Camping on our own for the first time

This "little" car is actually a breeze to pack.

It's time for my camping blog post for all youvicarious campers out there. This time we were on our own: no kids, no camping buddies. Last Tuesday we drove nearly six hours west to a campsite in Gifu Prefecture, north-west of Nagoya (check a map further down in this post).

Many vehicles in this michi-no-eki carpark.

Our lunch spot. The sky looks less hazy here than
 it appeared to the naked eye, but it
still wasn't so beautiful. This is Lake Suwa,
known for fishing and fireworks. But it also has
a hot spring/geyser!

We're often asked how we find campsites (because we rarely visit the same place twice). It's a simple Google Maps search for "campsites near here" in an area we've decided we want to visit. Then trawling through those that have websites listed, checking if they have toilet and bathing facilities and the costs (some are very expensive). And also, at this time of year, if they are even open. We found very few open as early as March in Gifu.

This time we ventured further afield and drove over five hours (the total trip was close to six and a half hours with three comfort/lunch stops). Much of the driving was along the Chuo Expressway (literally "central" expressway), a major route between Tokyo and Kansai region. The journey was a bit disappointing because the air quality was pretty bad. The cause was yellow sand from China's Gobi Desert! Yes, this happens every spring (see a video from last week here). This meant it was hard to see much of the gorgeous mountains that we were driving between. The Chuo Expressway takes you between some large mountain ranges and also provides multiple views of Mt Fuji on a good day, but we could see little of this last Tuesday.

You can see how the expressway takes a big
northerly detour around the southern Japanese alps. 
The above lake was just before the big turn south.

This information board was at the entrance to the ladies toilets.
Each of the stalls has a diagram and you can see it's quite a large 
facility. These michi-no-eki (roadside stops) cater for multiple
large buses! This handy sign shows you information like
child seats, change tables, wheelchair accessible loos, and
pedestal/Japanese style. And of course, which ones are occupied
vs vacant.

We got to the campground around 3.45 and were fully set up and cooking dinner over a fire before the sun went down around 6. We had no trouble setting up, but we did notice the difference in only having two sets of hands to set up the "annex" as we call it. It's a tarp roof next to our tent that provides shelter for our kitchen, table, and chairs.

Sunset in a valley isn't always so pretty.

It was very quiet. We were the only overnight campers the whole three nights. A smattering of others came and stayed one night in the various tiny cabins dotted around the campsite. And when I say tiny cabin, I mean: just a solid four walls, a roof, and a light, with only enough room for two to four people to sleep on the floor. Most of the cabins didn't have running water and to cook you still had to go outside. We enjoyed our space, it's something we don't have a lot of in Tokyo.

Cooking by fire is one of my big joys when camping. We do take a single gas burner that helps with making hot water and also a backup if the fire is struggling for some reason. Our first night we had yakisoba (stir-fried noodles and pork) a classic Japanese camping dish. We followed this with our usual banana-chocolate-marshamallow combo in foil cooked on the fire. Yum!

After dinner we headed off to the showers. I often don't have one on our first night, but these were so clean and beautiful that I did! And I made a video too!

Our teeny-tiny Japanese BBQ.
If we were better at an Asian 
squat it would be easier to use!
But it's big enough to cook for the two
of us. It's slightly longer than a
big frypan.

Next day, Wednesday, the air was a little cleaner. After a good camping breakfast of bacon and eggs, we did some roaming around the local area, but we really didn't feel super energetic. It was fun walking up and back along a different river, though. This really was a small settlement along a narrow valley that is mostly taken up by a wide, shallow river and a road that connects them to the outside world! At the widest point, we walked along a parallel road and most dwellings had their front door practically on the road.

Though there were few other campers, it was quite a noisy day. It seems that the campsite has a little artificial stream where they (perhaps) pump water from the main river. I can see why: the main river is fast and potentially dangerous. The little stream bed ran near our tent. However, when we put our tent up there was no water in it. 

On Wednesday morning we were startled, first, by a 7 a.m. song on the (very) loud nearby speaker. We discovered this happens every morning there. It's part of Japan's national network of speakers that they use to alert people, such as flood or earthquake or tsunami warnings. They used these a lot during Covid. But to ensure that all the speakers are working, each one plays a "go home" song at the end of every day. Some rural places also have a midday song (this place did), but I'm not sure I've ever heard a "get up" one too!

The next startling thing was just after 8 a.m. I was still in bed and not completely awake and was shocked to hear a large caterpillar-tracked vehicle rumble right past the tent! Turns out it was a digger that spent the next seven hours shifting large rocks around in the stream bed. Also turns out that this is a pretty loud thing to do. Later someone came and apologised! Anyway, by bedtime, the stream was flowing quite nicely, so it seems that some adjustment was needed before they turned a tap on? It would be a fun place to take kids in the warmer weather. As per most campsites in Japan, they encourage "day camping" too (and charge 1,000 yen or around $10 per day). I can see how this would be a very popular place to get away to, it's only 1 ½ hrs from downtown Nagoya.

Dinner was totally fire-focused again. We cooked potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin in foil along with small chicken legs. Dessert was damper (like American scones or UK soda bread), cooked in foil and spread with butter and syrup to eat.

This is the Shirakawa River (I really should
write "Shira River" because "kawa" = river)
You can see here that the air was still not 
super on Wednesday. But we did see a bit of
blue sky later in the day.

This is a much more traditional look than you often
see in the big cities. And this pine looks almost like a large bonsai.

I think this is a plum tree. There were lots of sakura trees
along the river, but none of them were blooming yet.

The reception/shop area of the campsite. I love the slogan.

Disappointing waterfall

On Thursday we drove up a nearby road that promised a lookout...but it was shut! We did a little bit of exploring, but there wasn't much to see. Possibly a local project that ran out of money? Also, this time of year isn't very pretty because the trees are still largely bare. After that we ran out of inspiration and enthusiasm for exploration, so we filled up the petrol tank and went "home" to our tent. We spent the rest of the day reading, playing games, and generally doing not much. Very restful.

Dinner that night was Japanese kebabs with rice and more vegetables cooked in foil. Dessert was a Japanese version of s'mores (you can't buy Graham crackers, the traditional s'more ingredient). After dinner was cooked we piled lots of little sticks on our little fire and made it quite large. It was entertaining and also warming! 

By the time the sun went down the rain had started and that continued all night, only clearing up as we started packing up our campsite the next morning.

Large fire on Thursday night.

Driving home on Friday we could see more of the surrounding mountains, including Mt Fuji.

It was a great trip, very refreshing, even if it was a little further away than we would have liked. We were both tired and it was great to take time out from our daily work concerns and instead focus on different, simpler things like getting a fire started! 

Next camping trip: October...but we're not sure where or if we'll be alone or with friends. Stay tuned!

I've made this large so you can see the "184.5" sign on the right. These are distance markers and, these Aussies find it hard to believe that someone thought it was a good idea to put these every 100m for over 350 km! We come from a land where distance markers are not even every 5 km.

Mt Fuji...it looked better in person, believe me!

My first sakura bloom photo of the season, at one of our stops closer to Tokyo.

And the reality of a wet tent pack-up when you live in an
apartment (and it's still raining outside). We've
spent the last four days drying stuff out, mostly inside.

Spring 2021 camping trip

It's about time that I got to this post, it's been nearly a week since we got back from our camping trip! We went to another prefecture (Ibaraki) we've never been to before, that makes 21 prefectures out of 47 that we've stayed at least one night in over the last 20 years (we've camped in 16, see my post from last year about our big goal).

This campsite was a complete contrast to last time, in that in October we camped in the middle of the mountains north-west of Tokyo. It was like camping in the middle of a complicated origami piece. This time we camped next to a large lake and not far from the ocean. We had a lot of horizon and almost no mountains. It was our first time in Ibaraki and we were surprised at how flat it was, at least the southern bit that we travelled through. We were also surprised at how easy it was to get there. Just over two hours from our house, most of that distance on expressways. Our campsite in October was closer, as the crow flies, but took about the same time due to weaving in-between mountains. We're far more used to camping on mountains in Japan (after all around 80% of Japan is mountains).

The Japanese tradition at this time of year is to have picnics under sakura (cherry blossom trees) when they are blooming. We went one better: we camped for three nights under one!

Campsites in Japan vary with how structured they are. Many have set spaces that you have to fit within, this one was nicely free of that and it felt like we were in a park. It also meant we could spread out. With ten of us camping, we had three tents and our usual tarp for a living area. We had four adults, and five teens and a pre-teen. This stage of camping with friends of our kids is different and really fun!

We've camped beside several lakes in the last ten years, but never as close as this. I could have thrown a tennis ball from my airbed into the lake (and I don't have a long throw).

Weather makes a big difference to any camping trip. We had quite a variety. After rain most of the first night, the next morning looked like this:

This is a clam fisherman. It was intriguing to watch him work, though he didn't seem to get much for his efforts. This lake, Lake Hinuma, is brackish. Our campsite was only 10km from the sea and the lake is somewhat tidal. Apparently it is a special environment where there are plants and wildlife that aren't so common in other parts of Japan, these clams included.

There were a couple of fearless swans that seemed to be very local. While we were cooking dinner on the second night, our friends got some lovely sunset photos with these swans around the other side of the campsite.

What a great looking kitchen! Cooking dinner: traditional yakisoba (stir-fried pork and noodles). Unfortunately one of these slipped and fell into the dirt just before serving, so we didn't get to eat it all and had to make do with filling up on dessert instead (marshmallows and chocolate banana boats).

We might have missed the sunset (the next day was too cloudy), but we did get a nice moon-rise:

Below are some pretty blossoms next to the tents. There was room to play frisbee and other sports, but this campsite lacked a little in the area of "things to do". We made our own fun, with lots of reading, walking, and riding (two campers brought bikes).

Flowering plum:

Spring starflower:

Daffodil:

Camellia tree just coming to the end of its best season.

Breakfast on the last morning was essentially leftovers. But we didn't do badly at all (we and our camping friends) have a long history of feeding teens, so we weren't found lacking.

The campsite had three main negatives:

1. Camping close to water is beautiful, but can backfire. The wind blew strongly off the lake almost all of our second day. It was like a giant air conditioner, but not in a nice way, because it wasn't warm enough for an air conditioner. Many of us got a lot of reading done in our tents this day. I started and finished a long novel on this trip, I think that's a first (for a short trip like this).

The "rubber ducky" onsen. Literally
dozens of rubber duckies decorated
the common areas of this bath.

2. No shower. Showers seem to be a hard thing to find in reasonably priced campsites close to built-up areas in Japan. The compensation was a trip to a local onsen (hot springs) on the second night. The kids loved it so much they begged to go back on the third night. Three of the adults didn't go again (it was an hour round-trip).

3. Though we'd been told it was okay to camp where we did, a local photographer came before sunrise each morning and set up close to one of our tents, waking some of our campers. Not nice.

One good thing about camping with teens is not having to supervise the kids all the time. On the first full day the four adults went for a walk to a local park. Alas the one who suggested the walk (me) didn't checked if the park was open. It's not uncommon to find attractions shut on a Monday in Japan and this park certainly wasn't open. Not the most scenic of walks, but it was good to stretch our legs. This little roadside garden bed was worth capturing, though.

And a teenager, who will not be named, was climbing in this tree on the first afternoon when a rather large branch broken and deposited him on the ground, about six feet below. Thankfully he'd been imitating a sloth by hanging below the branch, so landed flat on his back, rather than in a more awkward position. Still, it was rather nasty to watch him try to recover his breath. Over a week later he's still suffering some generalised pain, though, so he'll probably see a doctor tomorrow.

The first three months of this year have been very stressful for me—you've probably picked that up if you've read between the lines of my few blog posts. I was frustrated by the wind on our second day at camp, but it did force me to "stay still" and rest, which is probably exactly what I needed. As it turns out,  this is also something of a metaphor for our current situation. David and I have been limited in many ways at the moment (by the pandemic and other personal matters), and in many respects just have to be still and live one day at a time. So I am very grateful for this short getaway, it was a very necessary break in the stress that we've been facing.

We've also decided that three-night camps are a more efficient use of time. It means that we get two whole days of "chilling". We certainly came home from this trip feeling relaxed. I had to get back to work at my desk the day after we returned home (while everyone else in the house was still on holidays), and I can't say that that was very easy, or that I did a good job of it!

So now Spring Break is over for CAJ and we've got only nine weeks left of the school year. We're not sure what camping adventures we'll get up to this summer. We've got ideas . . . but no firm plans. So stay tuned (to get to any new prefectures we'll have to drive a fair bit further, so that might not be on the cards until all our boys have left home).