Roving Japan

Day 64 Photoset

Yousuke is the leader of the local Boy Scout chapter. Today there was a scheduled field trip for some of the youngest scouts to the cities Disaster Preparedness Center. Yousuke invited us to go along, so Risa and I went with them to learn about earthquakes, house fires, and tsunamis.

The center was actually pretty cool. The earthquake simulator was fun/scary. Fun because you know its fake, scary because if that’s what a real 7.0 quake feels like, I’d be crapping my pants. They also had a dark smoky room where you have to feel your way to the exit, and a 3d movie that simulates the 1959 Ise Typhoon.

All in all, it was pretty fun. My only issue was with the guy who was explaining how to get out of a dark smoky house. He told people to use their hands to feel the walls/doors for heat, but he didn’t say to use the back of your hand. The back of your hand is more sensitive, and if it gets burned you can still use your hand to grab things. When feeling for heat, never use your finger tips or palm! always use the back of your hand!

The next stop for the troop was a neat ice cutter ship and the Nagoya harbor museum. The kids seemed to enjoy everything, although the little boy spent most of the time running around and pounding on any levers and buttons he could find.

Last stop of the day was Kiyosu Castle. This castle is a replica, although it was reconstructed within the last 5 years, so its a really well done replica museum made of wood rather than concrete. This particular castle is famous because it was the base of Oda Nobunaga, one of Japans primary historical figures.

The best part of the castle was the sweet armor I got to wear. The first room of the castle was showcasing some modern samurai armor made by local craftsmen and volunteers. When the main guy saw me, he said he would give me “Gaijin Service” and let me put on the good stuff! The whole time he was putting on the armor, he kept saying how cool gaijins look in samurai armor. Ha! Tom Cruise eat your heart out! I AM THE LAST SAMURAI.

When we got home, we got to enjoy some fireworks with Yousuke, his son Takehiko, Takehiko’s wife Sachie, and the two kids.

Day 63 Photoset

Yousuke and his friend Hibino took Risa and I to the town of Takayama today.

Takayama is famous for its old style shopping district, so Yousuke thought we might enjoy walking the streets and looking at the shops.

It was a neat town, and the shopping area was entertaining although crowded. We bought the biggest sembei I’ve ever seen, and we had a great lunch at a local restaurant.

Besides the historic shopping area, Takayama is also famous for it’s huge floats that get paraded around town during the autumn festivals. The real floats are kept in storage all year, but a local millionaire created a huge museum with replicas of all the floats for tourists to enjoy all year long.

The museum is actually a hollowed out mountain, which was pretty neat. The floats themselves are awesome. They are HUGE and each one has a marionette scene at the top. Every few minutes a different float puts on a show complete with music. The replica floats use anamatronics, the authentic floats have people inside who control the puppets.

I would love to see the actual festival.

My bag smells terrible. Seriously, it makes me physically ill to smell it. The worst part is that the bag instantly makes my clean clothes smell terrible. It’s pretty embarrassing to meet new people with such a foul stench emanating from my back. Risa’s bag is somehow fine. Maybe girls really ARE made out of sugar and spice.

It’s really nice to be in a house again. However the mosquitoes haven’t let up. Risa still got bit a few more times.

We are staying with Masamura Yousuke who is the cousin of Risa’s dad. He’s a really nice guy, and he has offered to let us stay for as much as 5 days, although I think we might leave a bit sooner.

Yousukes two grand kids were over at the house today, so I got to use my 1st grade level Japanese with them. I think it went well. It didn’t take long before the 5 year old was climbing on me.

Yousuke treated us to Sushi for dinner, and tomorrow we are going to drive north to Takayama.

No photos today.

Day 62 Photoset

The day started out well enough. We walked the Nakasendo through Tarui, which had a nice feel to it. We saw a few old Ryokans and talked to a couple of people. One man gave us a pamphlet of the city and wished us well on our journey.

At the end of Tarui, there was a neat 300 year old stone road marker explaining the split in the road. One direction was the way to Akasaka via the Nakasendo, the other way leads to Ogaki. Since our next destination is in Nagoya, we had to leave the Nakasendo behind and head towards Ogaki.

Almost immediately, the road turned from green countryside with quaint towns, into mile after mile of concrete urban sprawl. Ugly, boring, blah.

The seemingly endless sprawl was broken up by two sort of interesting castles. The Ogaki castle and Sunamata castles are both concrete replicas, but their original selves played important roles in Japanese history.

Ogaki castle was the HQ of the Western Armies before the battle of Sekigahara. The castle museum had a ton of information about the battle, including a couple of movies with sweet tactical analysis played out via Shogun Total War animations.

The Sunamata castle was small, but still pretty cool. It was built by one of Oda Nobunaga’s armies that was engaged in a siege of another castle. They needed a local base, so they prepared all the material necessary to build a fort, then delivered everything on the same day. Less than 2 weeks later, they had built a defensive wall, a moat, and would eventually complete a castle tower in the center. The speed at which they built the fort gave rise to the legend that the castle was built in a single night.

We arrived fairly late to our campground, but managed to get our tent set up before it got too dark to see. At the end of the day, we walked something like 27km, much of it through blah urban sprawl. Risa has about 14 mosquito bites and I have a new blister on my toe. The weather was alright, it didn’t rain much, but it was really humid and it’s freaking hot in the tent right now. It’s going to be tough to sleep in this heat.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow. We are going to stay with some of Risa’s relatives who live about 20km south of here. Can’t wait to sleep on a bed/futon!

It rained a lot last night, and it rained a lot this morning. I am very happy that I bought an umbrella when it started raining super hard yesterday. The rain gear we brought with us is way too hot to wear while walking.

We walked through 3 post towns today. Samegai, Kashiwabara, and the famous city of Sekigahara.

The first town we came too was Samegai, and we were really happy to see that the old Nakasendo is clearly marked and actually goes through the city. So instead of walking along side the big trucks on the highway, in the rain, we got to take a nice stroll through an old post town that seems to have retained most of it’s old charm. The best part about this town is the cool stream that flows along side the main road. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard, so we didn’t get any pictures.

All day long, we were surprised to see how well the Nakasendo is marked, and that it never forces you to walk right on the highway. We spent almost the entire day walking on quiet streets that meander through trees, rice patties, or these cool old post towns.

After Samegai we came to Kashiwabara which seems to require all buildings to hang a white lantern with “Nakasendo” written on it. The town also had a little museum and tea shop. We waited out a heavy rain at the tea shop, and when we left we finally got a chance to break out the camera and take some pictures. As you can see, we were following this small little road through some classic looking towns.

I have to say, despite the rain, this was probably the best walking day we’ve had. The road was quiet, the towns were cool, and overall we really got the feeling of walking the Nakasendo. The fact that you come to a new town every couple of hours or so gives you plenty of time to rest and recharge. I hope the rest of the trail is so well preserved.

The last post town we walked through was Sekigahara. This city is famous for the decisive battle between Tokugawa and the Western Armies. Tokugawa won, and the Tokugawa shogunate began (basically).

Today, Sekigahara is still a small town, but much bigger than it was back in the day. There are markings all over the city for little historical land marks. We only went to one, but it was kind of interesting. There was a stone marker and a sign which basically said, “So and so deployed his troops here, but one of them betrayed him and the entire group was wiped out.” This marker now resides in an elementary school parking lot.

Our camp today is in a park just south of the post town of Tarui. We lucked out when we looked at the park map and discovered that there was a gymnasium. Risa said, “A gym! That might mean they have a shower!!!” Suddenly she walked 109343 times faster than me, as she bolted for the gym to ask permission for the shower. They initially said no, but Risa gave them her puppy dog eyes and explained that we’ve been walking the Nakasendo and are in desperate need of a shower. After hearing her plead for mercy, they were kind enough to let us use the shower (for free!) and even gave us permission to camp in the outfield of a baseball diamond. So right now we are camping out in right field, way out where the dandelions grow.

It’s raining again.