A Walk in the Woods

Saturday, April 11, 2026

The plan for today is Nature. We will venture out of town and up into the mountains. We will visit a 1500-year-old Shinto shrine and, if there is time, a mountain lake.

Surprisingly, it is possible to get there on a city bus, though it takes 80 minutes. There were only a few tourists on the bus with us. The bus made several stops near the center of Takasaki and local people got on and off. After a while, the urban congestion eased up and we started to see small plots of vegetables between the houses. The houses started to thin out and gave way to fields and forest as we reached the foothills of a mountain range. The bus began to climb. We passed clots of Saturday cyclists riding laboriously uphill.  Finally, after driving through a huge red torii gate, we found ourselves at a fork in the road where a small settlement had sprung up. The bus drove on a sort distance and we came to the end of the small community. The bus let us off in a parking area and we walked back to the fork and began to walk uphill along the other arm to another large torii where the road ended and a trail to the shrine began. 

This trail would take us to Haruna Shrine, a Shinto shrine founded in 586 CE and dedicated to the gods of Water, Fire, and Agriculture. Haruna Shrine The shrine is considered a “power spot” and attracts many visitors.  Power Spot

At the beginning of the trail there was a pictorial map. It showed several tall, skinny mountains near the shrine and showed the name of each one in Japanese. I thought this was a stylized depiction of the mountains in this area. When we actually got to the shrine we saw a number of interesting rock formations. They were tall, skinny spires, or pinnacles, towering protectively over the buildings of the shrine. They were very other-worldly in appearance. The pictorial map wasn’t stylized after all.

A sign near the entrance read:

“It is said that demons used to spend time high in the mountains where the gods reside. As clouds roll into the peaks of Mt. Haruna bringing with them thunder and lightning, rain falls and blesses the field below. This is why Mt. Haruna is believed to be the god of Water, Fire, and Agriculture, and Haruna shrine the home of the god.”

Most of the trail was paved with paving stones, but it was otherwise a rustic trail through the woods. Every so often there would be a bronze statue. There were some enormous, ancient cedar trees along the way. The trail was about 1 km, but seemed longer because it was all uphill and because we stopped frequently on the way to look at interesting things.

At first there were very few others on the trail and we were the only “foreigners”. As the day went on, more foreign visitors showed up. 

Near the end of the trail we found a couple of little booths where souvenirs and snacks were sold. I bought a piece of konnyaku on a stick. Konnyaku is a Gunma specialty. It is a type of mountain yam. When it is cooked it turns into a purple rubbery glop, something like the toy, Gak, if you remember it. Konnyaku has almost no flavor, IMO. The woman selling it said she cooks it all herself. She offered several types of sauce, and I chose plum sauce. She served the konnyaku on a beautiful ceramic plate. I think she also sold one or two othr local foods, but that was all. I think this was the farthest away I have ever been from a vending machine in Japan. Bring your own water if you go.

At the end of the trail we encountered at least 200 steps leading up to the shrine buildings. We didn’t come this far to miss the shrine, so we kept going. What we saw was a fairly large complex, which was a little unexpected given the location. The buildings were well maintained and there was a lot of new construction or repair work going on way out here at the end of a trail at the end of a road. The shrine had a lot of ornate gold embellishments, and there were carvings painted in bright colors. 

Note: It is fairly unusual to see gold and bright colors (other than vermillion) on a Shinto shrine. I don’t know why this shrine is different.

After looking around at the shrine, we walked back down on the trail to the fork in the road. Here we stopped at a small restaurant for a lunch of soba, another popular local food. Soba is a long thin noodle made of buckwheat, which grows in this region, and in many other colder regions such as Canada and Russia. Buckwheat is popular in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and is called kasha. Kasha is cooked whole, and is not ground into flour or made into noodles.

In Japan, you can choose to eat soba hot (in broth) or cold (on a bamboo tray). It comes with a soy-based dipping sauce and sometimes is accompanied by wasabi, green onions, or seaweed. When you finish the noodles, a server will bring you a little teapot filled with hot water leftover from boiling the noodles. You pour some into your leftover dipping sauce and drink it like broth. It is very tasty. Nothing is wasted.

There really wasn’t time to visit Lake Haruna also. If you had a lot of time, you could walk to Lake Haruna, and you might get there sooner than you would by bus because the bus does not run frequently. You can walk there from the shrine without going back to the fork in the road. The bus takes you there from the fork via a very winding road.

It was very satisfying to participate in something that involved more Japanese people than foreigners. I suspect that most of the visitors today were here primarily to experience a beautiful place, but also  - a little bit - to experience a holy place. How lucky for the Japanese that there are so many of both kinds of places on their densely populated islands.

Instead of a fabric, we will have a question today.

Have you ever been to a “power spot”? Where was it?