Travel: Urabandai - Yamagata - Aizuwakamatsu

This marks our first domestic trip in Japan, through Urabandai, Yamagata, and Aizuwakamatsu.

Golden week is a string of 4 public holidays occurring in a 7 day span at the end of April and start of May. If you plan it right you can take more than a week off with minimal use of paid leave.

During golden week everyone travels. Every destination you can think of has been thought of by a million other people before you. These million other people are swift, decisive. They’ve made their reservations 8 months ago, their itineraries planned down to the minute. These people know the weight of this moment. They’ve seized the opportunity.

During golden week the news provides live updates on key parts of transport infrastructure. Last year i saw news channel after news channel report on congestion at Tokyo station. In the videos masses of people moved in waves. A school of fish. A school of people.

When everyone turns into a tourist for the week, your only options are not to travel or to go where tourists don’t go. We chose the latter.

During golden week we drove up to Yamagata.

Where is Yamagata?

I say Yamagata because that was the destination in mind, but it was really a trip into Tohoku going from

• Tokyo to Urabandai
• Urabandai to Yamagata
• Yamagata to Aizuwakamatsu
• And back to Tokyo

The route looks something like this:

Yamagata is an hour or so away from Sendai, which is the major city in that region as you can see by its text size on the map.

I’m a surface-level traveller and don’t dig deep into things like the city’s historical relevance during the Muromachi era, so all i know about Yamagata is

• Maybe the most famous thing there is Yamadera, a temple on a hill you have to climb 1000 steps to reach. Incidentally, its name, Yamadera, is literally, mountain (yama 山) temple (tera 寺).
• It's a winter spot - people don’t go there in May
• It houses Ginzan Onsen, the location that Spirited Away took reference from
• It produces amazing sake (its called jyuyondai 十四代, its hard to buy, restaurants that stock it are constantly out of stock cause its so popular, and it runs several hundred dollars per bottle)

So what did we do?

This starts a visual log of our 4 days through the region.

Urabandai

Visiting Urabandai was a byproduct of wanting to travel to Yamagata. The drive up was 5 hours and we figured we didn’t want to do a drive for 5 hours straight, and also we didn’t want to spend 4 days in Yamagata, because what’s there to do in Yamagata?

In Urabandai we stayed at a bare bones lodge clearly aimed at winter visitors (@ Hanakirin)

Chanced upon some breathtaking views (@ 三湖パラダイス)

Drank local beer at said breathtaking views (Oh! Lager, beer was pretty clean and crisp, not bad overall)

Ate Italian food because that's just what you do when you travel into the Japanese countryside i suppose (@ Il Regalo)

Drank coffee overlooking rice fields (@ Rotten Row Coffee Roasters)

And enjoyed the coffee shop's toilet

We stayed for a night, we saw and we ate. I can't speak for winter but in May it's a quiet town - not in the "this is tranquil", resort-y sort of way, but more in the "this seems sparse" sort of way. A pitstop felt like more than enough time to get an experience of the area.

Yamagata

As a city i felt Yamagata was a tease. We stayed for 2 nights, and i had a sense that it hinted at dynamism, but wasn't quite as exciting up close. Up close things looked frozen in time from 20 years ago - i could imagine restaurants and buildings we passed being exciting back then.

On the way up to Yamagata we ate Kitakata ramen, apparently a famous style of ramen with soy sauce broth and thicker noodles (@Uende Kitakata)

And in Yamagata we ate Yonezawa beef - Yamagata is not known for Yonezawa beef (giveaway, Yonezawa is known for Yonezawa beef) but i don't think there's any particular style of food that Yamagata is known for (@ Yonezawa Beef Tokiwa)

Drank coffee from a truck - they served a darker roast if that's your thing, i'm not a fan dark roasts but sometimes dark coffee is better than no coffee (@ Damn!! Coffee Stand)

Climbed up a thousand steps to Yamadera (@ Yamadera)

Climbed down a thousand steps and ate some soba at a store that only accepted cash. We didn't have cash, the nearest ATM was 20 minutes away, and the store staff was unbothered that they were facing a potential eat-and-run situation. We resolved this eventually by transferring foreign currency to PayPay, a local e-money app, and paying through there (@ Takifudo Kisoba)

Went to Ginzan Onsen (to look, not to stay. Its booked out months in advance and is also very, very expensive) (@ Ginzan Onsen)

Climbed through some mines at Ginzan Onsen - Ginzan Onsen translates to silver (gin 銀) mountain (san 山) hot spring (onsen 温泉), so i suppose there was some mining going on here before (@ Silver mining cave)

And went for coffee - which was decent! - but was sold on the french toast back at Yamagata (@ OURSBLANC Roaster&Cafe)

Aizuwakamatsu

Much like our stopover in Urabandai, Aizuwakamatsu was an incidental stopover to break up the 5 hour drive back home. On the final leg of our trip we stayed at a ryokan that looks like its in middle of nowhere (@ Ashinomaki Marumine Honkan)

Ate a kaiseki

That included what might have been more Yonezawa beef (we don't know for sure, it was described as "Fukushima-raised cows")

Soaked in an onsen (sorry, no pictures here)

Went to sleep and woke up to foggy mountains in the morning

Ate yet another kaiseki for breakfast

Then went home.

No exploration was done in Aizuwakamatsu - staying in a ryokan is the core experience. If check-in time is 3pm and checkout time is 10am, we'll be in as close to 3pm as possible, and out as late as possible. As far as our experience is concerned, Aizuwakamatsu and Ashinomaki Harumine are synonymous.

As far as ryokan stays go, this place is considered pretty good - we distinguish higher quality ryokans by the fact that they serve kaiseki for both dinner and breakfast. Most places would serve a buffet for either or both meals.

In conclusion

I realise this post reads like a picture diary, but sometimes words just aren't the right medium.

One day I'd want to go back to stay a night at Ginzan Onsen just for the experience. And i'd drive the Urabandai roads in autumn.

This trip was memorable because it was planned at the last minute. We didn't have expectations because we didn't know what we were doing. We were rewarded serendipitously.