Yagen Valley

Well, we ventured out once again into parts of Japan we didn't know existed. This trip was to the Shimokita peninsula to the Shimokitahanto National Park. We ended up camping in a location known as Yagen Valley. The location was very scenic with a river flowing next door to us cutting a gorge into the landscape. Amy and I both experienced our first onsen (natural hot springs) and will tell more of that in a future post.

The next day we drove to Mount Osare (literally Mount Dread), which is a quasi active volcano with a beautiful caldera lake (see 1st photo).
This location is one of the three most "holy" spots to the Japanese...the rough translation is the gateway to hell. A huge Buddhist temple covering several acres is on shore of this caldera lake. There are numerous shrines, statues, and monuments scattered on the landscape (photo 3). Also dotting the area are sulfer and steam vents (photo 2). Most of these have rock piles on them (a sort of monument to dead infants). These rock piles are everywhere. Every year the Japanese have some sort of holy ritual that takes place here that over 30,000 people attend. Blind women known as itako lead these rituals supposedly being able to communicate with the dead. We didn't see any dead, but the area was pretty neat. We'll have pictures of this up on our shutterfly site soon.