowed on, as you can see from this photo taken from our campsite on Friday morning, snow fell on the slopes above our campsite.

Our friend brought his and his son's mountain bikes and did a couple of rides, but he was frustrated by the strict rules about where they could and couldn't ride. The second night we had to lock both bikes in our van as we were prohibited from keeping them at the campsite and had to put them in the separate car park a few hundred metres away down the mountain.

Food is one of the main events of camping—at least that's my opinion. When we camp with our friends we share meal preparation, which makes it easier, and even a bit more fun. We did one dinner and one breakfast each and took care of our own lunches. The dinner we provided was potatoes in foil with BBQ chicken drumsticks and onion, served with mixed vegetables. Oh so yummy! It was pouring rain at the time, we were very thankful for the solid camp kitchen that gave us even better shelter than our usual tarpaulin-covered kitchen.

Common sassafras

We were up in the mountains, so there were less signs of spring than in warmer Tokyo, so it wasn't a terribly picturesque camp. However a few lonely flowers were out and some trees had leaf buds about to pop.

Hairy bittercress, smaller than my little 
finger nail.

Early on Thursday afternoon we walked down to Lake Okutama to see what we could see. But there wasn't a lot. The wettest part of the year is still ahead of us, so the lake was fairly low and therefore the inlet at the bottom of the campsite looked a bit like a moonscape. We had to walk a long way to get to the water. We have memories of bringing the boys here in summer, really early in our camping journey, and playing in a fast-flowing, shallow stream that feeds into the lake. There wasn't much evidence of that play-place this year. We did find a cool-looking rusted out old jeep, though!

There was moss everywhere.

It's been a while since this access hole was opened!

It's moss, not grass!

Pathway "paved" in moss.

Tall, straight trees lined the mountainsides all around.

Our campsite on Wednesday afternoon, while the sun still shone.

I really didn't take many photos. This trip was like putting on an oxygen mask: much needed for recovery, but I was too tired to do much beyond the necessary.

We're planning a trip to Australia mid-year, so we won't get to camp again until October. Already looking forward to that trip!