Dorokawa Hot spring in Tenkawa village
Have you ever heard Yamabusi or Syugenjya in Japanese? If you know that, it
’s easy to introduce this small village. Doukawa is a small village at bottom of Oomine mountain. Yamabusi either Syugenjya, who has religious related mountains. They train themselves to climb the mountain. I guess it could be similar to pilgrim. This village is famous in mountaineer who climb Oomine Mountain(1719m). Only men are allowed to go. Not women.
From Kyoto to here, taking Kintetsu train to Yosino Simoichiguchi. Then take bus to Dorokawa. It could take 1 and 20 minutes from Simoichiguchi. When we visited was the day open the mountain to climbers. There were so many people go and come back. Also there are other mountains beside Oomine. Inamura-Dake(1726m) and Kannonmine (1347m). Those mountain, women are allowed to go in.
Climbing was out of our purpose. So we just went up small hill and spent time in Hot spring. There are so many Japanese styles of hotel here. Each hotel has also special bath. When we pay \500, we can take only bath there as well. Here is very small town. May be 20 minutes is enough to go around. Some smart merchant made street shop here. He sold boiled and raw natural river fish here. That
’s really tasty. Town view is also very nice. You can see old nice Japan here.We are not mountaineer. So we walked through the forest to Tennokawa hot spring. However there wasn
’t mountain, still we repeated up and down over and over on non concrete way. We walked down along the river, breath nice air in green and hear nice sound from stream. It was Ok to walk in the forest. We walked 7-8 km till concrete way. This way was very boring. Sign told us that 2km to Tennokawa. We walked walked walked. But still we were on the way…. When we arrived, we were bloody tired. There is a restaurant in front of Hot Spring bath. You can have bear meat, deer meat, pig meat and drake meat here if you like. We didn’t.Both bath of Dorokawa and Tennokawa are quite small. There are each one hot bath inside and outside. There are 9 shower at Dorokawa and 5 shower at Tennokawa. If it
’s crowded, it7s gonna be a problem I guess. Anyway that’s very nice to have a look nice green and mountain from the bath.How to go: Kintetu train From Kyoto to Yosino Simoichiguchi
1000yen+870yen(express charge)
Express bus to Dorokawa 1350yen
Tourist Information at Dorokawa
0747-64-0333 http://www.kansai.ne.jp/dorogawa/
About Yamabusi : http://www.os.rim.or.jp/~yfuku/