Thank you for participating in the tour of Tokyo Free Walking Tour of the day. We hosted 8 people from USA, UK, Italy and Spain. It was a very hot day but we were delighted to meet such wonderful people coming from so far away to such a hot place.
As promised photos taken during the tour are posted to recall the fun moments we shared.
Visiting Tokyo in this time of the year is the hard thing to do. You might wonder how Tokyo residents spend such hot summertime in the heated city. The best and common thing to do is escape the city and stay in a cooler place like a highland resort area. One of the guides of the tour went to one of the famous highland resorts in Tokyo area, called Kusastsu-Onsen town in Gunma Prefecture in early August. It took 3 hour train ride to get there.
The temperature there was significantly lower than Tokyo so visitors could comfortably stay there not worrying about heat and sweat. In addition to the cool weather the town is well-known for Onsen (Natural Hot Spring) as it is part of its name. Kusatsu-Onsen has been one of Japan’s most famous and traditional hot spring towns for centuries.
Over there people enjoy bathing in the hot spring baths and eat delicious local foods as well as viewing a performance like “Hot Spring Water Shaking”, which is practically done in order to cool the hot spring water coming from the volcano nearby.
In early-August the town held the appreciation festival and showed the ceremony of “Goddess ascending to the heaven” on the stairs to the local temple gate, which was fantastic to watch.
So summertime is fun anyway. If you cannot resist the heat in the city, escape the city and stay in the highland resort. The hot summer gives you the very reason to spend vacation in a highland resort. In wintertime such highland resorts turned ski resorts which attract many skiers and snowboarders around the world.
Tokyo Free Walking Tour guides have such good information for you so that you can enjoy not only staying in the big city but small towns or villages in the highlands which Tokyo residents visit in summertime and enjoy snow sports in wintertime.
To our guest on August 17th – we’d love to hear your feedback!
We would appreciate it if you could leave your comments possibly with names of the guides you were with, on Tripadvisor or our Instagram/Facebook pages.
If you want more info about our tour, check out our website, Facebook, or “Tokyo Free Walking Tour” on Tripadvisor.
(Posted by Masa Y.)