Upper Nakano Is Very Beautiful, And In The Autumn, When Its Myriads
Of Star-Leaved Maples Are Scarlet And Crimson,
Against a dark
background of cryptomeria, among which a great white waterfall
gleams like a snow-drift before it leaps
Into the black pool below,
it must be well worth a long journey. I have not seen anything
which has pleased me more. There is a fine flight of moss-grown
stone steps down to the water, a pretty bridge, two superb stone
torii, some handsome stone lanterns, and then a grand flight of
steep stone steps up a hill-side dark with cryptomeria leads to a
small Shinto shrine. Not far off there is a sacred tree, with the
token of love and revenge upon it. The whole place is entrancing.
Lower Nakano, which I could only reach on foot, is only interesting
as possessing some very hot springs, which are valuable in cases of
rheumatism and sore eyes. It consists mainly of tea-houses and
yadoyas, and seemed rather gay. It is built round the edge of an
oblong depression, at the bottom of which the bath-houses stand, of
which there are four, only nominally separated, and with but two
entrances, which open directly upon the bathers. In the two end
houses women and children were bathing in large tanks, and in the
centre ones women and men were bathing together, but at opposite
sides, with wooden ledges to sit upon all round. I followed the
kuruma-runner blindly to the baths, and when once in I had to go
out at the other side, being pressed upon by people from behind;
but the bathers were too polite to take any notice of my most
unwilling intrusion, and the kuruma-runner took me in without the
slightest sense of impropriety in so doing.
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