D23 JttE Kakunodate – Kazuno – Travelling reflections

A day of lakes, dams and tunnels.

First up was Lake Tazawa: Japan’s deepest 423.4m, a caldera lake with no natural inflow nor outflow. Hotsprings are a bonus. I don’t know why, but I wonder if the 0.4 is as significant as my missing 3cm in height? Very pretty too.

Then onto Lake Shusen with its very blue mystical submerged forest, the cobalt blue colour caused by microscopic volcanic minerals suspended in the water—specifically allophane (a hydrated aluminosilicate) and silica.

These microscopic particles act as natural light filters. When sunlight hits the water, the allophane and silica particles scatter the shorter, high-frequency blue light waves, while absorbing longer red light waves

Created by the Yoroibata Dam, the lake’s water levels rise significantly during the spring snowmelt. The shoreline trees become submerged, creating a phantom forest of young, bright green leaves appearing to grow directly out of the water. Especially around now, so we were very lucky.

Lake Hosen came up next, created by another dam. Also cobalt blue, very pretty but we had to pass it by as a hill beckoned. We had had a fair number of tunnels to reach this point. The road builders must have thought “that’s enough. they can climb”. There is quite a lot of infrastructure going on – maybe now the snow (apart from a few roadside remnants) has gone, to repair and prepar. Skilful work driving them diggers.