The Chichibu region lies to North-West of Tokyo and lis located in the Saitama prefecture. The region is made of forested mountains and valleys is a popular destination for outdoor activities. Temples and shrines dot the area across its forests and fields.
The proximity to Tokyo, an hour and half by train or car and attractions across the seasons makes Chichibu a well visited location. The Icicles of Misotsuchi or 三十槌の氷柱is one of the spectacular attractions of winter.
The official website for this attraction is [http://icicles.woodroof.jp/en/guide/] and explains that the icicles are both natural and artificial. The natural icicles are formed by ‘Spring water bubbling through the rocks’ and the artificial ones are made by ‘flowing water over the cliffs’ and let the water turn into icicles naturally.
The best time to visit is at twilight when the icicles are illuminated making for spectacularly colourful instagrammable pictures.
The traveler from Tokyo, the ones who choose to travel by car need to be warned that it takes around 3 hours to drive from the centre of Tokyo to the Woodroof campground and around 4 hours to drive back at night.
The drives goes to the Kan-etsu expressway, then involves taking the Hanazono exit towards Chichibu, getting onto the West Kanto road , the prefecture road and then the national road 140. The last 30 minutes involves driving on narrow, winding and mountainous country roads til you reach the Woodroof campground parking lot.
The parking attendants guide you into the spot after paying the 500 Yen fee. It takes another 200 yen to go down to the Arakawa riverbank and get a close up view of the icicles. My understanding was that the artificial icicles are the ones that can be seen immediately after descending the path to the riverbed and the natural icicles are the ones around 10 minutes by walk along the riverbed, crossing a small bridge and then walking up the path towards the wooden cabins.
The Woodroof campground has camping facilities with marked lots and wooden cabins for the less adventurous. The chilly early February winter day didn’t seem to have any visitors at the cabin but I could be mistaken. The crowds that turned up at dusk, young and old, rowdy drunk and sober could have been visitors who planned to stay overnight.
The resort has a cafe(Woodroof Cafe) overlooking the Arakawa river and provides a distant glance at the icicles from the heated confines. The cafe offers some local delicacies including a sweetish rice wine(amazake)
The crowds start to build up around dusk and intrepid photographers put up their tripods on the platform in front of the cafe as well as on the riverbank. As it turns dark and the lights are switched on, illuminating the icicles in shades of purple, blue, red and yellow the area starts filling up with people.
The best viewing spots get occupied with tripods and the other viewers struggle to catch a view of the lightings. The photographers come in all age brackets, the young with smaller tripods to the older ones with heavy duty professional looking tripods.
A loud and clearly inebriated group of middle aged people stood close to us, snapping up pictures of each other and cracking jokes. As the group tried to leave towards another viewing spot, one of them refused to budge.
The group tried to get him to move and he almost collided with another group trying to pull away.He stood there unsteadily swaying as his group apologised to the others , took out a picture, staring at it intently.
Tears started streaming down his face and the group around him fell silent. He wiped his face with his brow, still wordless.
‘Koiichiro San, no tears today’ a woman in his group admonished him.
She held his elbows supporting him as another person caught the other elbow and they walked away, unsteadily!
The sky had darkened and the viewers started walking away as others walked in. And in the distance Koichiro San’s group became audible again!
