Ojirogawa Ravine, Yamanashi

We went camping over the Marine Day long weekend, to the mountains, as you do on marine day ;)

Left home early Sat morning to beat the traffic, and headed out past Mt Fuji to Hakushu, (famous for fresh water they use in Suntory Whiskey) and Ojirogawa Ravine in Yamanashi. After seeing pictures of Nay's camping trip just a day beforehand, we wanted to try the same camp spot she had stayed at, but it was totally booked out (ok for 1 night, but Sunday night was full, so we couldn't stay 2 nights in a row) when we rang up at the last minute.

So we rang up another place, and they said there was space, so we headed there,
Ojirogawa Ravine Tourist Campsite (I found some good info and photos here on someone's blog, cant find an official website). ,The campsite was a bit hard to find, we put the address in the car navi, but it took us to a carpark at the start of a hiking track, that had a "no cars allowed past here" sign at the end of the carpark. So we did a few loops around the area, asked a few people but no-one knew where the campsite was. J finally caved and rang the campsite (my first suggestion of what to do, lol) and they said we needed to drive down the road that said "no cars past here" and the campsite was about 500m down from the car park. The road was SO narrow -- one of those cliff-hugging type dirt roads. I didn't think we were gonna make it, but we did, and found the campsite.

After setting up the first day (around 1pm by this time) we had a play in the COLD COLD river, all of us braving it and getting fully wet, except for K who was ok with the coldness of the water, but NOT ok with the tadpoles under the rocks ;(

Then we went for a bit of a walk, and found just a cute little shrine just 100m from the campsite, and a suspension bridge, under which the actual ravine was. There were a lot of people swimming, playing in the water here, so we had a splash too.

Got back to camp, set up the barbie for some yakitori (store bought) and curry rice for the kids haha.

Had a lovely, cool night's sleep in our new 5-person tent! woohoo. Until now, we ave always stayed in one of many of J's 2-person mountain climbing tents - you know how tiny those things are? Great if you are going hiking as light to carry, but a bit hard on a hot day with kids! Since it doesnt take J much convicing to buy a new tent(he is a bit of a tent-a-holic) we bought the new tent earlier this year, and this is the first time to try it out.

Sunday we headed off in the morning to the Michi-no-eki to get some veges, and supermarket next door to get some meat, then to the ”Verga" park where we played in the river again, then played in a splash pool in a park, then hopped in the
onsen before heading back to camp for more yakitori (J-made this time) and beer ;)

Kids woke up early Monday morning anyways, so we packed up camp and were out of there just after 6:30am, and we headed back to Tokyo, to visit PIL, where within 1min of us getting in the door, MIL suggests we all go out for sushi lunch at the yummy joint that ALWAYS has a long line up (sometimes we have waited over an hour, even with the kids *sigh*) so we get there 45mins before opening and are lucky enough to get a seat in the first sitting. All fed and back into the car to come home where we unpack, clean up and try to chase out all the bugs and beetles and other creepy crawlies that jumped ship and headed home in our bags with us.

Overall I liked the campsite for location and we had a great time.
The campsite was lovely and cool by the river; cheap, just over 6000yen for 2nights with all of us; dogs ok; close to onsen (5mins drive) and supermarket(less than 10mins drive) but still totally away from civilisation at the campsite.

But the road into there could do with some fixing (widening!!) and the drop toilet at the campsite was just vile! Really, really stinky!! Now, I am usually ok with stinky toilets, but I couldn't hack this one (men and women's together). Luckily the shrine 100m up the path had a much nicer (seperated male and female) toilet, and we took the potty for K so all was good.

Also, the campsite had a few taps with running water set up under a covered area, but basically the facilities at the site were crappy. I also wouldn't want to go there to stay in their bungalows!!!There was, however a small kiosk at reception that sold very cold beer for just 300yen ;)