Day 25 — Lake Towada - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

September 27, 2025

Day 25 — Lake Towada

Marilee here.

We took a day to explore around Lake Towada, another caldera lake surrounded by cliffs and mountains. It is also the source for the Oirase river, which runs in a deep wooded gorge on the eastern side of the lake and is locally famous as a spot to go hiking, especially now when the fall colors are beginning.

We started off the day with a slow meander through the resort town and along the lake, admiring the views. Then the path we were following turned into the forest and before long it led us to a quiet temple, where a single monk was methodically sweeping the ground clear of leaves with a twig broom.

The view from the boardwalk along the lakeshore.

The entrance to a temple in the forest along the lakeshore.

We spent a little while admiring the intricate carving on the temple, which probably depicted the origin myths for the temple (something to do with a monk whose sandal broke near the lakeshore, and also a nine-headed serpent? I had trouble following the plot in the English description on the information board at the temple entrance).

Beautifully detailed wooden carving on the temple.

His sandals seem to be still intact in this panel.

The monk carries on sweeping down the stairs as we leave.

Next up: a cycle through the Oirase Gorge. We headed away from the lake, sped through a highway tunnel and then turned off onto a secondary road and started climbing. And climbing. And .. wait how dang high does this road go? When does the gorge part start? We topped out at about 450m after about 6km and started whizzing down the other side, until we realized, wait a second, we’re on the wrong road. So yes, you guessed it, we had to turn right around, go back up the way we’d come, then shriek downhill all the way back to the highway. Well, we wouldn’t want to get soft on our day off, after all. Tom had seen a Japanese Racoon Dog lope across the road ahead of him on the climb up — very fitting as these are “tanuki” or trickster characters in folklore.

Once we’d got ourselves on the right road the Oirase Gorge turned out to be a very delightful 15k of twisty narrow ups and downs paralleling the river. There was a walking path along the river crowded with hikers all outfitted with bear bells, so the air was filled with a gentle tinkling sound all along the route.

There were pullouts along the road at particular beauty spots (rapids, waterfalls), and tour buses disgorging people for photo ops. We took the hint and followed along, stopping every few minutes for scenery gazing and a quick ramble along the riverside pathways.

The switchbacking route up the mountain that we did just for fun.

The Oirase Gorge - waterfalls and rapids.Just gorges!

Once at the far end of the gorge we stopped at a tourist info centre (this would be the point at which most people would start — we were doing things backwards). Tom slurped a bowl of noodles and I had an ice cream cone (not quite up to Hokkaido standards of soft-serve excellence, but still very nice). And we spent some time perusing the many bear warnings:

There are many safety steps to take if you want to avoid bears.

As BC’ers conditioned to always expect a bear around the next corner on a hike, we thought the bear propaganda here was a little overblown. Unless Japanese bears are very, very brave I wouldn’t be too worried about walking next to a busy road in the middle of the day along with several hundred other people.

We made it back to our hostel in time for an onsen at the fancy hotel down the road before dinner, and a chat with some of the other guests — an international gathering of a Belgian, a Ukrainian and an Israeli.

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,213 km (753 miles)

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