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那須 - Nasu
 Was a long this weekend past so me and my partner drove up North to Nasu in Tochigi Prefecture.
The drive itself was pretty easy though the toll gates are quite expensive. You can choose not to use them and take "non express way" routes but your seriously adding time to your journey. In UK where paying for usage of highways is unheard of, though toll bridges are common, I began to wonder if there was much difference between train fare and highway charges ?
When we arrived I was surprised to see it was still snow bound so little far north from Tokyo !
 The town itself was very tourist oriented and seems to thrive on an all year round trade in stopovers. The heavily forested mountains were heavily dotted with "pensions". This is the term used for B&B in Japan.The spacing between each pension seemed, just right so as not to infringe on each others ambiance.
Usually small run family places, uniquely modern with very pleasant themes decided upon by the owner.
Our pension was clock based with the garden full of Clocks and almost every surface in the B&B covered in clocks.I asked why, to which I got the surreal answer "I like clocks".
We spent the next two days exploring and lazing round the resort offerings, of particular note is the pictured temple, snowbound it looked very mysterious and quite a climb uphill. Upon reaching the top, the view down into the lower valley was full of "jizo" statues. These statues represent something similar to the "boatman on the river styx", wherea pile of stones are given as an offering. I've never seen quite a collected number of these statues, usually 1 or 2 are present but there must have been over 300.
They looked particularly eeirie amidst the snow and the dim lighting as the sun was setting fast, also in Japan these statues are commonly used to represent the souls of children born dead. I think this really added to the creepyness of the valley, felt quite sad as if the statues were like little children praying for the snow to melt.
We continued on thru the valley where at the entrance was in stark contrast we were met with "HAMLAND" which offered the best of Nasu's sausages and hams. Nasu is very famous for its beef, milk and meats which I thought was a little ironic as Nasu in Japanese means "eggplant", the vegetarians choice.
I couldnt seem to find any connection with the vegetable and the place, in fact the opposite, most restaurants were signed with smiling cows or pigs.
Towards the end of the weekend we browsed some real estate. Nasu offers adorable log cabin homes in the forest for very reasonable prices, we just sauntered into one show home as we were curious, but soon got into almost semi -serious consideration after a perfect delivered sales pitch from the cabins rep.
"You would be saving on mortgage repayments what you would be paying for rent and the shinkansen takes only 2 hours to the heart of Tokyo"
We were sorely tempted, but not at this current time; definitely a thought to hold on to. The idea of living in Nasu in a quiet part of the forest is very appealing !
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Posted by sasqwach
at March 28, 2005 4:34 PM | Permalink
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