Water, Water, Everywhere: A Journey to Nozawa Onsen

In Australia I have lived for years with the ever present lack of rainfall. We have water restrictions in place and everywhere you look rivers are low and the grass is brown. In the year leading up to my departure we finally had some decent rain and there was green in places I hadn't seen it for years. Here in Japan there is water everywhere and people are rather blase about it. It is still perfectly acceptable to hose down hard surfaces, something which fills me with horror. Yet at the same time, Japan apparently imports bottled drinking water! You have to love the insane logic of capitalism, they probably import it from Australia!

Nowhere have I witnessed so much water as in Nozawa Onsen in Nagano prefecture which I visited 21-23 September. I arrived there on Sunday afternoon and was met at the train station by Tim in the van whom I haven't seen for at least 12 years! He drove me up to the onsen village ski resort where they are staying and introduced me to his girlfriend Fiona. She was very nice and we had tea and a chat. Before long we headed out to find an onsen and wander around the village. There are numerous free onsen baths scattered about the village and we passed a few before deciding on one.

There is a set of 'baths' outdoors which are used not for bathing but for cooking vegetables, eggs and some kind of cane that I assume was being left in the boiling hot water to steam. Next to the cooking baths, which are roped off with a sign 'For Villagers Only' is a small shrine at the top of a steep staircase. Climbing the stairs the shrine is much the same as any small Japanese shinto shrine but the view of the village was great and the trees around us were beautiful. Above one can see the travelator which apparently takes skiers further up the mountain. One of the most remarkable features of the village was the extensive drainage network that ran along every street and between almost every house. Everywhere you go in the village you hear the sound of running water and many of the drains are open so you can see the constant stream rushing past.

There must be a lot of water rushing down from the mountains above. Some of the drains were like waterfalls so they were very pretty. Others ran beneath the street and could be heard gushing through numerous grates. Apparently the hot spring water is channeled beneath some of the streets in order to keep the roads free of snow. It would be interesting to see this in operation were I to come back in the ski season.

Tim and Fi are currently staying at one of two lodges in the town belonging to an Australian guy and doing some odd jobs in exchange for their accommodation. They have been promised work at the lodge in the winter season but are not yet sure exactly what the job will entail. They spent the last Winter in Hokkaido managing a ski lodge in Niseko, which is frequented by Australian ski tourists. They had to cook breakfast for all the guests in the morning but were free to spend the day out on the slopes before returning to do various jobs at night. Included in the job was a season lift pass, obviously worth its weight in gold to a serious snowboarder, accomodation and a monthly stipend. They appear to have been able to save some money and as they are both snowboard lovers they were able to spend an entire winter snowboarding. The powder in Hokkaido is legendary and they confirmed that it was indeed fantastic. It was also cold, so cold that after a few hours out on the slopes they had to take refuge inside and warm up before heading out again.

Since then they have been living in their van and traveling around Japan. Sometimes they would sleep in the van and after a while just driving around and parking, checking things out, they would head to a WWOOF placement for a week or so in order to get out of the van, wash their clothes and experience Japanese rural life. They worked with goats at one placement but more often worked with plants. They said the farm life was very hard and while they enjoyed it they were amazed at the stamina of the men and particularly the women who work all their lives on the farm. The women work all day out on the farm just as hard as the men but also take responsibility for cooking an amazing meal and keeping the house clean. Tim and Fi both commented on the extensive use of chemicals on Japanese farms. While WWOOF farms are mostly organic or at least partially so they border farms which use pesticides and other chemicals and there is no way to prevent cross-contamination. In particular they pointed out that the water in the rice paddies flows between neighbouring fields making any kind of separation impossible.

On Tuesday morning we went to another onsen, this one was very hot. I could only stand to stay in the water for a few minutes and when I submerged my hands in it they immediately started to develop really intense pins and needles. When you are in a very, very hot bath you feel as if as long as you stay still you are OK but as soon as you move the heat hits you. It was boiling! Outside the bathhouse has a receptacle into which you can place eggs. After 20-25 minutes they are ready and we so we made some for lunch. This method of cooking is called onsen-tamago (onsen eggs). The eggs are somewhere between hard and soft boiled with the yellow being quite well done but the white quite runny. We made a delicious meal of eggs, brown rice, seaweed and miso soup. Tim and Fi after spending many breakfasts on Japanese farms have developed a taste for the fermented soy-bean product called natto and they had that as well. I can't quite get used to its slightly 'off' smell and sticky, mucilaginous consistency. Japanese people's traditional breakfast is natto with rice and apparently on the many farms they visited as WWOOF volunteers this was the customary breakfast. I have asked some of my students about natto and while most of them like it only a few eat it for breakfast regularly.

I rode a nice old local train back to Nagano from Togari-Noazawa-onsen station after getting a lift to the station from Nozawa Onsen with Tim and Fi.
Their van was really cool and they lived in it for several months. The train line wound its way through a valley. On the right mountain chains rose up against the hazy sky. The valley was filled with golden fields of rice nearly ready for harvest. In Nozawa Onsen I saw people actually harvesting their crops using small tractors, one of which was hand operated. The machines seem to cut the rice in bunches and toss them to each side in very neat diagonal rows. I guess the rice is planted in tufts to make it suitable for this style of harvesting. Once the rice has been harvested it is hung upside-down on lines across the paddies and there are many paddies with their rows of drying rice on either side of my train window. Wherever you look around here every available piece of space is occupied by rice paddies or small vegetable plots. I don't think Nagano is particularly well known for its rice production so the real rice producing prefectures must be a sight to see.

As the train stopped at Iiyama station I noticed a building with an imitation statue of liberty on it! It is quite big and the building displays the large katakana letters ribatihiruzu (Liberty Hills)! What a sight! out in this rural Nagano village. The building was on a hill overlooking the station and main town. Riding the train was lovely. It rumbled along slowly offering plentiful opportunities to gaze out the window and the gentle rocking was soothing.

The mountains here in Nagano are so big and steep and rise out of the flat land of the valleys so rapidly. I think they are typical of mountains in the whole region. I have passed many temples on this short train journey (about 1 hour) and they all seem to have big, red roofs. Most of the buddhist temples I have seen in Japan have brown roofs so it is quite different. I hope to come back to Nozawa Onsen in the ski season and stay at the lodge once again. It would be great to see Tim and Fi again and to see the town under a blanket of snow. I may not make it though as they mentioned March was the most likely season and I may have other plans for March. They will be heading back to Australia in a few days to await the coming of Winter and I look forward to seeing them in Tokyo. We are off to check out Neon - Deepflow Drum'n'Bass at Module in Shibuya. Should be fun!

Nozawa Onsen, Nagano Prefecture 22-23 September