On a very sunny winter day in the end of February, I went cycling at the foot of Mt. Akagi with a international group. It was my 6th time to ride the same route, yet I enjoyed discovering lots of something new.
Actually I was a bit afraid of cycling in this area in this season, as southern part of Akagi area is well know for "Akagi Oroshi" which is dry and strong wind blowing down from the top of Mt. Akagi, but luckily my worry was unfounded.
Look! Paula took her coat off and she was cycling with her pink half sleeves T-shirt 🙂
Ewa and I were pretending to be cold, but it was not cold at all!
The tour started at 9:30 am at JR Maebashi station where we could reach within 2 hours from Tokyo by JR train. There were three guests, Ewa who loves the local area in Gunma but it's first time for her to visit Maebashi, Paula who recently moved to Japan from Europe so enjoying discovering new thing every time she travels and Peter who is serious cyclists living near Narita and today was his second time to visit this area. The guides including me were bit nervous and really hoping that they would enjoy today's cycling.
Toshiko is explaining today's route while guests enjoying rice crackers and coffee
Our first stop was Seikaen, a shop founded about 150 years ago to sell traditional rice crackers called Senbei. The current owner is the 5th generation, he is preserving the tradition at the same time redesigning the interior of the shop as well as the packaging of their products. Guests were nicely surprised when they heard the history of the shop was such long.
Various flavors Senbei and packages are so stylish!
Cups of coffee and Hojicha (roasted Japanese green tea) woke us up and we continued cycling to Chuo-Maebashi station where we took a train with our e-bikes. Jomo railway is one of very few railway companies in Japan that allow us to bring our bikes in the trains without holding or putting in bags.
Jumping on our e-bikes, we started cycling from Ogo station. We headed for a Japanese Shinto shrine called Santai Shrine. The main deity of this shrine is god of safe childbirth, that's why we saw many young couple who were wishing babies and young families with small kids who visited the shrine to express to gratitude. One more thing that is special about this shrine is giant rocks piled up at the back of the main shrine. Those rocks were actually flying from Mt. Akagi when the it had erupted long long time before!
Toshiko explains about the manner to worship at Shinto shrines.
After leaving from Santai Shrine, we cycled to Omuro Park where we could see huge ancient tombs. Gunma have many of those huge burial mounds from 5 - 6 century remaining in their original forms. And more surprisingly we can walk up to the top of mounds and we can even walk inside the tomb. How generous the ancient kings are!
Always very Instagenic!
The guests were super happy when Shinobu bought beautiful strawberries locally grown and currently in season! We did "strawberry tasting" of two different brands, Yayoi Hime (means princess Yahoi) and OiC berry (means yummy berry)
Both are very sweet and juicy.
After Omuro Park, we cycled about 30 minuets (well, I told them the next stop, a restaurant for lunch was just within 10 minutes ride, and which was completely wrong, they were mad at me X-) ), finally got to a local restaurant Ota Shokudo which is very popular among local people.
On the way to the restaurant, we stopped at the top of a small hill, where we could enjoy the perfect view of Mt. Akagi.
(left : Katsu Curry Ramen - Curry soup Ramen and deep fried pork on top!)
(Right: Both of them enjoyed Sauce Katsu set menu. Yum!!!)
Well, I think we were well deserved to eat those high-calorie lunches after cycling whole morning, although our bikes are e-bikes 🙂
We were fully charged and finally headed to our last stop, a soy sauce brewery. Oka Naosaburo Shoten is the name of soy sauce brewery which has 230 years history. Mr. Hoshi explained in detail how to make soy sauce inside the 100-year-old soy sauce cellar. We were all impressed only 2 percent of soy sauce are now made in those wooden barrels with traditional method using Japanese soy beans. Guests were happy to ask many questions to him and he was kind enough to answer any questions we made.
Chocolate ice cream? No, no. It's soy sauce flavor, of course!
All of us safely arrived at Akagi station and our tour was successfully finished. Nice weather, beautiful view and more over, lovely guests, we had a super fun time. Thank you all for coming to Akagi area for cycling. And we are really looking forward to having more and more overseas tourists after overcoming Covid-19!
Yukiko
