Tohoku Onsen Hopping: Four Nights, Four Hot Springs
Travel diaries: five-day onsen hopping trip through Tohoku during the foliage season.
Good morning,
This autumn, cloudy and rainy weekends have far outnumbered the sunny ones in Tokyo. It is also noticeably colder than the previous autumns. While I hope late November will bring sunnier days to accompany the peak fall colors, I don`t mind this moody Tokyo weather, especially on this rainy Sunday, which set the perfect atmosphere for a cozy stay at home and finish this post, mentioned in last month’s letter, Seasons of Japan, which covers a recent onsen hopping trip through Tohoku, for monthly and annual subscribers.
During the five-day trip,1 I stayed at four different onsen ryokan located in Aomori and Akita Prefectures. There were also visits to the region’s famous foliage spots, all conveniently scattered between each inn.
This recent Tohoku trip was visually one of the most satisfying trips that I`ve taken in recent years. It offered many moments of soothing beauty - the expected and delightfully clichéd version of autumnal scenery - “elevated” by uniquely Japanese features.
But there were also moments of almost violent beauty, the kind you don’t quite know what to do with, the sort of beauty that makes you worry you’ll never be able to take it all in, a panic-inducing sort of way. A kind of beauty that I consider myself lucky to encounter once every five years, as its impact tends to stay with you for a lifetime, once initial anxiety is replaced with an inspiring sense of awe.
The weather in Tohoku was, as expected, much colder than in Tokyo, and quite action-packed. The meteorological menu commanding the five-day period included a heavy rain that partially flooded the bus stops and shut down stream-side trails, strong winds of the umbrella-stealing kind, and Blair Witch-level spooky but photogenic fog. The sun had also made occasional, very brief appearances. But those appearances felt almost divinely timed, as if someone had suddenly turned up the lights, to brighten up the most deserving scenery at the perfect moment, as if to say, “Here is your moment, don`t bother me for another five years.”
Following the same itinerary, and getting a little closer to sunnier days with each step, we’ll below first start with a tiny onsen facility in the Hakkoda Mountains that has that secret cabin-in-the-woods feel (without the eeriness), move on to a famous, or maybe a little infamous, one known for its vast bath, renowned as much for its milky-blue waters as for its mixed-gender bathing policy. Then we’ll spend a night at an electricity-free onsen that has often appeared in this newsletter, and finish the trip at another small inn converted from a former school in one of my favorite hot spring villages in Japan. Logistics-related details will be provided in the footnotes in relevant sections.2
Day 1 – Oirase Stream + Onsen Stay: Yachi
The first day of the trip, which started with the earliest Shinkansen departing from Tokyo bound for Tohoku, took me first to the Oirase Stream near Towada and then to a 400-year-old Yachi Onsen, tucked away in the dense woods of the Hakkoda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture.3
I had, a few autumns ago, already visited Oirase Stream for a two-day trip, and I would, honestly, not have included it in this trip’s itinerary if it weren’t already on the way to Yachi Onsen. While I do love the concept of repeat travels, as evidenced by the recurring appearances of certain locations in the newsletter, I never felt the urge to return to Oirase Stream for a second visit, for a rather strange reason: it felt too beautiful for its own good.
The stream and the hiking trail that accompany it is for sure an objectively (which may be the keyword here) stunning sight. I attempted to describe the beauty of this famous rocky and narrow stream nestled between dense forests of Aomori, home to approximately 14 different waterfalls, and which flows out to the equally picturesque Lake Towada as follows in one of the previous letters: “I never truly understood what “romantic scenery” actually means, but I suppose Oirase Stream in the fall must be as close as it gets.”