A Walk in the Mountains (Monkey, Monkey!)

Lake Yu

When we had visited Nikko last year during tinted leaf season, we did not manage to visit the National Park in the mountains (mainly because we were told that the bus ride would take several hours due to traffic jams). Since it is not yet tinted leaf season, we tried another time, this time equipped with a book detailing “Day Walks near Tokyo”.

From Tobunikko Station, we caught the bus, which climbed up the hairpin curves of the mountain road painfully slowly. But after more than an hour, we finally arrived. Or so we thought. We got off the bus and the book instructed us to “walk a few meters to the lake shore”. But there was no Lake Yu, only the Yudaki, the Yu Waterfalls. What could we do, we viewed the falls and then went off on a walking trail made of wooden planks. The trail was lovely, it followed the small river through the woods. The ground was covered with dwarf bamboo. After a while, the trail split, one side going to the overall direction our intended walk was to go, one towards the lake. But now we became perfectionist. This trail was not the one given in the book. It was supposed to start from the lake. So we took the trail to the lake. Going to the lake meant first going back to the falls. And then climbing up the stairs next to the falls (this seemed funny, since the trail described in the book was following the river downstream). But sure enough, above, there was Lake Yu. A lovely clear mountain lake surrounded by wooded hills and paradise for fishermen. (Apart from this, it is also notable for smelling of – ahem – onsen.) So we started walking along the lake shore.

Monkey, monkey!

After a while, I heard an animal sound, like that of a big bird. I was joking about it being a monkey call. Nikko is famous for its wild monkeys (Japanese Macaques, to be precise), but last time we had only seen signs warning us not to feed them. Turns out it actually was a monkey call! We found the caller sitting a few meters away in the woods and another one sitting next to the lake shore. They were much less excited to see us than we were to see them, to say the least.

Once we had walked nearly all around the lake, I realized that somehow the whole description of the first part of the hike was going backwards. We had walked the wrong way around the lake! And then the puzzle was solved: we found the bus stop, we should have actually got off at. The book had given the wrong name. And it was indeed a few meters from to the lake shore. By now, we had spent nearly two hours walking and starting on the 2 h 40 min walk now seemed a bit too much. So we returned to the restaurant at the falls and first fortified ourselves with soba with yuba (the skin that forms on boiling soy milk), a local specialty. Then we caught a bus towards Nikko and got off at the big local attraction, the Ryuzu (竜頭, dragon’s head) waterfalls. The are indeed spectacular, and the surrounding trees even showed a touch of autumn color.

Ryuzu-no-taki

It looks like we’ll have to return to Nikko another time if we want to do this walk to Senjo Field. The walk we actually have taken was not to be complained about either, and we finally managed to see the waterfall!