JAPAN TAKES GLAMPING TO NEW HEIGHTS
It’s a long way to go, but these posh tents have wine cellars, hot springs and views of Mount Fuji
IT IS all going so well, this stroll through the Aokigahara forest in the foothills of Mount Fuji, when our guide, Makoto, stops beside an old tree and points to scratches on the bark.
‘This shows a black bear has been here quite recently,’ he says. No one else looks worried, so we carry on. Later, when safely back in my tent, I realise that I am learning about much more than bears on this glamping holiday in Japan.
Glamping? A word created from mashing the ideas of camping and glamour together to make camping holidays more luxurious, has become a trend here. Forget capsule hotels and skyscrapers — instead, visitors can explore Japan’s 34 national parks.
With the value of the yen to sterling in our favour, Japan has become a relatively cheaper option for Britons, and this kind of tented holiday reduces that cost even more.
I’m staying at Villa Hanz, one of the first of these new glamping ventures, two hours’ drive from Tokyo and accessible by train. It is in the Fuji Five Lakes region, which has been named as a Unesco World Heritage site. The nearest of the lakes is Kawaguchiko, with many water sports on offer, including canoeing kayaking and paddleboarding, to sporty visitors.
Villa Hanz aims to promote not just wilderness skills, but a love of nature. There is a capacity for up to 144 guests looked after by 50 members of staff. Through them, and their endless patience, we learn how to light fires, chop wood and handle knives safely.
These core skills, according to our guide, are in increasingly short supply in the modern world. Most Japanese houses do not have gardens and many children often have no opportunity to climb trees or explore nature. I see one young Japanese boy collecting firewood in such fierce competition with his older brother that their mother has to calm him down.
This is gentle glamping, with three grades of accommodation. I’m in the most basic, the ‘pao’, an igloo-like tent in the woods. Unassuming from the outside, it is deceptively luxurious inside. Kitted out with modern and antique furnishings, it has an adjoining bathroom with the ubiquitous Japanese loo that washes and warms. And the futons are comfortable.
Another option is a villa, a light and airy wooden house with a barbecue at the back. At the top of the scale is the main guest house, a restored, traditional Japanese home that sleeps up to ten.
Wherever you’re staying on site, breakfast is served in the main building. One morning, I meet an woman toasting her bread while admiring snow-covered Mt Fuji. ‘It’s such a privilege to be able to see up-close what’s been portrayed so many times in art,’ she says.
It’s a pity we miss the star-gazing tour, but we took too long preparing our barbecue supper. Hampers of fresh produce can be bought on site; sadly, we can’t buy cooking expertise, but we get more skilled — and faster — during our stay.
As for drink, everything is available — it’s one of the few glamping places to have its own wine cellar. And the water tastes divine, too. We fill up our bottles from a fountain fed by Mount Fuji. This spring proves popular and entails the only queue we get here.
This being Japan, there’s an onsen, a natural hot spring, where I luxuriate in the warm water and wonder why I am such a fan of this country. Is it the cleanliness, the tasty food or kind people? One day, while climbing a steep hill, the guide offered to carry my heavy knapsack.
Although I take to the sleeping under canvas, it’s walking in the forest that gives me the most joy. All its vegetation has grown on lava, spewed when Fuji erupted in AD 864. But that layer of sediment has created an eerie problem. It masks Earth’s magnetic field and no compass will work inside these woods. It’s quite another world.