10.12

the 183 curves of usui pass

walking the "shin-nakasendo"

it felt like i'd barely done anything in japan before i suddenly found myself rushing back to tokyo to find somewhere else to store my suitcase, i could no longer keep it at my friends' airbnb because they were leaving, which meant that i was officially one month into the trip. i had known since the start that i was going to be playing the long game so i hadn't really been in a hurry to get moving, i didn't really care that i had basically squandered my first twenty days in japan just farting around in tokyo (though there were a handful of fun unexpected sidequests like comiket or mt. takao), i viewed it like slowly allowing myself to adjust to the temperature of a pool before fully immersing myself, there was no need to expose myself to the shock of jumping straight in. unfortunately, i do feel like i let down some of my friends, prior to the trip i made a lot of bombastic declarations about my ambitious plans and they probably expected me to lead them on daring expeditions to hidden gems even domestic tourists didn't know about, then in reality i ended up spending what felt like weeks going to all the wrong stores in tokyo looking for a cardboard tube to transport my B2-size posters in (i finally found one at LoFT). i think most of them were probably fine with it, one friend was perfectly content to just go to akiba every day or visit all the lame tourist spots he's been to before, and another friend had plenty to do accompanying his girlfriend to all the labubu matcha spots she wanted to go to, but there was one friend in particular who seemed disappointed with the direction of the trip... in japan he'd imagined drinking at cool local hole-in-the-wall izakayas or seeing epic nature stuff or something, instead we were all "let's go to the arcade and shop in akiba again, then hit up cocoichi and see if we can handle the next spice level, and afterwards let's get wasted in the airbnb drinking strong zero while watching the mummy (200 yen book-off dvd) or 30 rock funniest clip compilations".

luckily, that friend was flexible and open to being persuaded to extend his trip, so i told him "come with me if you want to save your japan trip". i promised that i would take him on an epic whirlwind journey right to the depths of the heart of the soul of the genuine REAL japanfunnily enough this is the exact kind of sales pitch they use to sell people on the most touristy overpriced “authentic experiences” in super obscure off-the-beaten-path destinations like kyoto. convinced, he changed his flight to one week later, though it certainly helped that doing so also earned him a $200 flight credit since flights the next week were actually cheaper. "ah but wait, what am i going to do with all my bags..." he said. "don't worry, i know a guy."

the guy was the one (1) friend i had successfully made in tokyo, shibs of the comiket excursion, who graciously allowed me to store my suitcase filled with "the haul" at his place and then also let my friend store his stuff there too, this was a pretty massive favor because this was a tiny tokyo apartment and we were asking for like 10% of the space. it was pretty convenient for us too because somehow shibs lived only one stop away, the problem was that he could only meet us after work at 7pm and the airbnb check out was at 11am. naturally it was also raining pretty hard that morning, though there was a well-timed lull right at 11 that got me to the nearby metro stop not too wet despite lacking a raincoat and umbrella. maybe that was a good thing because my friend had put on a raincoat and ended up soaked, not from rain but from sweat due to the humidity. he was also pretty burdened by bags, carrying a duffel bag and wheeling a little rolling bag, and looked a bit like a turtle wearing both a big backpacking pack on his back and another smaller backpack across his front, we were not going to be able to go far like this. so, we headed right over to the station by shibs and left our bags in coin lockers for later.

now all we had to do was kill seven hours in tokyo somehow while it continued to rain profusely, for lack of any other ideas i immediately suggested "let's go to the garlic restaurant for lunch". the garlic restaurant was a restaurant in the general area i randomly stumbled across one day on google, it is exactly what it sounds like, they exclusively serve garlic-heavy dishes like garlic bread, roasted garlic, garlic soup, pasta with garlic sauce, steak topped with fried garlic, etc. even tokyo's lamest neighborhoods have restaurants like that, portland WISHES they were cool enough. it is apparently a whole genre of restaurant because a review from one aficionado said "this garlic restaurant is pretty overpriced compared to others, but the quality is good". i can't comment myself about that because when we arrived at the restaurant, a sign posted outside said that they weren't doing lunch service anymore, so we diverted to a nearby bougie hamburg restaurant. then we looked around for a bit for a coffee shop with empty seats and spent the maximum acceptable time there, then we rode off in a random direction and went to another coffee shop because it said you could smoke inside and we'd never seen such a thing, turns out that applied only to these special "heated tobacco" products. as the sun set, we went out and ended up walking along the shakujii river for a while, in the growing darkness after the rain it was such an incredible vibe that it could have been one of those 4k Ultra HD Japan Ambiance videos, incredibly there was barely anybody else out there walking even though probably tens of thousands of people lived in the vicinity. it was so good that we decided to keep walking and abandoned our original plan to try and go to the garlic restaurant for dinner, instead we'd get something after meeting up with shibs, he'd probably be down to come with us too. as we made our way to a nearby station at the end of the walk, we even ended up crashing some kind of neighborhood street festival for kids, looking hilariously out of place.

when we met up with shibs he was indeed down to get dinner with us, and it was on us of course as thanks for accepting our burdens. he suggested torikizoku, another one of those delightful japanese chains tourists rarely make it to because they're often located on the top floors of nondescript buildings without signs outside in english screaming "AUTHENTIC JAPANESE IZAKAYA! ENGLISH MENU AVAILABLE!". on shibs' recommendation i'd already been to one, it's a yakitori and drinking chain with a lively atmosphere, they manage to cram a truly unbelievable amount of seating into a tiny floor space with cozy rustic wood interiors. but he had failed to inform me of their biggest gimmick so initially i was scared to order on their tablets because nothing had a price listed, i was worried they were trying to pull a fast one and i might accidentally order something super expensive. i managed to figure it out after a few minutes: no prices were listed because EVERYTHING is 390 yen (approx $2.50), including alcohol. just be careful, it does add up...

over a round of mega beers (why would you EVER get the small beer? it's the same price!), shibs asked where we were headed off to. "well, we've got a hotel in takasaki booked for tonight and that'll put us in good position to hike the historic nakasendo over usui pass into the scenic mountain resort town of karuizawa tomorrow..." turns out, shibs had actually been up there before to visit the "usui tunnels", and we asked if he had any tips. "yeah, make sure to stop by this coffee shop called 'mini mini' in a round hut just off the path, and do the side trip to the lake, it's got a cool dam. also, watch out for the leeches... also i think i saw a ghost there..." the WHAT?! shibs proceeded to tell the harrowing tale of his visit - at the end of the day, he went to relax in the onsen and started feeling unusually light headed, then he looked down at his legs and saw they were covered in blood and little worm things... the staff took care of it because i guess they've seen it before. he also showed us a video he took walking back in the dark with weird howling in the background, probably a monkey but you never know...

shibs was a bit disappointed to hear we were staying so far away, he said he'd wanted to try and do some karaoke too or something. under the influence of a mega toriki high ball, i insisted that we could still squeeze karaoke in if we went right away, there was still plenty of time until our last train around 10:30. so, we packed up at toriki and managed to get in a good hour of karaoke with the all-you-can-drink package to boot, and the most humiliating thing managed to be not my singing but when i accidentally kicked the door and caused the waiter with our next round of drinks coming in to spill one on himself. we made it onto the not-quite-last train, thought that meant we just had longer to wait around on the platform transferring at akabane to the actually-last train to takasaki. to pass the time i drunkenly fooled around with the green card ticket machine on the platform because shibs had mentioned something earlier about "treating ourselves" to a green car, but after seeing the price was a thousand yen i decided it was a little much. i accidentally pressed the wrong button and bought it anyway, imbuing my pasmo card with the power to claim a green car seat. it's pretty cool how it works, once you get on board you find an empty seat and "claim" it by holding your card to a reader on the ceiling, changing an indicator from green to red. if a better seat becomes available later you can even move seats by tapping your card on a different seat's reader to transfer. the train started out extremely full, as last trains tend to be, but we were going all the way and saw it gradually empty out before finally reaching the terminus at takasaki shortly after 1am. it was a bit of an odd feeling being on a japanese train that late, typically they stop running around midnight, as tourists out partying late have often found out only after becoming stranded.

in takasaki we stayed at a business hotel chain called "toyoko inn", going purely based off vibes my guess is that they're japan's second biggest hotel chain after APA because they seem to be absolutely everywhere you see APA too. toyoko is kind of like the light-side counterpart to APA, their color scheme is a softer blue/light gray to APA's severe and slightly menacing black/red, it's the feminine (bizarre business quirk: toyoko heavily favors hiring women, according to a chart on their site their total workforce is 80% female, with management being 96.9% female) to APA's edgy masculine, and toyoko puts bibles in their rooms instead of political tracts. their big selling point is their free breakfast from 6:30 to 9:00, which i skipped because i hate waking up early and don't usually feel that hungry in the morning anyway. i have dragged myself to enough free business hotel breakfasts (including at toyoko) to get a good idea of what they look like, similar to hotel chains in america they've all converged on a "standard" business hotel breakfast. there's always rice and miso soup, curry (i didn't know this before but apparently quite popular for breakfast in japan), tamagoyaki, cold meatballs in sauce and/or hamburg, okra with natto...

though it annoys me greatly, the one upside about the standard japanese hotel check out time being 10am is that it forces me to get out earlier than i normally would, especially important in japan where the sun sets pretty early even during the summer (there's no daylight savings time either). so, we found ourselves bright and early on the shin'etsu main line from takasaki to yokokawa, the closest station to usui pass and the current terminus of that segment of the shin'etsu main line. formerly, the shin'etsu main line continued past yokokawa up usui pass to karuizawa, but the usui pass section was notoriously steep (at least for trains) and discontinued in 1997 almost immediately upon opening of the nagano (now hokuriku) shinkansen, which on its route between takasaki and karuizawa bypasses usui pass using a long tunnel. the old usui pass rail line has since been turned into a walking trail called アプトの道, the "Apt Path", which goes through the aforementioned "usui tunnels". the name comes from the "abt system" for handling steep inclines that was used on usui pass from 1893 to 1963, for some reason the japanese decided to transliterate it as "Apt" instead of "Abt", maybe because it's easier to say. in my translation i will not be changing it back because i find "Apt Path" more orthographically satisfying. anyways, the original abt route was retired in 1963 after they built a new pair of tracks through usui pass that used a new system where trains were boosted over the incline by attaching extra EF63 electric "helper" locomotives, and those were themselves retired in 1997 after the shinkansen line opened. so, there are actually two different sets of abandoned rail lines and tunnels through usui pass, the "usui tunnels" along the apt path that everyone knows and loves are actually from the original line that closed in 1963, though there are some sections at the start and end where both the old and new lines are coterminus.

at the time, i knew absolutely none of the above, all i knew was that there was the nakasendo trail between yokokawa and karuizawa, then somewhere in the mix there were also the "usui tunnels" that seemed worth checking out too. i figured we'd figure things out at yokokawa station, and sure enough there was an obvious path (the Apt Path) that seemed to be heading up in the right direction. yokokawa station also had a big railway museum that i would have loved to visit, unfortunately i didn't think we could spare the time because we had a long walk of uncertain length ahead of us. we did stop briefly to grab a soft serve at a little stand by a tourist info center, and as we sat around licking our scoops (or, uhhh, whatever it's called when it's soft serve... sludges?), an honest-to-goodness steam locomotive passed by inside the neighboring rail museum. i don't recall ever being this close to one before, it carried a strong industrial odor with it, iron and soot and lube, a taste of what a city's atmosphere must have been like during the distant days of the industrial revolution...

the apt path starts with a long straight segment at a gentle incline, at that point you're still working your way out of the valley. this first section had been part of the newer line that closed in 1997 too, in fact only one of its two tracks had been converted to a path, the other one was still operational and used for a novelty trolley thing that takes people from the railway museum up to an onsen located in the foothills (presumably the one where shibs discovered he was covered in leeches). along the way, a vintage EF63 electric locomotive passed by us on the track, that model had actually been purpose-built for usui pass and the railway museum still maintains several in operational condition, according to their website they'll teach you to drive one for 30k yen. this was also the place where shibs filmed his ghost video, though in broad daylight it wasn't that spooky, even when passing by the abandoned brick building that used to be an electrical substation. the most impressive sight, however, was the gigantic concrete expressway bridge we passed below, like the railway the old usui pass road (route 18) has a fancy new bypass too. my friend marvelled at the single massive pillar in the middle supporting the bridge, "wow, that's SO MUCH concrete!" if only you knew...

the apt path splits away from the newer usui pass line just before the onsen, and just past the onsen is the first tunnel. in my excitement to reach it i nearly left my friend behind, not realizing at first that he had suddenly stopped. when i turned around, i saw why: there was a MONKEY by the side of the path. i had known there was a possibility of encountering wild monkeys but i'd already given up on it in advance, these are the kinds of things that never happen to me... and now here we were, being greeted by a monkey even before we'd made it into our first tunnel. the monkey sat there by the side of the path chewing something with that serene monkey look that makes you certain they have access to some kind of secret enlightened wisdom, but at the same time i was still a little tense because i've heard too much about random monkey attacks, you never know when they're going to suddenly go apeshit...

i didn't know exactly what to expect inside the tunnels, i was entirely prepared to either use my phone as a flashlight or blindly fumble my way through pitch-black tunnels, turns out there was nothing to worry about because lights had been installed inside and they were all pretty well-lit. before going in i did make sure to pull up my socks as high as i possibly could, shibs wasn't exactly sure where he'd picked up his parasitic passengers, but a damp tunnel seemed to me like it could be leech central. i was still worried because shibs had also said the little worm leeches are JUMPERS that can leap up improbable distances to attack, he'd recommended long pants (i had none) or spraying our legs with salt water (too lazy). at the very least everything seemed pretty dry this time of year so it didn't seem to be "leech season".

shortly after the first tunnel, i spotted a little side trail marked "NAKASENDO". aha, somehow we'd stumbled upon our original goal, i knew we'd eventually find it taking the most obvious path from the station. we walked up it a bit to see what it was like, a very nice hiking trail heading up the mountain through a scenic forest that we both agreed looked like it could be fun, however there was no way we could leave the usui tunnels path having only gone through a single tunnel and without having seen the famous bridge that we'd just found out was only a little further ahead. we may not have made that decision had i known what i know now, but more on that later...

a bit further along, we made both of the detours shibs recommended, to the coffee shop (pretty sweet) and to the lake. on an infoboard at the lake, we saw the first official acknowledgement of the leech threat, a warning sign using the "leech attack" irasutoya clip art that of course exists. the lake, we discovered, was artificial, formed by a tall weir at the bottom end with a thin curtain of water running down it. my friend was surprised to see a setup like that not being used for power generation at all, instead it seemed to exist solely to create a lake to base a park around. our walk around the lake seemed to support that theory, it had a lot of high-investment installations like not one but TWO arched red-brick bridges clearly designed as landmarks, and there was even a non-ex-railroad pedestrian TUNNEL on the path around the lake. as is common out in rural japan, the park was almost entirely abandoned, the only other visitors were a couple people fishing. the park was still being maintained but inconsistently, as though there wasn't enough manpower left for the whole thing, some areas were trimmed and others left to become overgrown. the bridges looked good from afar, but on top of them plants were sprouting in the cracks between the bricks, overall it created an atmosphere of strolling through the monumental remnants of a golden age long passed. the only thing that looked fresh was an strikingly incongruous power line tower rising out of the trees nearby, the electricity suspended in wires a safe couple hundred feet from the ground, just passing by. by the train, by the highway, by the power, this was a bypassed area.

the tunnels began in earnest when we returned to the path, ploughing through hillsides in order to keep the route just straight enough for trains to handle. the cool and the shade in the tunnels was refreshing amidst japan's unrelenting summer weather, i remarked at some point "i wish all trails had this many tunnels!" the gradual incline that had apparently made this section brutal for trains was barely noticeable on foot, we chugged ahead steadily despite our heavy packs and the fact that it was technically all uphill. it probably would have felt amazing to fly down the path on a pike, i thought, though i was also glad for the "NO BIKES" signs posted everywhere that meant we didn't have to constantly dodge bikes rocketing down. soon we emerged from one of the longest tunnels and found ourselves at the most famous part of the route, megane bridge, the largest brick arched bridge in japan. up to this point we'd pretty much had all the tunnels to ourselves (and the occasional monkey), but suddenly there were a bunch of people around, japanese tourists who had driven up and parked in a nearby lot for the bridge. we continued across and headed into the tunnel on the other side of the bridge, within minutes we found ourselves alone again, once again demonstrating the rule i'd observed at aoshima that nobody walks more than a couple minutes away from major sights.

a few tunnels later, we reached the terminus of the apt path at the former kumanotaira station (and substation), where it rejoins the newer rail line through usui pass. it was pretty eerie up there in the mountain clearing with the abandoned buildings, something about the rail line's limp electrical cables still hanging above us unpowered for close to thirty years really added to it. the problem was, we were still far short of our goal of karuizawa, i had mistakenly assumed that the apt path followed the entire course of the former shin'etsu line up usui pass all the way to karuizawa. instead, we had run out of trail only about halfway up usui pass. as far as i could see, here were our options:

i was pulling for the last option but my friend was pretty hesistant, he said that walking on asphalt isn't as pleasant as i thought and he was not reassured by my inability to provide solid information about the hike ahead ("i think google maps said it should take 3 hours and it's entirely uphill"). his pack was also a lot heavier than mine, but i said we could always just try and hitchhike if it is too much, plus didn't he go backpacking all the time? wasn't he literally backpacking just a week or two before heading to japan? shouldn't he be used to this? "yeah but while backpacking we have lots to eat and take frequent breaks..." came the reply. eventually he grudgingly agreed to take the road, saying "this is a terrible idea, but fuck it..."

from the old kumanotaira station there was a staircase down to a big parking lot by the road, which was almost entirely empty. the bus was immediately ruled out as an option after i checked in at the bus stop and saw a notice that all bus service was suspended indefinitely, so we just decided to send it and started walking up the road.

the first thing i noticed about the usui pass road was that every single curve was numbered and labelled with a little blue sign that said カーブ and then the number below, i've never seen anything like it. i don't think it's something they do for every curvy mountain road in japan, it seems that usui pass in particular is a famous course for street racing, the drifting style made famous by "initial D". supposedly it was the home course of the "drift king" keiichi tsuchiyai actually saw keiichi tsuchiya in person a few weeks later when he was checking into my hotel in utsunomiya and even hosted some official events we'd seen posters for by the coffee shop, by the parking lot there was a sign commemorating "Sayaka corner" (curve 82), where just last year i guess pro drifter sayaka shimoda pulled some sick moves. presumably the curves are all labelled like yard lines on a football field so drivers and fans can easily refer to specific curves, getting in arguments over which curves are the gnarliest or who handled one the best.

you could also use the curves for makeshift wayfinding, suddenly i understood why the local guidemap we'd seen earlier had all these "C-##" markings along the road, it was indicating curve numbers. i vaguely recalled from the map that the top of usui pass had been marked "C-163""but wait, isn't this post called 'the 183 curves of usui pass'?" yeah, turns out i remembered wrong there..., so at the start when we passed by the curve 82 sign at sayaka corner i remarked "alright, we're already halfway!". though the curves were obviously not equally spaced, they did serve as handy progress markers, seeing the numbers on them steadily go up one-by-one served as a good source of encouragement.

the road was quite busy with sightseers making their way to karuizawa along the "scenic route", but as i expected it was pretty safe because cars had to go quite slow around the curves, plus the polite and cautious japanese drivers always gave us a wide berth while passing, veering deep into the other lane if there was no oncoming traffic. a lot of them definitely looked like they were gawking at the crazy foreigners with big backpacks trying to walk the usui pass road. not long after we started, we actually saw another guy walking along the road, a train otaku with a big camera who was photographing the abandoned shin'etsu main line tracks occasionally accessible from the roadtrain otaku have many options when it comes to an area to specialize in, some choose 廃線はいせん, abandoned train lines. we exchanged konnichiwa's with him like japanese hikers do when passing each other on trails, as if there was nothing unusual at all about our present circumstances walking along a road. i was glad we encountered him early on because it felt like it granted us permission to walk along the road, just in case i rehearsed in my head the line "well officer, we saw a japanese guy doing it so we thought it was ok".

as the curves went on and on, reaching and then climbing through the low triple digits, i started feeling tempted to try our luck on the abandoned shin'etsu main line tracks every time we saw them again. while we had been walking up the apt path i really had not appreciated how direct train tracks are, with their willingness to tunnel or bridge their way through obstacles. the usui pass road felt even curvier than the infamous road to hana on maui, it may not have been nearly as long but the density of curves, the CPM (curves per mile), was unmatched, or maybe it just felt like that because i had plenty of time to savor each and every one while on foot. drawing a straight line on google earth between sayaka corner and usui pass shows that they're only 3.2km apart as the crow flies, but along the road it takes 7km to get between them. at the very least, the incline on the road was even more forgiving than the train line's, the road had a much greater distance over which to mete out the elevation gain.

besides making sure to acknowledge every single curve marker, walking along the road i spent most of my time looking at the adjacent hillside, a veritable gallery exhibiting the astonishing variety of anti-erosion structures the japanese have devised. i am not exaggerating when i say there was not a single inch of raw virgin hillside abutting that road. i saw classic rock walls, steep smooth concrete walls, concrete walls with various patterns etched into them, walls constructed from prefab concrete blocks or metal cages filled with rocks, and lumpy parts where it looks like they just poured concrete over the bare hillside, which ends up looking a bit like the fake rocks at cheap theme parks. most of the walls were also topped with various metal fences, ranging from basic short chain-link to a fence so over the top that i dubbed it "the jurassic park fence". the hillside structures were frequently layered, as if they had been added on to over the course of the years, there might be a short bottom layer of rock wall barely visible through overgrown moss that's practically become part of the hillside, then a smooth slightly-angled concrete wall with just a thin layer of water stains and lichen, and finally it's all topped off with a shiny new jurassic park fence that might just been installed this year. it did appear that they were actively adding on to the hillsides, we passed by several roadside construction sites (though they appeared to be on break that day). give it another century and perhaps the whole hillside will finally be completely artificial, give it another millenium and perhaps the concrete will be buried in a new layer of sediment and vegetation, becoming just the last (and most unusual) geologic layer.

i began to grow a little concerned when curve 163 approached with no end in sight, in fact what was in sight was the next curve sign numbered 164. my friend was falling further and further behind, i tried to stay upbeat and keep morale up but even i was starting to have doubts, "uhhhh you know maybe it was actually 173 curves... or 183... or 193..." we no longer had a definite end point to strive for, the curves were just counting up meaninglessly now, we were stuck in an unknowable limbo climbing endless curves, at some point we'd reach a curve labelled ∞ and past there all the signs would be the same, カーブ ∞, カーブ ∞, カーブ ∞. but luckily my memory lapse about the curve count hadn't been too severe because not long after, we rounded curve 183 and beyond it the road straightened out the most we'd seen for kilometers. in the distance a sign over the road was visible, "NAGANO PREFECTURE - KARUIZAWA CITY". "WE MADE IT! WE MADE IT! IT'S THE LAST CURVE! CURVE 183 IS THE LAST CURVE!" i shouted jubilantly before taking a hideous commemorative selfie pointing slack-jawed at the curve 183 sign...