Weather: sunny with puffy clouds 13°C, high 27°C
Accommodation: Ryokan Matsukaze.
Why does Eskil always have to wake up at 6:30!! It makes it hard when you’re in accommodation and don’t want him to wake other guests. A TV showing bizarre Japanese children’s programmes is our friend!
Eventually we walked to the station. I got return tickets to Kamikochi and baked goods (we know the routine for this now: at the entrance you get a tray and a pair of tongs, make your selections, then pay at the till); Scott got coffee at Starbucks. We just made the 8:40 am train in perfect time. It was a lovely little local train.
We then changed to the bus. It was a very windy and steep road, but we had such a safe driver!
As we got to Kamikochi, there were monkeys (Japanese macaques) playing and fighting in the road.
Unfortunately Eskil was asleep, and unfortunately those were the only ones we saw all day! When we got off the but we immediately got our reservations for the 4 pm return bus (we already had the round-trip tickets, but you have to make the return reservation once you get into the park).
We first headed through the Tashiro Pond area to the Taisho Pond. It was a stunningly beautiful walk. High near the tree line there was autumn colour starting, and it must be amazing when the trees are in full colour!
At Taisho Pond we stopped for snacks. Throughout the park there are signs warning people not to feed the wildlife, however they need signs to tell the wildlife not to steal from the people! A duck tried to steal a bag of our cashews! For some reason I immediately grabbed Monkey George and used him to scare the duck off. It worked, and it certainly amused the people around us.
Monkey George was feeling right at home.
We walked back to the Kappa Bridge Area, and Scott and Eskil got ice creams. Another duck tried to steal their ice creams! Thieves! We didn’t have enough time to make it to the Myojin Area, so we walked on the Azusa River right bank through the wetlands area as far as we dared and let Eskil have some fun throwing rocks.
Then we returned to the Kamikochi Visitor Centre. At the visitor centre we found stamps for our books then waited for the bus.
The process to get on the bus was strange. A man made a very long, involved speech; I assumed something was wrong. But not. Just a long speech. We didn’t have assigned seating on the bus, but we had the numbered ticket we were given when making the reservation for the bus. When your number was called, you could go select a seat. I was very ‘trigger happy’ with the numbers (it didn’t help that our tickets had numbers that could be pronounced in more than one way – and I also had to recognise the numbers before us), and it became a bit of a joke that he would look at our ticket and shoo us away.
The bus went directly to the Matsumoto bus terminal near the train station, and we got off and found a Chinese restaurant in the little streets nearby. They had no English menus, so we just got 2 specials. Eskil was so hungry he spontaneously tried to use chopsticks and almost made it, but I got out his fork for him (I had brought 2 plastic fork, knife, and spoon sets that often came in handy).
I annoyed the staff member at the 7-11 by paying for our beers with small coins, but I have to admit there’s enjoyment in understanding the coins well enough to pay with them.
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2015/09/23/.