Roving Japan

Day 83 Photoset

So if you didn’t know already, Risa hates bugs. HATES bugs. This is especially true if said bug comes towards her, or worse yet, lands on her. It doesn’t matter if the bug is a black widow spider or a butterfly. She will scream and dodge/run/jump whatever. She does this with some kind of super strength that lets her move 2x faster than normal even though she has a 30lb backpack on.

Today, while walking along a particularly narrow stretch of sidewalk along the highway, we ran into Risa’s worst nightmare. For about 300 meters, the sidewalk was covered in grasshoppers. Jumping, flying, land on your leg and jump off grasshoppers.

Risa FREAKED. OUT.

I tried to calm her down, telling her that grasshoppers are harmless, but the fact that these guys were jumping on her was like something out of a horror movie.

Keep in mind that this episode is happening while just a few feet from oncoming semi-trucks going 55mph.

I started getting a little angry because I thought her jumping and screaming was going to land her in front of a truck and then I’d have to explain to her father that she died while under attack from grasshoppers.

I tried walking ahead and clearing the path, but Risa chose to RUN the entire 300 meters in the road, while jumping back on the sidewalk to avoid the trucks. Crazy.

Once clear of the Grasshoppers of DOOM™, we got a nice break at a waterfall. It was a little underwhelming because there was a big ugly steel bridge kind of blocking the view, but it was alright because we were bug free… for a moment.

As we got up to leave, somehow a little white Worm of TERROR™ appeared on Risas hiking stick, causing her to scream and drop the poll. Sheesh.

The final episode of bug attack happened at the worst possible moment. I spotted a monkey in the bushes ahead of us. I wanted to snap a picture so I asked risa to grab the camera from my bag. As she was taking off the lens cap, a Butterfly of DEATH™ flew in front of her face. She screamed, turned away… and scared off the monkey. Siiiigh…….

Other than our problems with the terrifying wild creatures of the Kiso Valley, the walk was really nice. This is really a beautiful place, and the periodic Nakasendo post towns that we come to every couple of hours make the walk even more fun. We especially liked walking through Kiso-Fukushima which is famous for it’s Nakasendo checkpoint for tax collection and its large gate.

We stopped at one Onsen today. It was a little place along the river, but it was a nice break from the walk and it was raining a bit so we got to duck out of the bad weather. The onsen was… dirty. The water was an orange color from the natural spring, but the problem for me was the .25in of orange grime on the bottom of the pool that covered anything that touched it. Good thing they had showers to go with the bath. If Risa had to deal with all those scary bugs, I had to deal with the Onsen of FILTH™. The guy who ran the place was really nice and gave us some ice cream on the house as we were heading out.

Tonight we almost camped at an awesome sumo stadium, but we couldn’t find any bathrooms so we decided to press on to another roadside rest area and camp behind the building. These rest areas are great. The 24hr bathrooms and vending machines give us almost all the comforts of home!

Our rest area has a big stone marker identifying this spot as the half way point between Kyoto and Tokyo on the Nakasendo. Woohoo!