September 29, 2025
Day 27 — Minshuku Enogubaku to Tazawa
Marilee here.
This day started with a Japanese breakfast at our guesthouse: rice, pickled veg, crab fritters, miso soup, and a bowl of a bland-tasting glutinous white substance we couldn’t identify and didn’t know how to attack armed only with chopsticks. It was all good, but the absence of a significant amount of caffeine at the start of the morning would seriously affect our performance and mood through the rest of the day.
The rain had been coming down in buckets all night long and continued through most of the morning, so we sat tight and waited, hoping it would let up before checkout time at 10. And, magically, at about 9:30 the drumming on the roof softened to a pitter-patter and we decided to make a break for it.
We still had several hundred metres of climbing to reach the top of the pass, and the road sloped so steeply in front of our guesthouse that I couldn’t get started and had to walk the bike for the first ten minutes or so, until the grade eased a bit. It was some tough slogging for the first hour or so — and drizzling but also warm, which forces you to decide whether to wear the rain jacket and get wet inside it, or forego it and get wet from the outside. We tried both, and neither was great but Tom still managed a grin when we reached the 40th parallel:
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Gradually the terrain flattened out, topping out just shy of 1000 m elevation, and we passed through an area beginning to show some autumn colours. We stopped for a break in a little pavilion at a hiking trailhead and chatted to a couple vacationing from Tokyo who were excited to hear that we were from Vancouver — they had each been there and in fact the man had just returned from a visit to BC a month ago (we might have been on the same flight!). In general, the Japanese people we’ve spoken to so far are very enthusiastic and quite knowledgeable about Vancouver.
Our end goal for the day was Lake Tazawa, another small resort town, but on the way we planned to make a stop at Tamagawa Onsen, a little spa in the mountains where the hot springs vent out of the mountain side in hissing clouds of steam, and you can hike a short trail to view them. But to get there we had some serious descending.
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We screeched down, down, down through multiple tunnels and snow sheds, thankful that we had the road almost to ourselves. Finally, we made it to a fork in the road: one direction was signed “to the visitors center”, the other was for “the spa”. Reasoning that the trail around the steam vents would be connected to the visitor centre we chose that route and plunged steeply downhill through four more short tunnels, emerging into a deserted parking lot. We nosed around and found our way to a deserted visitor center/museum. We had guessed wrong!
“Why?” We asked each other. “Why oh why would anyone put a visitor center two kilometers away from the actual attraction?” The answer of course is: to provide extra exercise for bike tourists.
So we hauled ourselves back up to the fork in the road, and chose the other fork, which led us to an old wooden hotel in a clearing and beyond it the start of the footpath we were looking for. And boy, was it ever worth the effort of getting there!
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It was a dramatically volcanic landscape, with great billowing clouds of steam everywhere and a strong sulfur smell. The hot springs are very sulfurous and there is a rare radioactive mineral in the rock here called hokulite, which is believed(by some) to have health benefits, so the spa is much visited by people hoping for a cure for cancer or other ailments. We came across many people lying out on mats next to the vents and springs, chatting, eating lunch, as though this was perfectly normal behavior. There were even some roofed huts, for people to shelter in during the rain without having to leave the healing area.
We, on the other hand, didn’t linger. It was a fascinating place, but the sulfuric smell was so strong it almost burned. We tramped around taking in the scene, then continued our precipitous descent. Yes, we had to go through the four tunnels AGAIN, for a total of 12 tunnel rides over this one short span of highway— but they were by no means the only tunnels of the day. I lost count, but we easily went through over two dozen — most of them quite short — before arriving in Lake Tazawa. Tazawa was a small mountain resort town, surrounded by peaks and with quite a remote feel.
It was predicted to rain overnight so we’d taken the precaution of booking a hotel, which turned out to be a huge resort on the edge of town, which we got for cheap as a last minute booking. We checked in, then headed into town to get some snacks (hotel snacks = too pricey!) and on the way back ….we saw a bear! After scoffing at all the warnings posted everywhere, it turns out that Japanese black bears do exist! This one was very small and nosing around on the opposite side of a river from us. It scooted into the woods before we could get a picture, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. It was a great end to an eventful day.
Today's ride: 56 km (35 miles)
Total: 1,332 km (827 miles)
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