Sweet fragrance of winter in Chichibu Nagatoro

Last winter after a particularly hard week of research which leaves me muddled-head and gasping for fresh air, I chanced upon an interesting pamphlet which featured a rather curious blossom. I have never seen this flower before and the photo featured in the pamphlet was a well-taken photo featuring a line of strange pale yellow blossoms on a sunny day. And a good photo is all it took to convince me to hop onto the train and go for it.

To see these pale yellow blossoms, I have to take the train to Chichibu Nagatoro (秩父長瀞) in Hodosan Roubai-en (宝登山ロウバイ園), Saitama. These blossoms are roubai (ロウバイ) or also called as the wintersweet. The shrub usually flowers in the winter after the New Year. According to Wikipedia, they are also called as the 'ice flower' which sounds cool to me.

Just to let you know that it is relatively easy to get to Nagatoro from Ikebukuro. From Ikebukuro (池袋), take the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line (西武池袋線) on the Rapid train（特急）to Seibu-Chichibu station (西武秩父). From Seibu-Chichibu station, change to Chichibu Railway (秩父鉄道) and take the train heading towards Hanyu (羽生) to Nagatoro station. This whole journey takes about one hour and 40mins.

From the Nagatoro station, it is a short walk of 15mins to Hodo-san and then, you have a choice to take the ropeway or a good one hour hike to the top. The ropeway costs 480yen for one trip and 820yen for return trip and you can find the timetable for the ropeway here (in Japanese).

From Nagatoro Ropeway website

If you go during the blooming time of the wintersweet, you should easily find your way from the Nagatoro station as there will be signboard posted all the way. If not, you can easily follow the crowd ^^ and you will not be lost.

Mid-way through the hike, I stop for a while to nurse my hunger (just an excuse to taste the local tonjiru), then, I finally reach the yellow blossoms.

And to my surprise, these flowers are fragrant! They are beautiful and fragrant! How lovely!!! This is a flowering shrub that you shouldn't miss in winter.

The  Hodo-san temple on top of the hill

It is a nice place to have picnic lunch. There are some small stores selling food like tonjiru, sweet sake (amazake) and dango near the temple grounds if you didn't bring any food with you.

Yes, I want to have a relaxing lunch all the time like this

After my 2nd bowl of comforting tonjiru, I relax in front of the fire with some amazake

So, will you be visiting a wintersweet garden the next winter?