As explained earlier, limited by my wife’s physical condition, there are many places we cannot and dare not go; additionally, having visited many places in Japan already, we have little interest in “standard” attractions.

My wife’s itinerary design this time mostly involves revisiting places we have been to before but want to explore in more detail. Take Karuizawa as an example: although we went there last summer vacation, it was a day trip based in Nagano. This time, we decided to stay for two nights to savor it. Similarly, we visited Matsumoto before, also as a day trip from Nagano. As for Niigata and Yamagata, this will be our first visit.

Unplanned Discoveries#

Geography#

This area is known as the “Northern Alps.” Geographically, it obviously has nothing to do with the “Alps” in Europe, but rather early European explorers who came here marveled at its mountains being remarkably similar to the European “Alps,” hence the name.

We had previously admired the summer snow scenes of Tateyama Kurobe, so we won’t repeat the visit this time.

Perhaps because of this connection, there are also many facilities themed around European culture here. For example, in Echigo-Yuzawa, there is a restaurant on the mountain called “Restaurant Edelweiss.” For an old man like me, seeing Edelweiss naturally reminds me of the movie “The Sound of Music.”

Also, in Hakuba Village, there are many facilities themed around “Heidi, Girl of the Alps.” This is a Japanese animation from decades ago, with its story background set in the European Alps. There is a classic swinging scene in “Heidi,” and on the peak of Hakuba Village, it has been turned into an actual mechanical swing ride.

It is in these places that many of my childhood memories and European sentiments were evoked.

Japanese History#

Tokugawa Ieyasu became the ultimate winner of Japan’s Sengoku period and established the shogunate regime. Prior to this, Japan’s political center was in Kyoto. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, fearing Tokugawa Ieyasu’s growing power, reassigned him to Edo (today’s Tokyo). Even if Edo at that time couldn’t be called a barren land, it was a remote backwater. However, through painstaking management, Tokugawa Ieyasu stubbornly turned this watery region into the future capital.

After the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, it was politically very keen on suppressing dissent. At that time, “attainder” (kaieki) or “exile” were severe punishments second only to the death penalty. Many once-prominent factions were relegated to remote areas like Yamagata, but they did not give up. Instead, they left behind many stories of hard work and local revitalization, which I will detail later.