Signs of Autumn, or Winter?

On Sunday morning, we departed from Tokyo to arrive at Kusatsu in Gunma Prefecture. We spent a couple of hours hiking around Mount Shirane. It was below zero degrees C, snowing, windy, and very cold, with some phases of low visibility. But the landscape was quite pretty with everything being encrusted in hoar frost, it was a first for me to see such large chunks of the stuff. Unfortunately, with the fog, we weren’t able to see Yugama-ko, a turquoise-coloured sulphur lake.

After getting off the mountain, we had a nice, warm soak in Sainokawara Rotemburo, a large open-air hot spring, which was very much welcome after the subzero temperatures of Shirane.

 
We had a look around Kusatsu and its hot spring water source, before heading home.