Ninety minutes northwest of Tokyo by shinkansen, the Chikuma River breaks out of the mountains into a wide, dry, unusually sunny basin. This is Ueda: a castle town that twice broke a Tokugawa army, a hot-spring valley old enough to have been written about in the Heian period, and one of the least crowded autumn corners of Nagano. Most travellers ride straight past it toward Karuizawa or Kanazawa. Late October and early November are exactly the wrong weeks to keep doing that — the rice is in, the valley walls turn, the onsen towns run their harvest festivals, and you will hear very little English.
A castle town with a grudge
Ueda Castle Ruins Park is a ten-minute walk west of Ueda Station, and it is not a grand castle. There is no keep, no soaring white tower. What it has instead is a story that Japanese visitors come specifically to stand inside.
Sanada Masayuki built the fortress in 1583 on a bluff above the Chikuma River. In 1585 he held it against a Tokugawa force many times his size. Fifteen years later, in 1600, his son Nobushige — far better known by his later name, Sanada Yukimura — did it again, pinning down Tokugawa Hidetada's army of tens of thousands long enough that they arrived too late for the decisive Battle of Sekigahara. Ieyasu never quite forgave his son for it, and the castle was dismantled in punishment.
Three turrets survive. The West Turret is genuine Edo-period timber. The South and North turrets have a stranger history: sold off after the Meiji Restoration, hauled away to Bessho Onsen and pressed into service as part of a pleasure-quarter building, then bought back by the city and returned to their stone bases in 1949. Inside, a small exhibition of Sanada armour and documents is open for a few hundred yen; the park and its earthworks are free. Sanada Shrine occupies the old inner bailey, and beside it is the Sanada Well, a broad stone shaft that local legend insists once hid an escape tunnel running out under the walls.
The park's maples and zelkovas are among the best in the city, but they are also among the latest — the basin floor usually holds green well into November, with colour peaking in the middle of the month. If you want foliage in late October, you go up.
Bessho Onsen: the Kamakura of Shinshu
From Ueda Station, a two-car local train on the Ueda Electric Railway Bessho Line rattles thirty minutes up a side valley to Bessho Onsen, past rice terraces and apple orchards. It costs around ¥600 each way, and a one-day pass is sold at the station if you plan to hop off along the route. (Fans of the animated film Summer Wars will recognise both the station and the train — Ueda is the model for the film's country town.)
Bessho has been a bathing village for well over a thousand years, and in the Kamakura period it became a serious centre of Zen learning, which is why the locals call it the Kamakura of Shinshu. The proof is at Anrakuji, a short uphill walk from the station: behind the main hall, in a stand of cedars, stands an octagonal three-storied pagoda. It is the only octagonal three-storied pagoda in Japan, it is a National Treasure, and it is built in the Chinese-influenced Zen style imported in the Kamakura period — all bracket arms and flared eaves, unlike anything else you will see in Nagano. Late October light through the cedars around it is the whole reason to come at this time of year.
Two more temples are within walking distance. Kitamuki Kannon faces north, which is deliberate: it is considered the counterpart to Zenkoji in Nagano City, which faces south, and pilgrims say that visiting only one of the two is a half-pilgrimage. Jorakuji, up the hill, has a quiet garden and an unusual stone pagoda.
The village has three small public bathhouses fed by the same alkaline sulphur spring — simple, hot, and priced at a couple of hundred yen. Bring a small towel; most do not lend them.
Kakeyu Onsen and the lantern alley
West of the city, in the folded hills of the old Maruko district, Kakeyu Onsen is a different kind of hot spring: quiet, clinical in the best sense, long designated a national health resort and used for rehabilitation as much as for tourism. The name means "the deer that taught the hot water" — a hunter, the story goes, followed a wounded deer and found it healing itself in the spring.
The village is wrapped around a ravine. A covered wooden bridge crosses it to Monjudo hall, and the maples along that gorge are the best-timed foliage in the whole Ueda area: they generally peak from the very end of October into the first week of November, several weeks ahead of the castle park. On the evening of 1 November the town runs its autumn food-and-bathing festival, with a lantern bar and a lantern-lit lane through the village — bathe first, eat outside afterwards, and bring a jacket, because mountain evenings here drop toward single digits.
Buses run from Ueda Station toward Kakeyu in roughly an hour. Check the last departure before you commit to an evening event; the service thins out after dark.
What else is on, late October to early November
The half marathon on 12 October is run, with some local relish, as the Ueda Old Battlefield Half Marathon. On 18 October the Maruko district stages the Shinshu Maruko Yoshinaka Festival, with an armoured procession commemorating Kiso Yoshinaka, the Minamoto commander who raised his army in these hills in 1180 and briefly took Kyoto before his cousin Yoritomo destroyed him. The same day, a small guided programme takes adults into the forest for mushroom foraging followed by matcha and sweets served outdoors.
Late October brings a countryside harvest festival and a long-running ekiden relay on the 25th, and a tea gathering on the 31st. On 1 November the city holds its Sanada Festival, now in its forty-fourth year. Dates and times shift year to year, so check the live listings on the venue pages linked above before you build a day around any single event.
Eating, and getting there
Ueda's own dish is oidare yakitori — grilled chicken with a garlic-heavy soy dipping sauce, served with a jar of the sauce on the table so you can keep dunking. Beyond that: Shinshu soba, walnuts and walnut sweets, apples at their absolute peak in late October, and matsutake mushrooms if your budget allows. The old Hokkoku Kaido post street of Yanagimachi, a few minutes from the castle, has a working sake brewery, a well-known bakery and several cafés in Edo-era buildings.
Getting there is easy: Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo Station, roughly 80 to 100 minutes depending on the service, around ¥6,500 unreserved, and fully covered by the Japan Rail Pass. Note that the fastest Kagayaki services do not stop at Ueda — take a Hakutaka or an Asama.
Two nights is the right shape for this trip: one in Bessho Onsen for the temples and the baths, one in Ueda city or Kakeyu for the festivals. Pack layers. The basin is dry and clear in autumn, which is lovely for photographs and brutal at dawn — mornings can start near 5°C while afternoons sit comfortably in the mid-teens.
Image: Ueda Castle South Turret by Suikotei, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
