Day 43 — Takasaki to Karuizawa - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

October 15, 2025

Day 43 — Takasaki to Karuizawa

Marilee here.

We had coffee with our guesthouse host in the morning and took some pictures with the stuffed crows that are the guesthouse mascots. It is called the Karasuya Guesthouse, karasu being the Japanese word for crow. A very laidback little place, that we enjoyed a lot.

All good things must come to an end as they say and so eventually we had to get going and find our way out of Takasaki. We were headed uphill (big surprise I know, not like we haven’t been moaning about climbs in every post recently!) to the mountain resort town of Karuizawa.

But first we had to navigate a route out of the city, which had us crossing and recrossing the Karasu River (points to those who note the name), trying to stay off busy routes.

Not far out of town we passed a giant, round red head by the side of the road. That in itself might not have been unusual enough to merit a stop in a country where every business seems to have a cute character as a mascot, but there was also a sign pointing to a temple. We investigated.

OK, let’s stop to see what this guy is about.

First, there were some stairs to navigate.

At the top, a temple half-buried in these mysterious colorful characters.

We’d come to Darumaji Temple, it turned out. Darumas, as we discovered in the small museum attached to the temple, are traditional good luck charms, symbolizing perseverance and resilience. They are given without the eyes colored in, and you are supposed to colour in one eye while making a wish or setting a goal, then colour in the second eye when the goal is achieved (the idea being that the daruma helps you focus on your goal).

The darumas at the temple ranged from small toy-like objects to enormous, all with very elaborate facial hair.

Further on, our route took us past a big smelter, which we were not tempted to explore, but which Tom wanted to document as part of his efforts to balance the depiction of Japan in this journal with some of the less picturesque reality. Not just all temples and mountains, folks!

Zinc smelter on the outskirts of Takasaki.

Just at the point where our navigation tools warned us that the day’s climbing would begin, we came to a complicated highway bypass, where we accidentally took a turning onto a road signed “Old Highway 18”. We stopped by the roadside to discuss our options: I was in favor of following a road identified as old, on the theory that most traffic would be on the new option. Then Tom discovered that the old highway followed the Nakasendo Way, an ancient route connecting Edo (today’s Tokyo) with Kyoto. Since we’d come to these mountains with the idea of walking a portion of the Nakasendo, biking along it as well was too good an opportunity to pass up. Plus, it looked like it had a slightly lower elevation gain than the route Komoot was trying to put us on. So, thanking the gods of randomness that put this road in our way, we pitched our planned route.

But first: snacks for the road!

Don’t be fooled by the skeptical expression, he enjoyed this. Billed as a mugwort mochi, it had a red bean filling.

Old Highway 18 proved to be an absolute delight. It did indeed have very light traffic, and it switchbacked up the mountain running parallel to an old railway line, which offered opportunities to stop and explore the remaining bridges and tunnels — including, right at the outset, this very spectacular bridge:

Looks like the railway line has been converted to a hiking path for at least some of its length— including through some old tunnels.

Once we’d made it to the top of the pass, it was just a short cruise downhill into Karuizawa. We entered town just as school was letting out for the day and there must have been a huge junior high school nearby, the streets were suddenly swarmed with clusters of gangly, shrieking school-uniformed thirteen year olds, giggling at the sweaty oldsters biking by.

Karuizawa has a reputation as a vacation retreat for the wealthy, and it definitely reminded us of Whistler. But we had found a campground on Google maps that appeared to be right in town, about the only affordable option. It is going up near the top of my list of unusual camping experiences on this trip: it turned out to be a long strip of grass along a small stream, in the back of a row of houses, so that we felt we were camping in strangers’ backyards. There was one other camper, a young woman from Tokyo, but we never succeeded in finding the owner or manager.

However, with the tent up, the next order of business was finding an Onsen. There was one just five minutes away, and this is where the Whistler vibe really intensified. Located on the grounds of a high-end resort, it was very modern and spa-like, and entry came with a modern spa price tag — more than double what we’ve paid for a bath previously. But it was worth it, with a large outdoor pool surrounded by autumn foliage and clouds of rising mist from the water. Thoroughly relaxed, we were to lazy to cook dinner and splurged at the neighboring restaurant before returning to our weird backyard campground.

The entrance to the Onsen— men on the left, ladies to the right.

Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 2,228 km (1,384 miles)

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