Paragliding!

It was a long time coming. I think the first time I had even mentioned paragliding in Japan might have been last Summer. On the 6th of April, I left Tokyo on a bus towards Mt Fuji, heart in my hands. It was lucky enough that I had even managed to find this place on the internet - paragliding, as you may or may not have guessed, isn't a very popular thing to do amongst the foreign community here. Or even the locals that much. But the plan was to take the Tokyo - Mt Fuji bus for 9:40, get there at 11:30, take a connecting bus at 11:40, and get to the paragliding base by 1:00.
 Except my bus arrived late, I didn't make the connecting bus, and the next one was at 3:00. The paragliding trip I had planned and reserved for was dead on arrival. A little upset, but mostly annoyed at the wasted trip, I called Sky Asagiri, the paragliding company, and explained my situation. "Alright," the lady on the other end of the line answered.
"Well, we'll still do the jump when you get here."

 Now, hold on, hold on. I know this all sounds like boring anecdote. But I couldn't believe what came next. Ten minutes later, I receive a call from them back. "Actually, we'll come pick you up. Just stay at the station. The drive's a half hour, so just don't go too far." Man, that made my day. Plus, I got to save 1400¥ on the bus fare.
 The instructor they sent to pick me up was Yamazaki-san, a man in his early 40's most likely, and extremely friendly. We chatted it up all the way to the base of a mountain and picked up the paragliding equipment before making our way to the top.

The jump site!

And the spot itself could hardly have been more scenic - forested hills with great pines, an open space at the base of the mountain for landing, and, looming ahead in the horizon, Mt Fuji itself, it's head crowned by clouds. I got strapped in.
 "Run, don't jump." I was told. "Just run off the cliff side nice and straight." I did as told.  Before I even reached the edge of the precipice, my feet left the ground, and I was flying. Paragliding didn't have the same effect on me as bungee jumping, contrary to what I expected. Whereas the bungee jump pumped my brain full of natural chemicals as the ground rushed to meet my face, paragliding was almost dream like. I felt weightlessness, like nothing I was strapped to was even there. I couldn't feel the parachute or the weight of the harness or Yamazaki-san behind me. It was just trees some three dozen meters under my feet, and Mount Fuji straight ahead. I couldn't help but laugh. The whole thing was surreal. "This wind feels amazing," I said.


 "Actually, we're traveling at 30 km/h. It's really just our speed. Here, take the reins!" And he gave me the reins. And I piloted us for a while, under Yamazaki's advice. "You probably like roller coasters, huh?" he said, as I handed him back the controls. "Here, then!" And then we started spiraling down in a mad downwards corkscrew. But at this point, there was nothing that could be done to make me fall out of love with paragliding. I loved that too.

 Our whole descent was around ten to twelve minutes long. Some unlucky bastards only get three minutes or so, but apparently the wind was good. And though the landing was a little rough, we made it down in one piece.
 After that, I had 30 minutes to kill. It turned out Yamazaki and I really got along well, and he didn't mind walking around the area with me until my bus arrived. We took it really easy and went around looking for fallen deer antlers. I was amazed at how friendly he was, even though I don't make for very interesting conversation in my basic Japanese.
 All in all, my paragliding experience really couldn't have been much better. Sure, there weren't any cherry blossoms in the area as I had first hoped,  but the folks at Sky Asagiri were remarkably friendly people, and I feel like I came out of all this having experienced something very few people get to do in their lives.

The Road to Nozawa

The car was set, our Winter tires ready, the five of us ready to go. Joined by Millo, Ken, Kazue, and her brother Dav, we set out en route for a festival that sounded too crazy to be real, deep within the mountainous prefecture of Nagano, in a small town called Nozawa. It was a long time coming, but we finally got the road trip we had been looking forward to for months. And what a good experience it was.
However, the road to Nagano is, simply put, quite short. So we decided to take our sweet time getting there, heading south-west then north, rather than simply north west, and ultimately adding some time before we got to our destination, not to mention some beautiful sights as well.

Our first stop was the often-romanticized city of Atami - known for its beaches, spas and, little had I known until then, numerous brothels. Atami in itself is very scenic, with a beautiful coastline which pretty much characterizes the whole area it's in, the Izu Peninsula, for which it serves as a good entrance point from Tokyo. But as it was, we chose only one place in Atami to stop at - and nothing would do but for that place to be Atami Castle!

Folks, don't get too excited about this seemingly wonderful castle overlooking the sea. Beautiful as that might sound, Atami Castle has, historically, never existed. That's right. It was built just for the sake of there being a castle there. If you can overlook that, though, the castle is a very handsome looking building, offers a great view of the whole city, and is pretty interesting to go inside. There, you'll find a small museum about castles, an exterior walkway with foot baths, a room where you can play ancient Japanese style dress-up in, and even an arcade. Who said a castle couldn't be fun, eh?

 But though I'm sure there's plenty of stuff to spend a day in Atami alone, we eventually got going, heading north towards our destination. Cutting across the Chubu province actually brought us very close to Mount Fuji, and there, at its very foot, was a town where we decided to make our second stop: Fujinomiya.

 The town, though quite sleepy, used to be the traditional starting point from where climbers would begin to ascend the fabled mountain. And at the mouth of that trail is the Fujisan Sengen Shrine, the most important shrine built in worship of the mountain. Though lacking the magnificence of the numerous other shrines in Japan, the Fujisan Sengen has a splendid garden, with ponds fed directly by Mount Fuji's waterfalls, resulting in exceptionally clear water where the fish can be seen from a distance. It probably wouldn't have been too hard to spear one or two, as Dav had said.

 Continuing north, we stopped at Matsumoto, Kazue and Dav's hometown (which has a splendid castle I stopped by on my first Japan roadtrip.) This time, however, Matsumoto was merely the point at which we decided to call an end to our first day of travel. Finding a ryokan in Matsumoto was, thanks to Ken, nothing too difficult, and we got a room to the five of us, which, despite being a little bare, was lots of fun together. The ryokan having an onsen was a welcome bonus, although the water was only a step below scalding.

 From the next morning on, our destination was within reach, and we made it there with little trouble. We found Nozawa Onsen covered in a deep sheet of white snow. Having finally made it, we were rewarded with a day of ski (my first in three years since coming to Japan.) But the true pearl of this whole voyage would be the festival that awaited us here in this seemingly sleepy ski resort town - the Dosojin Fire Festival.