Camping at Chuzenji

We are planning a bigger camping trip in a few weeks, but since we haven’t camped in Japan before, we figured we should get some practice before our big trip. So we went up to Lake Chuzenji for a night.

We brought our tent from America, but we didn’t bring sleeping bags so we had to go out to buy them on Friday night.

All packed up and ready to head out.

The drive up was great weather. We had the windows down the whole time.

This was the first day of the season that the camp ground was open. They had to take everyone’s temperature before we were allowed to enter. It was supposed to open at 1pm, but they let us start unloading early, around noon. We went up with other Honda people. The usual crew of Americans. Plus one Japanese guy from Honda. The whole camp ground was surrounded by trees, but there was one little peninsula that went out into the lake. So we claimed that as our little America. We had four tents between all of us. And ours was probably the biggest tent in the campground. Its a 10 person tent.

From the moment we got there, the kids had a blast. The water was shallow and clear, there were plenty of rocks to throw, and plenty of loose sand to dig in. And since we were trapped in our peninsula, it was easy to just let the kids run without fear of them getting lost.

The weather was crazy up there. It was beautiful on the way up and when we first set up. Then some crazy clouds rolled in and changed the landscape.

Then all of a sudden we saw the sheet of rain starting from the other side of the lake.

Luckily we had a giant 10 person tent, because our friends could join us during the rain storm. It kept us completely dry and it was cozy in there. We boiled water for our instant ramen and also cooked hot dogs on our gas skillet. The kids had a great time playing in there too.

Then the rain stopped and the weather was awesome. We built a fire, made popcorn, roasted marshmallows, and did fireworks.

After the kids went to sleep, the adults stayed up and talked around the fire. Our new friend, Atsuki, grilled some delicious Japanese beef for us. Then I was able to take some long exposure photos of the awesome clear night.