Return to Nozawa Osen: Pt. 1

Foot's Bar, located along the main drag in Nozawa Onsen, a lovely little ski resort town in the northern Nagano area, has it all: Guiness on tap, a foosball table, big-screen HDTV for watching live sports via satellite, a PC with Internet access (free with drink purchase)...

...and this incongruously frilly number by the restroom sink:

There was an entirely different sort of Kleenex dispenser on the bar:

We ducked into Foot's on the Thursday we arrived, after a fine (early) meal at Kaze No Ie, one of the town's best restaurants (IMHO) run by English-speaking Japanese serving terrific Italian (get the green salad topped with fresh mozzarella and the spaghetti with eggplant and tomato sauce). Nobody bats an eye here when you bring kids into a bar but it was still nice having the place to ourselves.

We were just passing the time that first evening, waiting for our friends the Kirchers to arrive from Singapore. They told us later they were so glad they decided to spring for a private taxi from Narita, a six hour journey made bearable with DSes and iPads and a roadside stop for ramen. And a really friendly driver armed with Mickey Mouse blankets.

Contact info for future reference:
Chie Yamaguchi, CHUO TAXI
Phone: +81 26 282 0232
Email (and Chie will write back in English): otoiawase@chuotaxi.co.jp
http://www.chuotaxi.co.jp/

The transport ain't cheap, but if you're traveling with kids and/or late in the day, go for it. The alternative is to take three trains (or two trains and a bus: Narita express to Tokyo, shinkansen to Nagano, then 1-hr. train (or shuttle bus) into town.

Nozawa Onsen Pt. 3: the slopes

If you want to ski or board from dawn to dusk, by all means stay at Pension Schnee, which is on the mountain and a short walk from where you can rent your equipment and buy your lift tickets and take a gondola up to the top.

To go to Nozawa Onsen the village -- it's very charming -- from Schnee you need to take the moving walkway, or the "Yu-Road," which is just like the rolling sidewalks you see at airports. Only it stops operating around 4:30pm, so unless you want to walk uphill on packed snow for 15 minutes after an evening out, it's the pension's bar/restaurant for you. Which is fine, a cozy spot with an extensive drink and snack menu.

The whole setting is idyllic, really. We've skied in a few places around Japan -- Hakuba, Yuzawa/Niigata, in Hokkaido just outside Sapporo -- and I must say that Nozawa Onsen was the prettiest, with its many tall pine trees with branches sagging under enormous clumps of snow...

The area saw some heavy snowfall while we were there, which made for some nice and soft and fluffy-powdery conditions. The weather was wild, actually, shifting dramatically all weekend long. You'd have clear blue sky/bright sunshine/great visibility one minute, dark gray overcast sky /heavy snowfall and chill the next. The swings, so regular and extreme, were unlike anything I've ever experienced on a ski slope anywhere, no kidding.




On Sunday we took a few hours off from skiing/boarding to check out the town...
It's a pretty steep descent

shops on main street


Lunch at Wakagiri featured a full range of local cuisine: ramen, kappamaki, tempura and tonkatsu. And a menu we could read!


I ditched the group before they had a chance to order dessert and found myself in a "paper dolls and origami" shop. Proprietress Silvia, originally from El Salvador, makes some pretty cool dolls out of washi paper:
foot bath on the corner

On Monday morning we had a couple hours to spare before our train left, so the boys went to a public onsen for a free soak (they had to use Terry's jeans to dry off because towels were not provided and we didn't think to bring any) while I wandered around and ultimately found Memorial Hall. It was then I started to understand what the upcoming Fire Festival was all about...

Nozawa Onsen Pt. 2: the Guardians

Say Hello to the Dosojin, Shinto-Buddhist gods of roads and borders, believed to ward off evil spirits and protect the village from harm.
These guys are the VIDs (Very Important Deities) of Nozawa Onsen, the hot spring and ski resort town in the northern part of Nagano prefecture I mentioned in my last post (more on our recent trip there later). When they are depicted in human form, as a man and a woman, as they are here, their guardianship extends to marriage and fertility and childbirth. (They also protect travelers -- a natural extension of the roads and borders thing).

Maybe because it was New Year's weekend or maybe they are always on display, but we saw loads of these doll-couples all over town, in shop windows, on doorsteps and street corners...




And here they are protecting the TogariNozawa-onsen train station.
(Photo taken on Jan. 3, 2011)

Nozawa Onsen Pt. 1

Street brawl!

I mean, Fire Festival! (Dosojin Hi-Matsuri)

Nozawa onsen is a lovely little village in the Japan Alps known for its many public hot springs baths and European-style ski chalets. It is where we spent New Year's weekend after our trip to New York. It is where the boys learned how to snowboard, and I learned that I should stick to skiing. It is also the site of this curious annual ritual.

Apparently every year, on Jan. 15, villagers try to light a bunch of 42-year-olds on fire.

The targets sit on top of a huge shrine (assembled over three days leading up to the event) while the town's 25-year-olds stand guard and try to beat back the attack, whacking at the flaming torches to snuff them out. (25 and 42 are two of the "unlucky" years for men, according to Shinto belief.)


Happy New Year!


This impressive diorama in the town's Memorial Hall explained a lot. So did the video the museum cafe has showing on its big screen TV on continuous loop. But I still have questions. Such as, do the defenders wear flame-retardant gloves? what happens if the attackers are successful and the giant pile of wood actually catches fire? Is the fire brigade standing by?

Learned a few more things at NaganoGo.com:

During the festival, much free sake is consumed.

Visitors are asked to carry a badge to identify themselves and their accommodation, so that those who overindulge can be given a ride home in a fire truck, after a spell in the tent of shame.
The evening starts with some ceremonial events, namely lighting a fire with a flint to then light the fire sticks.

The protectors yell “hi motte koi” (bring on the fire), and that's when things really get going.
The first fire attacks come from the youngest villagers, who are carried up by their parents.
The 42 year olds sit on top of the shrine, drink sake and egg on the attack.


Insane!

If you want to check it out, you can take a shinkansen to Nagano (about an hour from Omiya) then the Iiyama line local train to TogariNozawa-Onsen (another hour). The village is a 10-15 min taxi ride from the station. There's also a bus that can take you into town. I will not be on it. As much as my boys want to go see this spectacle, I can't imagine that's a good idea.