Oze

hey all,

So yesterday I got back from my trip to Oze. I tried to make it an Outdoor Club trip, but there were snags. About 3 other people were interested, but only one actually emailed; the rest replied on the outdoor club website. In my opinion, the new club website is very poorly designed and I avoid it like the plague, so I wasn't aware that other people were even interested until pretty late.

In any case, Michi and I were definitely going to go, and as it happened the other people either lost interest or canceled at the last second.

Although several places seem to say that Oze is only 2 hours from Tokyo, that might be if you have your own private helicopter. For the rest of us, it means 2 hours by train (one of those hours by the shinkansen or "bullet train;" otherwise you need 3 hours), and a little over 2 hours by bus.

So why would we want to go to all that trouble? Well, Oze is one of the largest marshes in Japan, which makes the area a lot like Michigan, except with mountains.

Hiuchigatake, as seen across from Lake Oze. Day 1

Day 1.

Yours truly. Day 1

Lake Oze as seen from top of Hiuchigatake.

Red circle is our starting point for Day 2. Red trail shows our hiking path. Day 2

The wooden walkways laid out through the center of the marsh. Day 3.

We started from Oshimizu and finished at Hatomachitoge.

Black line shows hiking route. Red dots show our camp sites.

I'd really like to give a detailed itinerary, except that it is already 21:00 over here and I have work tomorrow. I'll just leave it at the following:

• Day 1: Get up at 6:00. Leave Tokyo around 7:00. Arrive at Numata train station around 9:00. Take incredibly slow bus from Numata to Oshimizu. Arrive around 11:30. Walk on really boring path for almost 3 hours. Arrive at campsite next to Lake Oze. Take hot shower and eat instant ramen.
• Day 2: De-camp and hike next to Lake Oze for an hour. Hide heavy luggage in the trees before hiking up Hiuchigatake, a 2356m mountain. Hike down the mountain, pick up luggage, and hike several more hours to arrive at second camp site. Eat more instant ramen, and take another hot shower.
• Day 3: It starts to rain before we can even eat breakfast or break the tent down, so we have to do everything in the rain and are already soaked before we begin hiking. My backpack is extra heavy thanks to the rain soaked tent inside. Really easy hiking this day, which is good because we are both tired and the rain keeps up from 4:00 until 12:00. We make record time, completing the course from our second camp site to Hatomachitoge more than an hour quicker than the map time estimate.

I saw almost no foreigners, which is kinda rare. We did visit somewhat off season, just like we visited Kyoto off season earlier this January. As I understand it, those wooden walkways get jam packed with people and are a real pain to be on during the busy times. You get several bus loads of 70 year olds who walk really slowly, stop to take pictures every few seconds, and keep up a lot of random chatter and you can imagine how bad the situation could be. You can't pass them either, because although it looks like regular ground, they have those planks for a reason: it really is a marsh, and you don't want to step in the water.

Cheers,