Golden Week Camping with a View on Mt. Akagi

Golden Week, the set of consecutive holidays that falls around the first week of May every year, is generally considered an extremely busy season for any sort of travel or activity, and camping is certainly included in that. Popular campsites can be booked out months in advance, and traffic to and from them can be high. In addition to that, though it is late spring, the weather can still be unpredictable and the nights quite cold, especially higher up into the mountains, making it somewhat difficult to predict the kind of weather you'll get.

But the Golden Week period can also be a beautiful and rewarding time to camp despite these challenges. We go camping during this time period every single year, and over the years have developed some different strategies to help manage the crowds, the weather, and our expectations for this time of year.

Day 1

4PM

Check in time at Kurinoki Campfield on Mt. Akagi in Gunma Prefecture is usually from 1PM, but we are late. Golden Week this year officially consisted of holidays from Monday through Wednesday, with regular work days commencing from Thursday. It is Friday, so we waited until the kids were out of school to head to the campground in the late afternoon. Although many people will take Thursday and Friday off to have a full nine day vacation, enough people will elect not to do so that the weekend right after the holidays can sometimes be a tiny bit less crowded than that of the main holiday weekend. Pushing our camping reservations a little bit off of the main vacation days is one of the ways we're able to mitigate the heavy crowds and lack of space at many campgrounds.

Another way is to choose your campground wisely. This particular campsite is one of our go-to's during this season for several reasons. First, it's far enough from Tokyo that it doesn't get booked up immediately once reservations open, and the sites are generously sized so that you don't feel you're right up against someone else. Also, each site is by reservation only and there are no free-camping areas, so you can choose where you want to be in advance instead of relying on trying to get there early for a good spot. Finally, it has rules in place such as no large groups, no music, and trying to keep quiet even during the day, that often will weed out first-time campers that don't realize how loud they can be, which makes the whole experience much more pleasant.

So here we are checking in at the late time of 4PM, several hours after normal check-in time! But since we are only an hour away from the campground, and have gotten pretty quick at setting up our campsite, we weren't too worried about getting everything set up before the sun went down.

Our reserved site this year is different from our normal choice and is much higher up on the mountain than we usually go for. It has a small view of the low-lying city area below Mt. Akagi, and is also on the end of a row of site. We immediately unpack onto a tarp and start setting up. When we get everything up, I make a quick mostly pre-prepared dinner, then we relax before an early bedtime.

Day 2

8AM

We are up after a good night's sleep. There is currently nobody next to us, and it was nice and quiet all night. I send the kids off to the playground for them to get some energy out while I make breakfast, then after cleanup, we take a walk around the campsite. There weren't so many people checked in last night, and most of them are already packing up and leaving.

The weather is also beautiful! It was nice and cool but not too cold the previous night, and the day is looking to be sunny and warm with scattered clouds. Sudden rainstorms or late-spring cold weather can often crop up, but the predictions show none of that in the coming two days. We've brought rain gear and colder-weather layers just in case, but it doesn't look like we'll need it at all.

12PM

Lunch time, and I make a quick bite, then we head to a local onsen for an early bath. Negoyajo Onsen is only open on the weekends, and seems to be a popular spot for locals. There were only a few people there when we arrived, but by the time we left the parking lot was already getting full. I could tell it would be busy later in the evening.

5PM

Dinner time, then we get the fire started and entertain the kids with some fireworks. I forgot to buy marshmallows so the kids were a little disappointed in me, but I cheered them up with some other treats, and we had a good evening before getting to bed early again.

Day 3

8AM

Another quiet night, though definitely more people checked in than the previous night as the spots all along our row were filled up. But as a testament to the campsite's strict rules, we hardly heard anybody else's noise all night! Always appreciated, especially during the busier times! I get up and make breakfast while the kids play at the playground again, then we clean up and start to pack up.

11AM

Checkout time. It was a singularly uneventful camping trip, which is honestly the best kind. Quiet and predictable, it's one of the reasons why we keep coming back to this particular campsite. Maybe next year we'll try one of the highest 4 wheel drive campsites with the best views, but honestly, we were really happy with the one we chose and we had a great time. So, goodbye until next year!