We woke up to another cloudy day sadly, we never got to see the peaks of the Alps from Kamikochi Valley, which was a real shame. What made up for it was the most delicious breakfast I have ever had. The chef was again amazing and made me a fully gluten, egg, and milk-free meal. The yaki-dofu was possibly the best thing I have ever eaten haha.

As we had chosen to have breakfast early we had time for a walk before taking the bus out of the valley and getting back to our car. The day before we had walked north up the valley, that morning we decided to walk south and see downriver. It was a lovely stroll, we were very altert to bears as they had been seen in that area a few days before. Although it was cloudy, we could almost see the tops of the closest peaks.

After our wander we got back to our room packed up, and had checked out by 9am. We had a noisy walk, thanks to dragging our luggage, back to the bus stop, and waited for the return bus. It took 25 minutes to get back to our car, and soon we were on the road. Even though we had a good nights sleep on our comfortable futon, we were a bit worn out after our long walk the day before, and soon pulled over at the first conbini to pick up some caffeine filled beverages. Once we were back on the road, we started to hear a rumble in the distance, and soon the sky opened up and a torrential rain started. There was lightening everywhere, and visibility was awful, we crawled along the road in a queue of traffic heading back towards Matsumoto. The storm didn’t let up until we were well north of Matsumoto on our way up to the famous town of Hakuba. Two and a half hours of driving later, and several michi no eki stops, we made it to Hakuba. Too early to check in we immediately got to Happo Gondola station, as I was excited to see the mirror like Happo Ike pond.

Before making our way up the mountain on the chair lifts and gondola we popped into the shop, and we introduced to the (somewhat terrifying) mascot of Hakuba – a white man-horse with wings. To understand where this character comes from we need to understand the kanji that make up the towns name 白馬. For those who can read kanji you might notice that the kanji meanings are white 白 and horse 馬, which can be together pronounced as both Hakuba and/or Shirouma – confusingly different places in the area use the same kanji but different readings, such as the nearby peak Shirouma-dake 白馬岳.

Backing slowly away from the wildly named VICTOIRE CHEVAL BLANC MURAO III we hopped into the first gondola and headed up the mountain. Sadly, we were soon enveloped in mist, and had absolutely no news of the mountains we were on, or the town below. Two chairlifts later we arrived at the start point of our hike up to Happo Ike, which we were told was too far away to reach and be back before the chair lift closed. We thought otherwise, and giving ourselves and turn around time, we started the misty climb up.

We kept hoping that the mist would lift, or that we would ascend past the clouds, but this never happened, the mist got thicker as we climbed, but it made a really interesting climb! Finally we stumbled upon the pond, quite literally as we couldn’t see anything haha. We were greeted, not with a mirror image of the surrounding alps, but of a few inches of pond before it was lost to the mist.

With disappointment we turned around and made our way back down to the chair lift, and started the descent back to the car. In a scary turn of events when half way down on the second chair lift they came to a complete stop, and we were left suspended waiting for something to happen. Sounding very far away we could just make out that an announcement was being made, but the way the sound travelled in the mist made it indeciferable, except for the word sumimasen, which has many meanings such as sorry or excuse me, and we hoped that meant this was temporary. A few moments later the chair lift started up again, and we were safely back in the valley.

Our whole adventure up to Happo Ike had only taken three hours, but it meant we were now able to check in to our home for the night, which turned out to be a rather shoddy, but well located, cabin in Hakuba town. On entering the property we were greeted by something I had never seen before, a warning for stink bugs! Although helpful in English, with no image of the bus (cute cartoon aside) we had no idea what to look out for, but were respectful of any bug we found!