I'm on Japanese TV! Nagoro scarecrow village and Kazurabashi Vine Bridges

Trip Diary Day 15 - 12 April 2019 - Iya

Kazurabashi Vine Bridges

Check out Episode 12 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.

One of the downside of having a huge communal bathroom all to yourself is they are big and and when it is cold it is hard to get the entire room steamy enough to get warm. But I used the hot tub shower anyway. Like most onsen bathrooms the shower was a short hose with a shower head so you have to sit on a stool to wash. Not ideal for a long hot shower. I suppose I could’ve filled the big bath and had a soak but we had plenty of things to do today so no time for decadent indolence. We did make time for breakfast in the kitchen though. Cereal, toast, yoghurt, green tea & boiled eggs. At home shokupan toast is a treat - if you can even find it - but when you go to the conbini or supermarket in Japan it is just plain white bread. It is one of my very favourite things about Japan. For the record you can get frozen imported shokupan in Melbourne from Fujimart in South Yarra / Prahran. As of September 2020 I’ve also learned how to make shokupan properly during the Covid-19 lockdown.

One of the reasons we stayed at Iya Vine Guesthouse was because it was cheap. And it was also across the road from one of the Kazurabashi vine bridges. This bridge stretches 45 metres across the Iya River. There used to be 13 vine suspension bridges in the valley but there now only 3 left. The one across from our guest house and another couple up the river. The bridges are made of mountain vines and anchored by cedar trees at both ends. The vines are replaced every few years but nowadays there are steel cables hidden inside the the twisted vines for added safety.

I naively thought it being a bridge it would be free to cross but it was 550 yen for adults and you could only go one way. We thought it was a tad expensive so we decided to give it a miss till tomorrow and drive up the valley to Oku-Iya Niju Kazurabashi (Double vine bridges or the couples bridges). It was about a 45 minute to 1 hour drive. Only 28 kays but it was really windy and a 40 kph speed limit most of the way. No passing in many places. You have to pull over to let oncoming traffic through. Scary shit when it is a big truck. The gorge is gorgeous. Severe and colourful. There is a lot of concrete in the river though. Lining the river like is a huge canal or drain. I don’t know why? Maybe to reinforce it?

It was only about 10 degrees when we get there the double vine bridges. Another cold April day. The entry fee - 550 yen - was the same as the other bridge, but better value. Two bridges, a wooden cart crossing the river and a waterfall. There didn’t appear to be any limit to the crossing direction or how many times we crossed either. The larger of the two bridges with a span of 44 metres is the called the Husband bridge (Otto no Hashi). The smaller bridge with a span of a cricket pitch, 22 metres, is called the Wife bridge (Tsuma no Hashi). We spent the next few hours exploring the bridges, the waterfall, and pulling ourselves across the river from dangling wooden cart suspended by a rope across the river. The cart is like a tiny two person cable car and is called the Wild Monkey Bridge. You pull yourself across the river from inside tiny cabin. Georgia and Brandon were too small to pull themselves across so I pulled the rope from one end of the bridge. It was a fun little ride. I suspect when the weather is warmer and there a more tourists around there would be quite a queue for the Wild Monkey Bridge.

Although the bridge vines have been reinforced with steel cables to make them safe you have to watch your step crossing them in case you put your foot through the gap between the planks. If you have a fear of heights the gap between the planks might be unnerving, especially with the fast flowing water and rocks below.

We’re on Japanese TV

We saw a Japanese TV crew filming as we were about to ride the Wild Monkey. They waved and beckoned to me. My first thought was we are in the way and they want film. But no, the producer, or production assistant, introduced me to the young female presenter - Kadowaki Kanako - and asked me to walk into shot while they filmed, then introduce myself and shake her hand. Kadowaki Kanako (she is is on Instagram too) was a lovely person. An absolute delight. Apparently she became famous on one of the many Pop Idol J-Pop TV shows in Japan. She asked me a couple of questions. Do you like here? Do you like Japan? Am I a famous Youtuber? I laughed and said no. I introduced the kids and they thought the kids were kawaii. I signed a model release and they gave me a piece of paper saying when the show would be broadcast. Their TV show is a Tokyo based food and lifestyle program hosted, I think, by Kanako. I think it is a morning TV show. With their limited English and my limited Japanese I’m not totally sure of the details but the photos of the paperwork are below if you can read Japanese. If you know of the TV show or actually saw it let me know. They told me it wasn’t online anywhere and unfortunately we would already have left Japan by the time it was broadcast. But apparently I was on Japanese TV. I jokingly said to them that they would snip me out but they laughed and said no. Kanako and the crew were very gracious and patient when I did get in the way of some of their shots later on. I will have some of our encounter with Japanese TV on my Youtube channel… when I finish the video. Keep an eye out below or on my Youtube channel.

A Haiku

Japanese TV
talks to awkward dopey me
Youtube wannabe

Nagoro Scarecrow Village

We drove back down the valley a few kays to Nagoro - the scarecrow village. Nagoro is one of the coolest, freakiest, weirdest most awesome places I’ve ever been too. With apologies to Jacqueline Susann, Nagoro is literally the Valley of the Dolls. And scarecrows. Very cool life sized scarecrows and dolls have been set up all over the village to look like the villagers and former residents. Workers climbing power poles. Farmers in fields. People waiting at bus stops. A potter at her wheel. Kids in a classroom and families at home. They’re everywhere. I wasn’t quite able to nut our whether they supposed to represent former residents or whether the former residents have been turned into dolls. One is nice, wistful and sentimental the other is creepy as fuck and straight out of Japanese horror movie like Ringu. We were there in the day time. I guess it would have been an entirely different experience at night. The scariest doll is Donald Trump but that is probably down to Don himself and not the doll.

The dolls were made by Tsukimi Ayano who lived in Nagoro as a child and moved back in the early 2000s to look after her father. She made her first scarecrow then, her father, and has since gone on to make more than 400 with another couple of hundred in the works. When we visited the population of the village was about 27 humans and 350 scarecrows. Nagoro once had a population of around 300 people and no dolls. As Japan’s population has declined over the last few decades many of these remote rural villages, like Nagoro, have been depopulated. Ayano has created a fabulous memorial to the former residents of Nagoro.

We ran into the film crew again here. They, like us, were running around taking shots of the scarecrows in their dioramas.

The village is very remote. There are only 2 or 3 public buses up and down the valley per day so if you do visit I’d highly recommend renting a car. All the main tourist sites in the valley are quite far apart. We saw a number of tourists arrive at their accommodation by bus and suddenly realise that some of the tourist spots were a little further apart than you could comfortably walk in a day. The remoteness of Nagoro is a plus. You’ll probably have the place to yourself unless the living residents come outside. The lack of living people and the number of dolls around you might even enhance the sheer creepiness for you. We had a ball. It was one of the most fun places we’ve ever visited. The kids loved posing with Ma and Pop - their doll grandparents - and waiting for a bus with the other commuters at the bus stop. Actually I wonder if tourists who don’t know about the scarecrows travelling through the valley on a bus have a WTF moment if their bus pulls up at the Nagoro bus stop?

Nagoro is a tiny. You could drive through and barely notice. If you weren’t taking too much notice you might think that it was a vibrant little community with so many people out and about. Until you realise they’re not moving. They only move at night.

A Haiku

Nagoro Village
Wonderful dolls everywhere
Not creepy at all

The Valley Where the Noodle Restaurants Close At Night

We were hoping to get some noodles, noodles being the local specialty and all, but all the noodle shops we drove by had shut at 5pm. So we drove back to our village and beyond to Oboke to go to the Lawson and buy something for dinner and breakfast. We bought hot chicken karaage and pre-packaged bento boxes with rice, meat, fish, and mince for between 400 and 530 yen for dinner and more shokupan bread for breakfast. It was all very cheap. I was fast becoming a fan of convenience store fried chicken.

Back to the Guesthouse to microwave and eat the pre-packaged meals. They were surprisingly good for pre-packaged food. Is there nothing Japan doesn’t do well? The kids had been playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch. Poor Taku was admirably keeping them amused. If you were to ask Brandon a year later what he missed about Japan most he’d say Taku and the Nintendo. For almost a year after we returned from this trip Brandon asked every single day “When can we visit Tak’s place?”

Epic Family Road Trip Japan on Youtube

Check out Episode 12 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.

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