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At first, I was nervous about not having my own guide, but chilled out when it became apparent that asking around was clearly more efficient than trying to decipher a book, since the low down on the next house available seemed to be common knowledge among all those who had passed that way.
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| Kussharo Lake from Bihoro Toge | |
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Only once in the whole two and a half weeks did anyone give me bogus information, on that supposed Jagaimo House in Naroya, which he hadn't been to himself, but was reading about in one of those xeroxed booklets. Harrell was apparently right in that the situation changes rapidly.
Dinner that first night was at the tiny counter-restaurant connected to the rider house, and the evening's bath was at the onsen across the road, 400 ¥ for a huge, luxurious pool full of some kind of soft mineral water and a soothing view of a pine-covered hill just outside the huge wall of plate glass. As it turned out, at Rider House Friend, women slept in a separate room upstairs, a luxuriously new and clean 12 mat obviously part of the owner's house, reached by tramping through the family kitchen. I had it to myself that night and felt a mixture of envy and pity for the eight or nine guys crowded sociably into the six mat, plus platform downstairs.
After Rider House Friend, I stayed about a week of my two and half week visit in Hokkaido in rider houses, and never found Nirvana but did satisfy my basic physical, social and monetary needs. And while I couldn't find rider houses every night, I saved enough when I did stay in them to afford the relative luxuries of youth hostels like the one gloriously located smack in the middle of Daisetsuzan's beautiful Sounkyo Gorge. Besides, who's to say good company, and a safe, dry piece of tatami for 400 ¥ isn't heaven on earth in this land of the rising yen?
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