Roving Japan

[Editors note: 7 days left! I will hopefully finish soon!]

Day 85 Photoset

Mr. Itoh told us that we should look for chopsticks in this part of Japan. The wood from this valley is some of the best in Japan, so one of the local specialties is Chopsticks and wooden hair combs. His advice was to look for the pairs in the $10 - $20 range. Anything cheaper than $10 wouldn’t be nice enough, and anything more than $20 was too expensive.

So this morning we spent a good amount of time wandering around Narai, poking our heads into the houses-turned-museums, and browsing the many fancy chopsticks and combs.

These goods have been sold here for hundreds of years, since most travelers passing through couldn’t carry much more than small trinkets like combs and chopsticks. Everything is hand made and really nice.

We probably spent an hour or so looking for the perfect set, but we just couldn’t settle on one that we were willing to pay that kind of money for. $10 is a lot for 1 pair of chopsticks. We decided to move on and see if we could find chopsticks along the way.

Outside of Narai, we found a lacquer ware shop selling top quality Japanese dishes, boxes, and anything else you might make out of wood and lacquer. We are in Nagano prefecture now, so you might remember the Nagano Olympic medals were black on one side. That was a tip of the cap to the local lacquer industry.

Everything in the store was super expensive, so we didn’t stay long. We looked at the bowls that seemed identical to our bowls we bought for $1 each, only these are the real deal and therefore cost like $100 each. They also had chopsticks, but nothing caught our eye, so we moved on.

For lunch we stopped at a big roadside rest area that had a big shop/museum filled with more chopsticks and lacquer ware, and a restaurant owned by a woman from Finland. We thought it might be a nice change of pace to eat some western food, so we ordered the closest thing we could find which was a spaghetti / salad thing. It was pretty good, but the highlight of the place was a funny little book talking about the great things you can do in Finland. The one that stood out to me was the wife carrying competition! Maybe Risa and I should compete!

Again, none of the chopsticks seemed right for us. We didn’t want to pay $10 on just anything, so we needed THE PERFECT PAIR. But we couldn’t find one. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. From the rest area, we continued down the highway until we reached the small town of Niekawa.

Niekawa is home to the second major checkpoint on the Nakasendo trail. We figured that since we didn’t tour the checkpoint in Kisofukushima, we should tour this one.

The checkpoint building was pretty cool, with lots of old artifacts from the Nakasendo days.

We learned about how everyone passing through here had to be inspected to make sure they weren’t carrying any wood from kiso valley. They also checked every woman, and every man who looked like he might be a woman to make sure they weren’t royalty. Apparently, back in the old days, the shogun had kidnapped the wives of many of the local feudal lords and held them captive in Edo. The checkpoints had to make sure none of them were trying to escape by checking everyone who passed through.

We also got a good look at some of the old passports and documents used back then. It was a lot of fun.

After the checkpoint it was about 4:30pm so we made the executive decision to take a train from Niekawa to the city of Matsumoto. Originally I had wanted to walk to Shiojiri, but we spent a lot of time shopping for chopsticks, so we didn’t have the time. We also wanted to see Matsumoto since it is famous for one of the most beautiful castles in Japan. So on the train we went!

It was a little sad, because the train spends a lot of time in a tunnel, so we missed the final few kilometers of beautiful Kiso valley scenery before popping out in the main valley near Shiojiri.

Matsumoto is an interesting place. As soon as we got to the train station, we knew we were in a unique location. It seemed like everyone had big hiking backpacks like us. This is the main hub for people who go hiking in the Japanese Alps, so risa and I didn’t stand out at all.

We went straight for the information center and grabbed a bunch of maps, then walked to the hotel we reserved last night.

As we walked through the city, the vibe we got was totally different from most places. Matsumoto is definitely NOT “Any City In Japan”. It’s got a lot of character. Modern architecture, nice big sidewalks and lots of foreign food!

In our room I brought up google earth and found a Thai curry place with good ratings, so we checked out a couple free bicycles from the hotel and rode down there to experience an AMAZING dinner. $12 got you all you can eat curry, and you could choose between 10 different flavors! The common strategy seemed to involve making an X with the rice, and pouring 4 flavors into the divided areas. It was delicious.

After dinner we rode to the famous Matsumoto castle and took some really cool photos. This castle is awesome. One of the best looking we’ve seen. We can’t wait to come back tomorrow. I guess the bicycles at the hotel are free to use, and you can also pick up free bikes at museums and the train station. I think we’re going to get some good use out of those bikes tomorrow.