Mount Asama, Shiraito Waterfall, and Karuizawa

DAY 3

When our Tokyo friends were in Hawaii they asked, “What do you want to do in Japan?” I replied, “Eat, shop, and play in the snow!” So today they were fulfilling my third wish of playing in some Japan snow!

They took us to Mount Asama, the most active volcano on Honshu Island as well as the lovely nearby resort town of Karuizawa. The area is over 100 km from downtown Tokyo, quite a distance to drive.

It must have taken close to two hours to get there by car.

We stopped once for brunch at a rest stop. We had some onigiri, melon pan, and these takenoko inari that I really liked!

When we finally arrived at the Mount Asama area, we stopped in this parking lot to take a stretch and walk around.

Then we drove around a little more getting different views. It was a really pretty area…

After we had our fill of snow, a quick little snowball fight, and saw this…

we figured it was time to move on.

On our way to Karuizawa we stopped off to see Shiraito Waterfall. It’s just a very easy 5 minute walk to reach the falls.

However, if you are like me and stop every ten seconds to take a picture, it’ll take you more like 15 minutes to reach the top. But really, how can you not stop to enjoy these mini falls along the way?

At the end of the path is the very graceful Shiraito Waterfall. It stands 3 meters high and 70 meters wide, with its water coming from the rain that falls on Mount Asama. Once the rain falls on the mountain, they say it takes 6 years for the water to seep underground and reach the top of the waterfall.

After a leisurely walk back to the car, we headed off to Karuizawa. During this time of year, Karuizawa is a small ski resort type town. But since we don’t ski, we concentrated our time on the historic shopping street in town.

On this street there are many little shops selling clothes, trinkets, and best of all…food!

Along the way our friend asked me, “Do you like sweet potato?”
“Sure!”, I said with a nod. Ten seconds later she handed me this…

a piping hot baked sweet potato! We were starting to get a little hungry, so this was a good treat. We split it into four pieces and shared.

Also on this street were dogs…everywhere. With many of them wearing the latest in doggy fashion. This lucky group got to ride around in a little stroller!

As I was saying, there were many stores that sold food. And the good ones always served lots of samples to try!

Our friends bought a ton of tsukemono to bring back to Tokyo. We bought some but didn’t want to go over board. However, now that we are home I wish we had gotten more!

For lunch we went to a discreet little soba shop that was recommended to us by one of the tsukemono shop owners. The two guys tried the special cold soba that was locally made.

Have you ever seen anything like this below?

Our other friend ordered it. It’s the same flour used to make the soba noodles but made into dumplings. It was served in a warm broth just like my hot soba.

My order was a warm mushroom soba with wasabi and lots of grated daikon – Oishii!

After lunch we finished up at the shopping street and went to quickly visit the ski slope and adjoining outlet shopping mall, before setting off for the long ride back to Tokyo ending a very fun day.

Back in Tokyo after a short rest, we decided to head to the department store at the train station for dinner. There were so many choices, about 3 floors worth of restaurants to choose from! Eventually we chose one with some delicious looking samples outside. He had the Tendon with all vegetable tempura.

While I had the teishoku with miso soup, chawanmushi, tempura…

and sashimi!

The area of Japan we went to on this day was very beautiful. We were lucky that the weather was so nice all day! It was also enjoyable because the town was not too crowded. At the visitor center I picked up some brochures that showed that same shopping street completely packed with people during the summer season. So if you aren’t in to big crowds, try Karuizawa during spring!

DAY 1 & 2: Meiji Jingu, Harajuku, Omotesando, Shibuya, Ikebukuro
DAY 3: Mount Asama, Shiraito Waterfall, and Karuizawa
DAY 4: Ghibli Museum, Odaiba, Asakusa
DAY 5: Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Ochanomizu
DAY 6: Tsukiji, Ginza, Akihabara
DAY 6 (Part 2): Kappabashi, Asakusa, Okonomiyaki, Monjayaki
DAY 7: Japanese Baseball at the Tokyo Dome
DAY 8: Ueno Park, Yanaka Ginza, Sengakuji Temple, Beer Museum Yebisu
DAY 9: Nikko Day Trip – Toshogu Shrine and Yuba
DAY 10: Fishing in Tokyo
DAY 11: Kanamachi and Shibamata