Weekend trip to Kusatsu, Shiga Highlands and Karuizawa

First stop: Kusatsu

Photo gallery: Kusatsu (October 24th 2026)

After a long drive in the Emira we stopped at Kusatsu for lunch. This is one of my favorite locations in Japan, and I come here from time to time because of the hotsprings. However, this time we were just stopping by. First we had lunch at a restaurant right next to the Yubatake. It was a bit rainy:

The hotel check-in was from 3pm, and it was still a bit early, so we went for a walk around the Sai-no-kawara Park.

I think I have described it already in another blog post, so I won't bore you with the details. In short: it's a small valley a few minutes on foot from the Yubatake, with a bunch of hot spring sources popping out of the ground here and there. There are several hot water pools where you can dip your feet, and hot streams run down the valley towards the town center. To me it feels like a magical place regardless of the time of the year.

Near the top portion of the valley there's the Sai-no-kawara Rotenburo (open-air bath). We didn't go for a bath this time, though I try and come here a few times every winter. It's one of the places where you can experience sitting on an open-air hot bath while snow falls on your head and shoulders. Totally recommended.

For more photos, see the photo gallery I linked at the top of this section.

Second stop: Shiga Highlands

From Kusatsu we headed up the mountain on the Asama-Shirane-Shiga Sawayaka Highway (not really a highway, just a twisty mountain road). The plan was to go visit the Mount Shirane Yugama crater lake.

There's a big rest house with a large parking lot at the feet of the Mount Shirane caldera, which had been closed for several years for safety reasons because of the volcanic activity, and they re-opened on October 13th. We wanted to leave the car at the parking lot and go up the hiking path to the caldera lake, but when we got there we found it closed and roped off. Initially we thought that they had closed because it was already a bit late in the afternoon, but later we learnt the actual reason: it has been closed again until further notice, not because of the volcanic activity, but because the number of people coming to visit the volcano caused serious traffic jams in the road.

I guess we'll have to try some other time.

From there we kept driving and stopped at the Mount Yokote Drive-In, a large restaurant and rest area near the top of the mountain that people visit because of the views from the observation deck. However, it was very windy and foggy, and it was impossible to see anything, so we kept going to the hotel.

After checking in and chilling for a while we went to try the hotel's onsen. The private baths were tiny, so we ended up going to the public ones. I happened to be the only person in there, so this is one of the very, very rare occasions when I have been able to take photos of a hotel's bath. 😅

Third stop: Tamamura Honten

The following morning before heading back to Tokyo we stopped by the Tamamura Honten brewery. It's located in a large old building that has been restored and modernized. I didn't take any photos inside this time, but there are some in the photo gallery that I uploaded when I visited last May.

I don't drink beer, but my friend did, so we ended up buying a few bottles for her, and I bought a hoodie for myself.

Fourth stop: Onioshidashi Volcanic Park

Photo gallery: Onioshidashi-en (October 24th 2026)

On the way back we stopped at the Onioshidashi Volcanic Park near Karuizawa, on the skirt of Mount Asama, another active volcano in the area.

The whole park sits on a small portion of the large lava flow that flowed from the volcano during the 1783 eruption. There's a large wooden gate leading to several paths running between the volcanic rocks, with a large Shinto shrine in the middle.

The whole area feels like an alien landscape, because of the weird shapes and sizes of the rocks, the colorful mosses growing on them, and the fact that there are only a few tress (none of them big), because the whole area is hard rock and there hasn't been time since the eruption for soil to accumulate on top.

It's difficult to describe, and the photos and videos don't accurately describe the scale of the place.

Unfortunately, we had to cut the visit short because it started raining heavily, so we got on the car, went to have lunch at a soba restaurant, and drove back home.