The “Golden Week” holidays (Showa Day, Constitution Day, Children’s Day and two Greenery Days) in Japan fall on different days of the week depending on the year, and this year two of the days alligned with the weekend, so it wasn’t really a week off, but the temperature in early May is perfect and the days tend to be more golden than not, so it’s still a great chance to get out of town. Except that everyone else in the country has the same idea so if you are not careful with your planning, you can easily spend half of your vacation stuck in traffic somewhere. For that reason, Akiko and I usually just stay in Nagoya and do local things, but this year she had put our names on the waiting list for an onsen (hot spring inn) she had long wanted to visit. It is called the Doai Lantern Onsen and their selling point is that it was built in 1924 and has been run by the same family for generations and has retained its rustic character. There is no outside electricity, no cell phone service, no TVs, refrigerators, clocks or electrical outlets in the rooms, and they use oil lamps for lighting. It is about a 3 hour drive from our home in Nagoya, and a cancellation had opened up for Monday night (Children’s Day, incidentally), so we headed out in our car late Monday morning and were back home by Tuesday afternoon, clocking in at 27 hours and change for the whole trip, continuing our trend of highly efficient travel. We made one stop on the way to the onsen, at a waterfall about 45 minutes from the inn, where we arrived a little after noon. We’d picked up some sandwiches along the way so we decided to hike down to the bottom of the waterfall to eat lunch. Naturally, I’m a sucker for a good waterfall shot, but it was a bright, sunny day, so I knew I wasn’t going to get the diffuse, even lighting I prefer for bucolic scenes, but sitting on the rocks at the bottom of the fall, eating sandwiches with cool mist and negative ions swirling around us was a nice way to start the trip.
Beyond the waterfall, the road turned to dirt and we soon lost the signal to our iPhones (thankfully we had downloaded a map of the area ahead of time so we could still navigate using GPS). Previously the road had been a used by a few dozen families living in a remote village, but most of the families have since moved to more urban locations and only a handful of people still live in the area. For the last forty-five minutes of the drive we saw only one other car, which was fortunate as the road was less than three meters wide in many places. We drove slowly with the windows down, enjoying the peaceful drive (and lack of radio). We got to the onsen about an hour before our check-in time of 3:00 P.M. so we took a walk around the area. We could hear the sound of a small motor and splashing water coming from just down the road, and when we went to check it out we found several small pools containing trout, carp, Iwago and Amago fish, separated by size, and species, with a pump constantly circulating fresh water through the pools. This told me two things: 1. they had a generator for making electricity and 2. we would be having VERY fresh fish for dinner. We continued down the road to the Tsukechi River. It was a beautiful river, but the light was not flattering for photographs, so I decided I would have a look again early the next morning, when the light would be better for capturing subtle details and colors. When it got close to check-in time we walked up the path to the onsen inn. As promised, we could see lanterns (and lots of other “stuff”) through the open door of the main house.
Inside, the Doai Onsen seemed like a relic from the Showa Era (1926 to 1989) and was charmingly littered with collections of oil lamps, cameras and many other things amassed over the last century. At one point during our stay, I asked the proprietor where all the cameras had come from, and if he was a photographer, but he said they had all been left by guests over the years. That seemed sort of odd, but whatever the source, it was an impressive collection and further inspection revealed similar collections of puzzles, games, records, radios and odds and random objects whose function I couldn’t really guess at. After checking in, we walked through the halls, our feet creaking and groaning on the old wooden floors. I had the impression that not much had changed over the last several decades.
Baths are a key feature of any onsen, and these didn’t disappoint. There were two bath rooms, with two showers and two hot tubs in each, and the designated rooms for men and women alternate daily, so if you take a bath on consecutive days, you can enjoy the views afforded by each. There were only two other families staying at the inn while we were there, so I was able to have a bath to myself on both days and bring my camera. Both had tubs made from Japanese cedar with views of the tree covered mountains outside, and of course each came with a requisite lantern. You can tell the difference between the two rooms if you look at the size of the tiles on the walls
We had two wonderful meals, dinner and breakfast, both consisting of locally farmed fish and a variety of herbs and vegetables raised and scavenged locally. The presentation was beautiful, and dinner included more food than we could finish. I probably don’t have the most discriminating tastes, and am not a great reviewer of food, but I quite enjoyed everything, and the variety of ways things were seasoned and flavored made for a an enjoyable dining experience.
Our room was traditional tatami style with fusuma sliding paper doors that opened to an engawa veranda where we sat drinking beer and looking at the forest. During the light hours, we kept all the doors open. There were no mosquitos, and the temperature inside and outside was so similar, the wind so unassuming, the forest sounds so clear, that it gave you the impression your room was connected to the outer world, with a chromatic change from shades of brown to shades of green being the primary indication of a transition. Inside the tatami room there was a kotatsu covered table, heated by putting small pieces of charcoal underneath, which were still generating heat the next morning, when the temperature had dropped enough for it to be a very welcome addition as there was no other source of heating. It turns out the rooms were all equipped with a single elctric light (in addition to the lanterns) which was powered by their self-generated electricity and turned off automatically at 10 P.M. We turned ours off early, and just enjoyed the warm light from the lantern, playing with shadows on the fusuma and walls.
In the morning I was pleased to see it had turned rainy overnight, so umbrella in hand, I went out at 5:30 to photograph the river. The light was cool and diffuse, and fog stuck to the trees and highlighted the greens and blues of the landscape. By the time I returned my pants were soaking with rain and dew, and my feet were cold, so back in the room I warmed my legs under the kotatsu and then took a soak in the onsen before going to breakfast.
We left in the rain and on the way back stopped the car several times to appreciate the lush beauty of Gifu Prefecture. At some point our smart phones suddenly chirped alive with alerts letting us know that the world had been trying to contact us since the previous day. Interestingly, the signal came back at a more distant location from the onsen that it had disappeared on the way in, as if conspiring to let us enjoy the feeling of Showa Ear Japan a bit longer before nudging us back into the modern world. Our tempers shifted melancholic at the realization that Golden Week was over so we discussed when we might visit Doai Onsen again (maybe in the fall?), and I turned my mind to the photos waiting to be uploaded when we got back.
