Our Last Day Of The Pilgrimage, Zao Onsen And Conclusions From Our Hot Springs Walking Tour Of Northern Japan
Our Last Day Of The Pilgrimage, Zao Onsen And Conclusions From Our Hot Springs Walking Tour Of Northern Japan
This morning, after a good breakfast, we checked out of the Onsen.
The front desk handed us a lovely handwritten letter, painstakingly written by Miki, the gardener we met yesterday.
Every word was written both in Japanese and English.
Miki wrote that she admired our pilgrimage but felt very worried about us, as we walked through these mountains, so heavily populated by hungry bears.
We took the hotel’s shuttle bus to the train station in Kakunodate.
If it weren’t so cold and raining so much, we would have gone for a walk in Kakunodate.
Kakunodate town is famous for its well-preserved samurai houses and the proliferation of cherry trees.
It is a popular tourist destination, and it is sometimes referred as 'the little Kyoto of Tōhoku'.
But the rain was very intense and a thick morning mist covered the area.
Because we have already been to Kakunodate as tourists, we decided that it wasn’t worth getting soaked, and that instead we would take the earlier high-speed Shinkansen train to our destination in Zao Onsen.
It took a full day to get to the Zao mountains.
It took three hours to get to Sendai, then an hour and a half bus to Yamagata station, then another hour by bus to Zao.
But the time passed very quickly, as the movement of the train lulled me to sleep.
After walking everywhere for a month, it seemed almost too easy to just sit back and relax.
We chose to go to Zao after concluding our pilgrimage because we have never been there.
It is located in a scenic ski mountain area, and it has very acidic hot spring waters.
After Zao, we will go to Yokohama for a few days, before leaving Japan.
We both agreed that this pilgrimage was a wonderful experience.
It wasn’t long, only about a month of walking, but we had some challenging days and wonderful scenery.
Most of the Onsens we visited were unique and wonderful, and we enjoyed every day of our walk.
For me, it was a total success.
This is because we didn’t follow a traditional route.
We have already walked most of the well known pilgrimages in Japan.
We have walked the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage, the Nakasendo, the Tokaido, the Saigoku pilgrimage, the Chugoku pilgrimage, the Sasaguri 88 temple pilgrimage, the Kyushu 108 temples, the Kumano Kodo, and the Dewa Sanzan pilgrimage in the Tohoku region, which involves climbing three sacred mountains: Mt. Haguro, Mt. Gassan, and Mt. Yudono.
The idea of walking yet another famous pilgrimage did not really appeal to us.
In this pilgrimage, there were no arrows to follow nor a line of numbered temples to visit.
This was just me looking at the map of Northern Tohoku in Japan, making an arbitrary route based on what I thought looked like a nice path that offered some Hot springs hotels to stay in, within a daily range of 20-25 kilometers of walking.
I didn’t spend a lot of time planning this pilgrimage.
I simply trusted that however difficult the route might be, we shall rise up to the task and simply do it.
This trust that I have in our ability to pull through difficulties and to not give up, proved right, and to me, this was a major success.
Because we had no previous knowledge of the route we were walking through, we had some wonderful surprises and discoveries.
This time, I didn’t spend any time “refreshing my language skills” before coming to Japan.
Yet, my basic knowledge of the Japanese language was more than enough for us to converse and to communicate in the most rural areas, where nobody spoke any English.
I realized that the more I trusted my recollections and memory, the better they performed for me.
And on the other hand, if I doubted myself and rehearsed too much, the more forgetful I became.
I simply trusted that the years I have spent learning Japanese had encoded the knowledge inside me, and that the words would come out correctly and naturally, as I needed them.
I stopped telling myself that we forget what we do not use regularly.
I simply told myself that I KNOW the language because I have studied it for years, so why claim forgetfulness and limitations?
And it worked!
The less you clarify, declare and define your limitations, the better you become.
Our own beliefs determine how much we can do and not do.
When we left Tohoku and the Akita region, we heard that Akita Prefecture is currently under a bear warning and high alert, due to an unprecedented surge in bear sightings and attacks in 2025.
The situation has been described as "critical" and has prompted the Akita Governor to request assistance from Japan's Self-Defense Forces.
I knew before we started this pilgrimage that fatal bear encounters were getting more frequent in the area, and that people were canceling their trips and their plans to hike in the area.
But we came feeling fearless, and we carried no weapon or bear spray, and as a result, we had no bear sightings and no encounters.
Were we reckless and irresponsible?
Or were we simply creating our reality in alignment with our belief system?
We are powerful beings and we do create our own realities, based on our beliefs and ideas.
We got off the bus in Zao Onsen.
The air was very cold and the scenery fantastic.
The room we had booked looked a bit narrow and sad, so we upgraded our room to a suite with a living room and great views of the ski slopes.
The hotel served us breakfasts and Kaiseki dinners, which changed daily and were wonderfully prepared.
The Onsen hot spring baths were awesome, acidic, sulphuric and empty, and the whole experience felt so luxurious and fun.
Our hotel participates in an “Onsen hopping tour,” in which you could visit seven different hot spring hotels in the Zao area, and soak in any of them for free.
We walked around Zao village and got to know the area, tasted the local dishes and sweets, and chatted with the locals who were fixing their properties and getting ready for ski season.
Next is Yokohama, where we will be reunited with the box we sent there after realizing that we were carrying too much with us on our pilgrimage.
I also plan to stop by the Yokohama dive shop to buy a lens and a waterproof tripod for my upcoming diving trip.
With love and encouragement,
Tali
