It's Like Yosemite but with Monkeys - Nagano Adventure Part 1

This past weekend the temperature was in the mid to high 90s in Tokyo. The concrete jungle was a virtual oven, which was unfortunate for everyone in Tokyo.

I managed to escape the city for a trip up to Nagano prefecture. Nagano is probably best known outside of Japan for hosting the 1998 winter Olympics. The trip was organized by Tokyo Gaijin's an organization kind of like BSSC back in Boston that organizes outdoor/athletic/social events specifically geared towards foreigners in Tokyo.

The leader of the trip was a Filipino guy named Ricky who also happened to be the founder. He told a few of us that he used to organize trips like this for his friends and then eventually decided to make a job out of it.

The trip started when we boarded a bus in Shinjuku early Saturday morning and headed out towards Komikochi. Komikochi is kind of a wilderness park/resort. The first day of the trip we would be spend leisurely exploring Komikochi. The second we would be in Hakuba, a ski resort town in Japan's Northern Alps or the Hida range, where participants had two options for hiking in the surrounding mountains.

Komikochi actually reminded my quite a bit of Yosemite in California. A river valley surrounded by mountains and dramatic alpine scenery.

I played around with the cool hipstamatic app on my phone which recreates Polaroid style pictures.
Also like Yosemite, you're not exactly roughing it just wandering around. There are plenty of Hotels and souvenir shops to cater to tourists. Also two types of locally brewed beer were available. One sold on the north side of the river one on the south.

Of course Komikochi has one thing Yosemite doesn't.. monkeys!

Late in the day we suddenly stumbled on to a whole pack of them that were just hanging around.

After exploring the valley, and sampling the local beer we boarded the bus for the two hour drive up to Hakuba.

At our Japanese style hotel we were treated to a huge all you can eat shabu shabu meal. Shabu shabu is very similar to Chinese hot pot, where you dip uncooked meat and vegetables into a pot of boiling oil. It was delicious and we ate our fill.

The first option for tomorrow's hike involved taking a gondola and two chair lifts up to the top of the Hakuba ski resort then hiking up a ridge to a mountain lake called Happoike, and if people were more ambitious to continue on for another two hours to the peak of Karamatsudake.

The second option was a much more difficult hike up Mt Shirouma. At about 10,000ft Shirouma is the tallest mountain in the Hida range, the 26th tallest in Japan. We would have to get up and down the 5,600 vertical ft by 4pm to catch the bus back to Tokyo. Because of the ambitious pace we would have to make up the mountain (and the 4:30am wake up) only 4 people including Ricky decided to take on the challenge. I was one of the 4.

After dinner we settled down for a few drinks in the Hotel lobby. Someone broke out a bottle of tequila and announced their intention not to bring in home with them.

I headed back to my room around 11:30, and made myself comfortable on the Tatami mat floor along with my four roommates. I would need to rest for what turned out to be quite an adventure tomorrow...