By Rebecca Milner

Travel May. 16, 2010 - 03:08AM JST ( 5 )

MINAKAMI, Gunma —

A little over an hour’s ride from Tokyo by shinkansen, Minakami in Gunma Prefecture is often described by guidebooks as a thriving onsen town. And a few decades ago, it was, as the bubble economy brought busloads of visitors to its grand inns. Yet economic decline and the younger generation’s distaste for traveling to the kinds of places their parents did have threatened to turn the resort into a outpost.

Still, the raw materials were there: cascading mountains and clear streams punctuated with waterfalls—catnip for an altogether different type of visitor. In the mid-’90s, a transformation began when the first rafting operations arrived, taking advantage of the torrential rivers that gush in late spring as the mountain snow melts. At the time, there were only two rafting companies in all of Japan; now there are nearly a dozen in Minakami alone.

These days, weekend sojourners can take advantage of what has evolved into a year-round outdoor sports destination: mountain biking and canyoning in the summer, hiking in the autumn, and skiing, snowboarding and snowmobiling during the winter.

“Outdoor adventure is the town’s second coming,” says Mike Harris, the New Zealander who owns local tour operator Canyons. “It’s got the most going for it in terms of adventure.”

A former accountant, Harris first came to Minakami in 1995 to work as a rafting guide. He has since branched out, and is the man responsible for introducing the area to canyoning, a sport that involves navigating cliffs and sliding down waterfalls. Canyons, which started in 2000, also offers rafting, caving and a variety of winter sports packages.

Harris is also working to establish an evening “après” scene to complement those long, adventurous days on the mountain. Canyons’ centrally located Alpine Lodge hosts weekend events, from riverside barbeques to techno parties. Rather than just entertaining the guests, he hopes that these events will attract—or rather create—a larger local community.

“People’s attitudes towards foreigners have changed over the years,” says Dexter Greenwood, a long-time Minakami resident originally from Toronto who is now chef at the Alpine Lodge. “We were a bit of a sideshow at first.” He adds that the foreign community’s attitude of “wanting to earn our place here” and “contribute to the [local] beautification process” has helped to win over skeptics.

This beautification has included adopting and renovating dilapidated buildings and making a commitment to working with local industry. Still, even the best intentions aren’t always enough: Bungy Japan faced numerous bureaucratic obstacles (documented in these pages last summer) before it could get its operation up and running.

Along with other foreigners, Harris has taken a particularly active role in community development, serving on the board of directors of the Minakami Tourism Association and pushing for a policy of sustainability. Ultimately, he says, he would like to see the town import a development model similar to his native Queenstown: “Turn it into a young person’s town. There is a ton of potential.”

This idea is already bearing fruit. Longtime Tokyo resident and scuba instructor Patric Spohn relocated to the mountains of Gunma this spring to establish Abseiling Me. The German native offers half-day introductory courses in abseiling (also called rappelling) in both Minakami and Mt Haruna, which are particularly suited for novice adventurers. Participants begin on a practice slope, work up to a 5-meter wall, and finish (if they wish) with a final descent down a tree-lined mountainside. What sounds totally daunting is actually rather beginner-friendly. “It’s basically holding the rope and letting go,” says Spohn.

With many operators running half-day courses and working in cooperation with each other, it’s possible to mix and match activities, piecing together the best possible Tokyo escape for a given group or season—which is what Minakami 2.0 is all about. The natural onsen are still there too, of course, but now the idea is to have worn muscles to soak.

For more details, see www.canyons.jp, www.bungyjapan.com, and www.abseiling.me.

This story originally appeared in Metropolis magazine (www.metropolis.co.jp).