Day 5, Biei

Today’s destination is officially not a national park, but you could see one on a clear day. It was the town of Biei (pronounce “Bee-ay”) near the Daisetsuzan national park. Again, it took 2 hours by train to get there, but it was worth it. Biei is famous for its lovely rolling hills, nice views (on clear days, which it wasn’t, see photo) and flower industry. The flowers didn’t really impress me, but the remote countryside roads did allow for some nice quiet bicycling. That is, it was quiet when you didn’t run into the busloads of Japanese tourists. They were apparently prepared to pay money to look at a small field of flowers (and at each other, because it was very crowded). The field was so small that the average flower-farm in the Netherlands would have gone bankrupt long ago. But then again, they don’t ask an admission fee.

And to tell the truth, the fields of ‘wild’ flowers were actually prettier. Biei is also known for its famous named trees. Apparently they feature regularly in TV commercials, and that fact alone attracts many tourists. One of the trees is called the Tree of Philosophy (see photo, to the left of the flower).

Biei is such a small town that I was just as much of a sight as the flowers surrounding the town. When walking back to the train station, I heard some children say ‘haro’ ‘haro’ (this sounds as ‘hallo’). When I looked, they started waving, and when I waved back they had to laugh. This kind of thing would happen more often during this trip, but it is quite funny the first time.

While I was writing this text (well, the original Dutch version), the lady of the ryokan gave me some ‘moon cakes’ and rice crackers. This was because of the ‘furu mun shukan’, full moon custom/tradition. Indeed it was full moon around that day. For this custom they put dishes with fruit and seasonal vegetables in front of the window, and little cakes you can eat.

Tomorrow’s story will be a short one, because I will have to sit in the train for 7 hours on my way to Morioka. These 7 hours are divided over 3 different trains, each time with less than 5 minutes transfer time. Which is more than enough in Japan.