Nakanojo

It is a prefectural border town located in the northwestern part of Gunma Prefecture and adjacent to Niigata and Nagano Prefecture. From Tokyo, it is about 2.5 hours drive to see the beauties of nature abundant with hot spring resources. Nine hot springs, such as Shima, Sawatari and Shiriyaki, gushes out in the town, and since ancient times, military commanders such as Yoritomo Minamoto and Yoshinaka Kiso and many writers and artists have relieved their fatigue.

Nakanojo-machi is a town where 4 towns and villages of Nakanojo-machi, Sawada-mura, Isama-mura and Nakuta-mura were merged in 1950 and joined by Kuni-mura in 2010.
Forests occupy more than 80% of the area and the dynamic nature forms a varied landscape, such as the dam lake “Lake Nozori” surrounded by 2,000m high mountains, the Yoshigadaira Wetlands registered under the Ramsar Convention as the repository of precious alpine plants, the Chatsubomigoke Park like a vivid green velvet carpet.
In this place surrounded by mountains, people have been making rice, konnyaku, vegetables, fruit trees, etc. in the little flat land. A hot spring and a tourism business mainly by two roadside stations support the town. They are also focusing on planning town of flowers and flowering peach trees are planted by volunteer in a section of about 20 km between Nakanojo Gardens with seasonal flowers and Nakanojo Hill Top Garden and they aim at “the best flowering peach tree road in Japan”.
Two villages of Isama and Kuni have been joined the most beautiful villages in Japan. Isama was once a flourishing sericulture farm, and the large thatched house “the Tomizawa family house” built in the late Edo period keeps the appearance of the sericulture farmer at the time. A movement to use the closed school's wooden school building for art and movies grows and the contemporary art festival, the Nakanojo Biennale, is also set in an old wooden school building.
On the other hand, Kuni located in a mountainous area got its name because it was originally made up of oaza (a subsection of a village) of the six villages. The Shiriyaki Onsen which a river itself is a big open-air bath, is the extreme of a secret hot springs full of rustic atmosphere. The specialty product of this area, flower bean, is characterized by large grains with texture that, like chestnut, is not soggy. You can purchase at roadside stations etc.

Interviewed in January, 2020