When Flight Centre’s Mariel Clayton last joined us she went up in the mountains to take in the gardens and doing some people watching. In this post Mariel travels back down the mountain to explore Yuzawa, Japan, enjoy different types of sake, and share with us incredible vacation ideas and of course her incredible holiday photos.

I get back on the Cable Car. About half way down I see the first pack of hikers straggling up through the trees. While I’m sure hiking is a very healthy and rugged and noble pastime, it’s not for me. I don’t mind the odd stroll along a softly sloping incline, but If God/Buddha/Deity of Choice had intended for me to climb mountains he would not have made them so big, or invented the Cable Car. I shall be a vociferous spectator of hiking, more than happy to cheer on those hardy fellows covered in mud and muck from the comfort of my sagging chair high in the air. That’s about as close to real hiking as I intend to get.

Back on the lower earth, a little disappointed in the mountain. I decide to explore what there is of this little mountain town and its grey shops and streets. It takes about an hour to walk from one end of the main street to the other, past the same storefronts again and again, those that aren’t closed are in such disrepair that they should be. I do a lazy loop around the backstreets and through the little homes huddled against the foothill, like a pattern on the hem of a skirt. It seems as though every person’s house has some kind of water feature in front or beside it, there are little monuments to H2O everywhere.

One house has a beautiful cascading series of little stone pools and fountains. All the pools play hide and seek between clusters of planted reeds and lush green foliage. I explore every one, trying as best I can to not actually set foot on that persons property (very rude). There are koi of all sizes in each one, mainly white or gold, except for one big monster whose body is exploding in splotches of colour. He looks like he was caught in the middle of a particularly vicious game of paintball.

Moving on from the little goldfish oasis and further down the road, there another house and another pond, only this owner doesn’t seem to have been as diligent. There is a large tangerine-coloured goldfish floating belly up in it. This fish is… was… big… I have ‘Fancy’ goldfish, and I know how hard it is to keep them successfully until they get to be that size, and this was a monster even by goldfish standards. In Chinese /Japanese superstition and history, it’s fortuitous to keep goldfish by the door of your house or business to ward off evil spirits. The spirits, being attracted by the shiny fish will attach to them instead of you or your family, thus sparing you ill fortune. When a goldfish dies, it’s because it has ‘taken the evil spirit bullet’ for you. I guess it took a large demon to fell this fish. I watch his body twirling in the current, his long flowing fins look like swathes of carnadine silk. It’s a sad sight, it’s a sad town.

I wander off again in search of something a little cheerier. Yuzawa is morose, maudlin and moody. This is where Hemmingway would thrive, but not me… I don’t need that sort of introspection, I need loud noises, bright colours and sake. Lots of sake.

I head back to the train station, not to escape by rail, but by happy touristy shopping.

Japanese train stations always seem to have some kind of ‘tourist trap’ mishmash of food vendors, booze joints, and trinket stalls – I love them. They are the kind of cheap, tacky, and just plain fun shops that I need right now. The Echigo Yuzawa station proves to have a good collection. There are a lot of displays of sake, and sake glasses, bottles, paraphernalia. One monument to this alcohol has life-sized mannequins of drunken salarymen passing out and all but vomiting around the bottles. This is awesome! I could go for some happy alcohol brain-death right now too.

I mooch around the stores and shelves. One section seems to be dedicated to what looks like mummified fish snacks. Dried and twisted and shiny. There are little bowls scattered about with free samples, and yet, somehow I am able to resist the temptation (although the smell helps with that). There is… and I swear this is what it looked like, but I really couldn’t stomach going in for a closer inspection – a bowl of what looks suspiciously like dried fish eyes?!? One of the very few times in my life when I’ve ever wussed out on a taste test.

I do try some of the pickled vegetables – dyed in lurid shades of Barbie pink and UTI yellow. They are mouth-puckeringly bitter, and chewy like an old school eraser. I don’t even know what vegetables they are… daikon I think. There is a long wall filled with exquisite sake cups. Some pottery, some glass, some bone porcelain. Thinking that these would make some lovely souvenirs I go in to inspect a delicate little cup that sits like a blossom in my hand. It’s translucent white porcelain, with a subtle soft and wispy pattern of orange and scarlet Japanese maple leaves on it. I turn it over to inspect the price… and moving my now trembling hand very slowly and delicately put it back on the shelf. I keep forgetting, the things I really like are always the ones that turn out to cost more than the GNP of some small countries.

Oh well… it’s nice to look anyway.

I complete my inquisitive meandering of the stores, pick up a few goodies and presents and am now in a much cheerier mood. The only thing that could make this any better is… sake? I’m fairly certain that this revelation was accompanied by some sort of heavenly chorus, because this was indeed, miraculous. Ponshu-Kan!! I had forgotten about that in my research on Yuzawa!

Ponshu-Kan is cross between a sake ‘museum’, storeroom and tasting room. ‘Hello? why, yes Mr. Guardian Angel, I believe I will go in, thank you very much’.

The store room is the like the wine cellar of my dreams – packed floor to ceiling with over 250 brands of sake! I stand there drooling for a bit, and once the waterline reaches my ankles, move on into the museum/tasting room. I will confess, any noble ideas of learning about the history of sake flew out the window once I saw the tasting room. Let me just explain this to you. Imagine being in a room, filled with what looks like postboxes (y’know the old drop-box style ones all square and grey) only instead of postboxes, they are Sake shot dispensers. You pop your token in the slot, put your cup in the tray and get it filled with a shot of the sake of your choice. Each ‘taste-test’ that you do gives you 5 tokens, so 5 shots. How much does this all cost you ask? Must be a fair amount, seeing as how you can’t even get a shot at a bar for less than 4 dollars. This is why the angels were carousing my friends… the cost for 5 shots of sake – LESS THAN 4 DOLLARS! That’s right… for about the same price as a ride on my local public bus in Toronto, I can get close to plastered in Yuzawa.

I am trying to contain my alcoholic glee as I all but throw my money at the attendant and choose my sake cup. The first brand that I try (don’t even ask me what the name is, I couldn’t tell you) is light and sweet and refreshing. I try another, this has an almost ‘mushroomy’ taste, in that it conjures up images of wood and moss and dark earth. I go over to whom I thought was just an attendant, but is actually the proprietor. He speaks no English whatsoever, and I try to mime, or hand signal asking him what his favourite is.

I guess he recognises a fellow sake convert when he sees one, and he gets the general idea. He points me to a box that has 2 white cranes on the label. Auspicious for me, as I love the Japanese White Crane, and even have a tattoo of one that I got the last time I was in Tokyo.

I pop in my token, put my cup on the tray, and let the sake flow. It smells strong. I can’t tell you what it tasted like, because it took the roof of my head right off. My cranium has only now recovered.

After my initial 5 shots, I float merrily to the other parts of the tasting room. Around the corner there is a table set up with what looks like, tastes like salts. The Japanese version of a margarita? I gather you’re supposed to use the different salts to enhance the flavours of the sake, but I have no idea what goes with which, and there are no instructions or descriptions but tiny cramped Japanese. I sample a few anyway, using my best tequila technique. Does nothing for me, I guess I am an unrefined Barbarian after all. I go back and gladly give the proprietor some more of my money, then reacquaint myself with the wall of sake.

$30 later I think I’m done. It’s probably a good idea to stop before my liver decides to escape from my body. At the moment I can just hear it whimpering. I rinse out my cup under the little tap and leave it on the tray. Then I stagger… lurch out the shop, out of the frying pan and almost into the fire… right next door is a sake Onsen!!! That’s right, a nice relaxing sake-flavoured bath where you can pickle your outside as well as your inside. I contemplate it for a while, but considering right now my blood is about 80% proof, thinning it further in the heat is most likely not a good idea.

Once I am back outside on the street, veering and swaying along and giggling to myself – Yuzawa seems like a lovely little town after all. Very charming, rustic even. Seeing as how I missed out on the full sake bath, I console myself with the thought of another footbath, I did do some walking… staggering… today after all.

This time I go to the Kan-Nakuri footbath, a public one run by the town and on the main street, not too far away from my ryokan in case I need to crawl back on all fours.

This one sits on the corner of the main road and a side street, and is surrounded by beautiful cedar planks for the patrons to sit on and watch the world go by as they soak their feet. There is no one else there but me, so I prise off my boots and plunge right in… bother with decorum.

I’m sitting there in my sake fugue, letting the booze and the steam transport me to that dazy dreamy state of glowy happiness. I don’t really care if I look like a bit of a twit with a big grin on my face, it is so peaceful in the mountains, the quiet of the town and the valley, the enveloping mist like a veil on the face. I forget almost where I am and what I’m doing. The only thing I am aware of is the blood whooshing in my ears, and the heat around my legs. I am transported away.

Then brought, crashingly, back to earth. This is a public footbath, which means there are no little courtesy towels provided for you like at the footbaths run by the stores, you are supposed to bring your own.

So… the problem penetrates my sake-stained brain, now how do I dry my feet?

Yuzawa, Japan is highlighted on the Flight Centre travel map.

Looking for more information on traveling to Japan? Contact Mariel Clayton, an Adventure and Sport Specialist with Flight Centre based in Oakville, Ontario who can be reached at 1 866 704 5366.

Interested in more of Mariel’s great posts? Click here.

Categories: Destinations

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Destinations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.