The Sleepy Onsen Town of Oigami

It's amazing what a full Viking breakfast will do for you! I'm ready to go raid a European village now! Well, maybe just hang out defiantly in an Italian restaurant. Yeah, I'm bad.

So, we actually slept in a bit so we could take part in the morning buffet, which was a combination of Japanese and western food. Road food can get pretty boring after a while, no matter how much I like yogurt. We filled ourselves up and got ready for another day of climbing mountains.

Today's route took us through more of the Japan Romantic Road

or Japaniche Romantische Straße

starting with a pretty healthy 600m climb above Lake Yunoko

Looking down from 100m above

A typical switchback 

A typical view. See the road on the left? That's where we came from

and continuing into the Gunma prefecture

The little guy at the bottom is Gunma-chan, the prefectural mascot

The ride was long, but we had a number of downhill runs that more than made up for the climbing. It's like a sledding hill that lasts around 30 minutes. You have to get up the thing, but the payoff is worth the slog.

Approaching Oigami, we slowed down, checking our location frequently. The roads were so steep, we didn't want to overshoot a turn off and have to climb back up the hill to find it. Pulling into town, it really felt pretty abandoned

One car and a bunch of empty hotels

This is the off-season, and most of the onsen hotels, including the largest ones, simply shut down until later in the summer. Ours was set back on the street and so quiet looking, we rode right by it at first.

Rakuzensou

The woman running the inn and the man running the gift shop next door were very friendly, and quite relieved we spoke some Japanese. There were zero foreigners here, except us. We picked up our suitcases that we had shipped....and promptly shipped them again! There was no coin laundry within several miles, so we just grabbed the clean clothes we had, put our dirty ones in the suitcases, and shipped them on to Suzaka, where we'll be in a few days.

We were starving, and there wasn't much open in town. The landlady recommended a Chinese restaurant across the bridge. The bridge, you ask?

Looks like a footbridge, doesn't it? It should be,

A nice, if narrow, bridge to connect the two sides of town. It spans the Shima river. The occasional vehicle travels across this bridge, too, which is pretty scary. There's barely enough room for a delivery truck and a pedestrian at the same time, and I, for one, would not be too keen on being forced against the railing, because it's quite a fall.

View from the bridge. Beautiful, but well over 100m in the air

Anyway back to the Chinese restaurant. We were a bit skeptical. Chinese food in Japan is usually second rate stuff. And the place, in the first floor of a larger hotel, looked maybe a little fast-food-ish.

The logo is on top. Stereotypes are alive and well in Japan

Usually, though, when the locals recommend a place, it's worth going to. And this was no exception. The food was really good Chinese food! Of course, we took pictures.

Pepper Steak, Gyoza, Chicken Stir-Fry. All very good

and they sold Coke in a bottle!

Touminkan. Check it out next time you're in Oigami

Very well fed and tired, we headed back to the inn and called it a night. Tomorrow we ride into another onsen town, Kusatsu.