Japan Countryside Spring Bike & Walking Tour

• Duration: 5 Days / 4 Nights (extensions available)
• Dates:May 31 - June 4
• Difficulty: Easy-Moderate
• Price:130,000 JPY / person (all inclusive / Min 2 participants)

Take five days to relax and enjoy the best of country life that Japan has to offer. This program is designed to offer a perfect balance between bicycle touring, allowing you to see more of the beautiful Japanese country side, and relaxed walking and cultural activities, allowing you to experience more of the rural Japan lifestyle.

Description & Activities
Tentative Itinerary
Pricing & What's Included
Register

The area covered is smaller than our regular tour simply because, after a long winter, every square kilometer of spring in Northern Nagano is overflowing with new life as the natural world emerges from beneath it's snowy cover, and the people emerge from their homes to begin planting rice and preparing their fields for the summer.

While the actual itinerary is still being developed, as we wait to see how climate conditions will treat us this year, along with daily bike rides and country walks, we expect you will have an opportunity to:

• help farmers prepare their fields
• get your feet muddy as you hand-plant a rice paddy
• follow locals to their secret sansai (mountain vegetable) picking spot
• help to rebuild trails once used by locals who made their living from the nearby mountains
• enjoy the onsen baths that the locals use
• visit locals' homes for tea, lunch, and a chat (with us there to translate)
• view the blossoms of the Akiyama Valley which may still be blanketed with snow
• observe wild monkeys in their natural habitat
• visit excellent museums depicting traditional life in Japan for villagers
• take day-trip to nearby Nozawa Onsen village
• wear a cotton yukata robe and wooden geta shoes as you meander through small winding roads from hot-spring to hot-spring
• walk through precious beech forests that just may still have a snow on the ground
• walk forest trails with a local guide, learning about plants and their traditional uses
• learn how to make soba, mochi, oyaki, or other local delicacies
• help make yourself a pair of traditional geta shoes under the watchful eye of the only traditional geta craftsman left in Nagano
• visit a local family-run dairy farm and try your hand at milking
• help to survey and map local wildlife and vegetation
• enjoy off-road, down-hill mountain bike riding
• practice the essentials of great haiku poetry or etegami painting
• wait for the perfect sunset at select photography or watercolor points
• make traditional Japanese rice-straw handicrafts
• guided tour of supermarket to learn just what all those strange foods are and how they are used
• relax and just read a book or take a nap under a wild cherry blossom tree

Description top

This program is run in and around the small country village of Sakae-Mura in Northern Nagano prefecture where you will have an opportunity to focus on and get an in-depth picture of traditional rural Japanese life. Daily activities will give you an opportunity to get out into the village, meet the locals, interact, communicate, and relax.

While we understand the desire to "see it all", hitting every major tourist spot in Japan, we feel there is great value in seeing less, but seeing deeper. With Sakae village as a base, you will have an opportunity to relax as you ride and walk through some of the last remaining areas of Japan where they least expect a tourist to show up.

This tour is limited to six or seven people in order to allow our guests more intimate encounters with the locals, and more personalized attention from us.

An average day can include as much walking or riding as you would like. Along with organized group events (such as helping the farmers or a guided English tour of a museum) you are also free to strike off on your own or with other participants. We will provide you with maps of the area indicating points of interest, approximate walking/riding times, and difficulty assessments. The area offers a variety of terrain, from rolling hills and river-side rides, to steep mountain roads and off-road trails. While we encourage people to ride up anything they want to ride down, some of the optional "group" activities have the option of a lift to the top of the mountain, and cruising down together.

Meals include full course traditional Japanese dinners, lunches at local soba shops, and mountain-top picnics featuring fresh, organic, local, and macrobiotic (based on traditional Japanese diet that focuses on a balance between yin and yang foods) dishes. You may even have the opportunity to dine with local farmers and their families in their home. We will be there when you need us to translate and facilitate conversation, as well as share the historic and cultural story of what you are eating, giving you a complete view of rural life

Tentative Itinerarytop

This trip is planned for May 16-20 & 24-28, with an optional extensions, and customizations to fit your travel plans.

Day 1 Arrive in Sakae Mura

We will meet you at Morimiyanohara station, the "center" of Sakae Mura. We will take care of your luggage, leaving you free to take a guided walk through the village. Our first stop is a moderate climb up the nearby ski-mountain where we will get a better view of the surroundings from up-high.

After a picnic lunch, we will descend into a small cluster of farm houses to enjoy a hot cup of tea at a local's home. The day's walk will end at our local hot-spring bath - just a few minutes from your accommodations for the night, either at the local meeting hall, a villagers home, or a local family-run inn.

After an elaborate Japanese dinner, you are invited to join a short introductory session about Sakae Village as we translate descriptions from local speakers and video documentary series. Alternatively, you can take a walk, sit under the stars, or simply relax with a book - either your own, or from our recommended library of Japan-related material.

Day 2 Sakae Mura & Nozawa Onsen

This morning, as with every morning, includes the opportunity to wake up before the sunrise for a guided photo tour, where we will take you to the best spots for breathtaking views in the soft morning light, and see the village as it bursts into life. Of course, you wont need a camera to enjoy this walk, and we will provide you with a CD of our own edited photos of your entire trip, including the morning walks.

After our walk and a hearty breakfast, participants are invited to join one of our planned activities, or strike off on your own with our map and suggested itinerary to explore the lower areas of our village as fits your needs.

Planned activities will be seasonally based, including farming, guided walks and bike rides, and traditional crafts. As the season grows closer, we will have a more detailed schedule.

As evening approaches on day 2, we will guide you on a leisurely bike ride through small villages along the Chikuma River. Our destination is the historic Nozawa Onsen Village where your luggage is waiting at a historic 200 year-old inn. We will don a yukata robe and wooden geta shoes for a walk through the villages winding roads visiting as many of the thirteen famous hot-springs as you can handle. An elaborate seasonal Japanese dinner, complete with iwana river fish grilled on an open irori fire-pit common in traditional Japanese homes.

Day 3 Sakae Mura

After a traditional Japanese breakfast, and a morning bath (or two), we will take you and your bikes to the top Nozawa's ski hill for beautiful views and an exhilarating downhill ride back into Sakae Mura where you are once again free to explore on your own, or with us.

Our recommended routes will take everyone in the direction of our next night's accommodation at the entrance to the Akiyama Valley. This abandoned schoolhouse turned inn (complete with hot-spring bath) is a testimant to the hardships of the past, and the changing demographics of Japan's countryside where young families with children are rare, and schools struggle to survive.

Day 4, 5 Akiyamago Valley

After our morning walk on Day 4, we will either bike, walk or catch a lift deeper into the Akiyama Valley. This is an area known in Japan for its remoteness and history of self-reliance. It was not until the 50s that a paved road connected the villages of Akiyamago to the more hospitable villages along the Chikuma River.

Despite the road and increased mobility offered by cars and snow-plows, only two years ago Akiyamago Valley was shut off from the rest of Japan by record breaking snow-fall and avalanches. While we will not have to worry about that in May, it is still a major factor that influences life in the region. The last two days of our trip will offer us an opportunity to explore and experience how villages live, thrive, survive, and in some cases, disappear, in such an environment.

Some highlights of the Akiyama Valley include:

• Visits to local wood-carvers who now make high-class chests, tables, and traditional wooden bowls for clients across Japan and the world.
• Visit a local minka house, which has been preserved in its original state, with tools and artifacts showing how people survived in such a foreboding terrain.
• A guided tour of the local museum, depicting traditional life, eating habits, and bear-hunting
• Unique natural hot-springs, including outdoor baths with amazing views, and one that requires you to first dig into the riverbed at the end of the valley.
• Helping locals to prepare their fields for the summer, or just listening to them boast about how amazing their crops are.
• Plenty of really wild mountain vegetables, and a chance to cook and eat them with the locals.
• Distinctive local foods that have evolved through centuries of hard-ship and famine
• Amazing hiking trails through intense green spring foliage and famous waterfalls

Our night in Akiyama will be either at a local inn or the more rustic preserved thatch house. Meals can include traditional bear-meat nabe (a type of soup cooked at the table), soba (buckwheat noodles), and iwana, a river fish abundant in this area.

Whether you opt to stay in the inn or "rough it" in the historical preserved house, even the coldest nights are warmed by tea or hot sake around a traditional irori fireplace surrounded by straw tatami flooring.

On the morning of the fifth day we will awake early for our morning walk ritual before breakfast. This time, if we are lucky, we will have an opportunity to see wild monkeys playing near the small logging roads.

The morning will be spent walking or riding on your own through the small villages that line the valley, or participating in planned activities along with your guides. A final soba lunch and hot-spring bath (dug by hand in the river) before cruising down the valley by bike will have us reach civilization just in time for you to catch a bus or train to your next adventure in Japan. Of course, for those who just have not had enough, there is plenty more to see and experience, and we can provide custom extensions as well! :)

What to Expect (A Sample Day) top

Every day in this experience will be different, depending on the participants' interests and whims. A hypothetical day might look like this:

6:00 Wake Up, dress, head to the local dairy-farm to learn about small-scale dairy in Japan, as well as try your hand at milking. If lucky, we may even see a calf being born.
8:00 A stroll through the village as farmers begin the day's work
8:45 Enjoy a simple, traditional (meaning, what the "real people" eat) Japanese breakfast
9:00 Discuss Day's plan over green tea, coffee, and juice
9:30 Join local obachan (grandmother) for a walk in the forest and sansai (mountain vegetable) picking
12:00 Picnic lunch overlooking beautiful scenery followed by a nap
13:00 Begin afternoon bike ride through village, either on your own or with your OneLife guide
14:00 Stop to explore an interesting museum, chat with farmers, or learn to make soba - then continue on
18:00 Arrive at your inn, get settled, prepare for bath
19:30 Traditional local full course dinner / discuss the days findings / play with the inn-keepers children
21:00 Take an evening stroll or chat with locals about life in the village
22:00 Retire to your comfortable futon for a well deserved sleep

Pricing and What's Included top

All-inclusive Bike Tour
We design our all-inclusive tours so that you wont have to look at a credit card for the entire duration:
5 days: 130,000 JPY/person Register

This includes

Bikes: Our cross touring bikes are selected to make your trip the most comfortable and enjoyable possible. Our frames are sturdy, stable, and light-weight, fitted with ultra-comfortable seats, handle bars and grips. Pannier saddle bags allow you to easily carry warm clothing, water, snacks, and any souvenirs you pick-up along the way.

Accommodation: You will be staying in family run inns in small mountain villages and popular onsen towns, as well as a possible night with local farming family. Every night offers a hot-spring bath, comfortable traditional cotton yukata robe, and a oh-so-heavenly futon on a traditional straw tatami floor. One of our main concerns when choosing accommodation is the friendliness and openness of the owners and staff, and we will be there the entire time to translate and facilitate communication. For the family trip, we look for inn-keepers with children of their own to provide interactive opportunities for everyone.

Meals: Perhaps the most important part of any trip to Japan is the food. While the well-known sushi and sukiyaki are available, we seek out local, traditional meals that have developed in the region over the centuries defining and being defined by the local culture and history. Wherever possible we choose fresh, local ingredients grown by farmers we know - you will even get to meet some of them. Lunches will either be at local restaurants or luxurious picnics with macrobiotic, traditional vegetarian and zen foods overlooking beautiful mountain valleys in their full autumn splendor.

Vegetarian and special dietary needs are also welcome.

Entrance Fees: All museums, baths, festivals, and any other entrance fees are covered so you are free to go anywhere and do anything your wanderlust takes you.

Guides & Communication Facilitation: You have the option of riding with bilingual guides that have studied the area and culture and are anxious to share as much as you want to hear, and probably a lot you didn't even know you wanted to hear. (Of course, we will shut-up if you ask nicely). Alternatively, you can strike out on your own with scheduled meeting points. Either way, we will be available every step of the journey, whether you are trying to communicate with your host for the night, the old man at the vegetable stand, or trying to find a certain color of kimono for that perfect souvenir. We can also provide printed translations of important museum exhibits and explanation of various foods and interesting cultural artifacts found along the way. One optional highlight of the tour is a trip to a supermarket where our guide and professional chef points out interesting foods and explains how they are used and their history.

Support Vehicle: Not only do we carry your luggage and have elaborate picnic lunches waiting at the perfect lookout point, but we also carry people when needed. If you would rather spend more time at a museum or napping on a mountain top while the rest of the group rides on, our support vehicle will help you catch up. Want to walk instead of ride? The support vehicle will take your bike to the next meeting point. Had enough up-hills for the day? Our support vehicle will carry you to the top leaving you to enjoy the cruise down.

Maps: We have made easy to follow English maps with important landmarks and points of interest highlighted. We even give you a pen to keep notes on the map of the one of a kind encounters and experiences you have along the way.

Photographer: Photos of you, your fellow adventurers, and the people you meet on your journey, edited and collected into one CD with optional large-size prints of the really good shots.