Portland Japanese Garden? Nope! It's Kiryu.
Recently, I discovered a delightful little town in Gunma by the name of Kiryu, about 90 minutes by train from Tomioka. The town in usual for assorted reasons, but one of the more interesting aspects is that it’s a mountain town, but not an onsen or temple town. This is someone unusual for larger cities, at least in my neck of the woods. By and large, cities in Japan tend to be in flat areas because it’s easier to build and farm rice. Keep in mind that most towns/cities in Japan are really old, so it was unusual for people to settle in the mountains once agriculture and complex societies developed.
View of Kiryu city from the park
Other outstanding features are as follows:
- Numerous prehistoric archeological sites
- A plethora of pre-WWII architecture (one place we managed to miss in the carpet bombing)
- Forest and mountain adjacent (as in, you walk five minutes and you’re out of town and an actual forest)
- Free zoo (of questionable quality, but still)
- Cheap amusement park
- An artsy-fartsy young people vibe, not unlike Portland, Oregon, but with much better Japanese food.
Billboard for a photography studio - isn't this every girl's dream?
Kirin Beer!
My first day trip out, I had a bit of a late start, so I really only scratched the surface of what Kiryu has to offer.
In that time, however, I managed to find a 300 year old intact shrine (unusual in this area – many were destroyed by fire or bombing and have since been rebuilt) totally covered in amazing carvings,
Carvings on the inner shrine at Tenmangu Jinja, from the 1790s.
visit the tiny zoo,
Papa pig asleep.
WWII Zero at the zoo.
have a delightful conversation with a couple of locals at the small, oddly familiar boutiques (I think they actually had a couple things from Oregon in there) one of which was about to close its doors forever,
Meet my little friend.
and hike around the park and nearby mountains.
Sunset
Park!
Oh, and I also went to this awesome cafe in a 100+ years old farmhouse.
Dinner time at the Basho Cafe
My next adventure roundabouts Kiryu was a bit more action-packed: I decided to take a ride on the old Watarase Keikoku railway – formerly the transport line for the Ashio Copper Mine, operating from the 1600s to 1973. Obviously, the train line was a fairly recent development in the mine’s history. Oh, and the mine dumped a bunch of waste into the river in the 1880′s, which was really bad.
View from the train
These days, the train line and mine operate as tourist attractions. Simply riding the train is pretty cool, is it winds through the mountains of northwest Gunma and southern Tochigi along the (apparently) no longer polluted river.
I rode the train to the end of the line, Matou, and wandered around for the 30 minutes it took for the train to head back. I found a nice trail through the woods that ran parallel to the train tracks and almost missed my ride because of a high fence keeping me from the station – only 20 feet as a crow flies.
A street of houses all like this one.
Fancy!
Gorgeous mix of Japanese and western architecture.
Telephones through the ages.
Switchboard operators back in the day.
Coolest stove EVER, and it comes with a novelty eagle!
I feel sorry for the actual historical people this represents, but this is the most fantastic mannequin ever!
Next stop: Tsudou, the actual home of the Ashio Copper mine. Truthfully, these two stations were both in the town of Ashio, but you’d think they’d name the stop nearest to the mine after the mine. I think they just want to confuse the tourists into spending more money going to more spots, but whatever. On the way to Tsudou, I passed the remains of the actual mining part of Ashio – settling ponds, ruins of factories and employee houses, and other cool, ghost town stuff. This would have been the place to explore, had I the time and tetanus boosters.
The mine tour had us all pile into an odd little train/mining car thingy that drove us about a hundred yards before depositing us not too far from the mine entrance. From there, we walked. Diorama with historically costumes mannequins illustrated miner life, but the best part was the added sounds and lights. I didn’t understand most of it, but I took some cool pictures.
Many miles straight into the darkness
Me and a miner - a drunk one, I think
This is how they ate lunch back then
Trying my hand at drillin'
Umbrellas at the train "station" (a cinderblock shelter, really) for visitors to borrow if it rains.
I was tossing around the idea of going for a 9k hike up to a waterfall, or at least that’s what I thought the map was describing to me. The weather was nice, and I had the time, so I decided to stop in Konaka for the hike. When I got off the train, there was no apparent trail from what I could see. I realized what I had thought was the “trail” was actually the river on my map. I found a path leading up through the woods, so I followed that. After ten minutes, I emerged on a hilltop with a few farmhouses and gardens, and still no idea how to get where I was going.
Bridge to the waterfall
A farmer nodded as I passed, and I decided to ask for directions. He had a funny dog – like if a German Shepard, after its thighs have been removed, crawled inside a Corgi skin. Its head was too big, its legs too short, and this made it confused and mildly irritated at everything else in the world. At any rate, my conversation with the farmer went something like this:
Me: How do I get to the waterfall?
Farmer: That’s pretty far from here.
Me: Yeah, 9 kilometers, right? That’s okay. I don’t mind the hike.
Farmer: There’s not really a trail.
Me: What about the road?
Farmer: I don’t know… it takes a car maybe… an hour, at least a half hour to get there. Walking would take you maybe three hours one way.
Me: Uh… what about this area? I could just walk around here.
Farmer: Not really anything around here to see.
Me: Oh.
Farmer: Did you come on the train.
Me: Yeah… Are you sure? Nothing.
Farmer: [Pause] Hold on a minute. [He steps out of the garden, goes and washes his hands. He is thinking... I assume he is going to get a map. He checks the time.]
Me: I could walk part of the way, I guess…
Farmer: [Standing by his truck] OK! Let’s go!
Me: What? Um… it’s okay. No trouble.
Farmer: Ah, it’s fine, fine.
And off we went. I know, I know, dear reader. You’re thinking, “What in the HELL WERE YOU DOING?!? Getting into the car of a strange man! You’re going to get killed.” I guess you had to be there.
When I asked to take a photo of us, my farmer friend first put out his cigarette out of politeness. I was like, Dude! You are way too nice.
We chatted about life in the area. According to him, there wasn’t much industry in that neck of the woods: farming wasn’t too good because of all the mountains/severe weather/monkeys and boars, and there weren’t really any nearby cities. The town I was in had one store half the size of a 7-11 and nothing else. I suppose someone like me was pretty exciting, as I was to find out when we returned from our foray.
He dropped me back at the store near the train station, and two children (belonging to the shopkeepers, no doubt) considered us as we discussed by next move. The girl, probably eight and a little chubby, was wary but interested. The farmer told her to go check the train times, which she did quickly, knowing the results would bring more amusement. It was soon discovered I had at least 40 minutes until the next train. The farmer thought for a moment, and I told him, “It’s okay, I don’t mind waiting. Are there any restaurants?” He laughed. “Nothing around here.” I told him, “That’s okay, I have a book.” But this was unsatisfactory: he said, “There’s a nice little trail right over there, down by the train tracks. It’s pretty interesting.”
Orange drink
We bid each other farewell, and the farmer drove off. I walked down to the train tracks, where a trail forked to the left and right. I wasn’t sure which to take, when I realized the girl was a few yards behind me. She trotted to catch up, directing me to go right. “The trail goes down and around. You’ll come to a red bridge. You should turn around before too long, though, OK?” She handed me a can of something orange from her family’s store and said, “OK! See you later,” grinning broadly, and with authority.
She watched me until I disappeared from view, and satisfied, went back into the house.
I found a spot along the river by the bridge with a familiar, rocky beach. All the bugs were out and skimming the water.
So close to Eagle Creek
My final stop was Mizuma, an onsen. The only thing of note was when I dropped my hundred yen behind the counter. The clerks hefted the counter aside and found three coins: a one yen and two hundreds. They asked me if I’d like the second hundred as well, and I said, “Oh, it’s not mine.” They laughed and said, “No matter! You can take it.” I put it in a donation box for local environmental efforts. Oh, and there were pretty Christmas lights up all over the station.
Otherwise, it wasn’t too interesting there.
Me:
Farmer:
