Roving Japan

Day 80 Photoset

Yesterday was so boring because we apparently walked down the wrong road while going through the town of Ena. If we had walked a few blocks north, we would have been able to see the old Nakasendo road, and a couple of neat little museums. Usually, this would have been filed under, “Oh well”, but today was a bit different.

Risa called her uncle Kazuhiko to tell him about our potential article in the Chunnichi newspaper today (It wasn’t in the paper when we checked, maybe tomorrow). When he found out that we were still close to Mizunami, he offered to take us to a few points of interest in the area, then drop us off somewhere on our route.

So this morning at 8:30, Kazuhiko picked us up at the Family Mart near the turn off to the park we were camping in. Just out of curiosity, I asked how long it took to drive from Mizunami to here (which would have taken Risa and I all day). He said “About 30min.”

Kazuhiko drove us back to Ena and we got to see all the stuff we missed yesterday. First we went to the Ena Gorge, then a cool old house museum, a Ukioe art museum where we got to make our own prints, and finally he treated us to lunch. I love Risa’s family!

At this point it was about 12:30, and he offered to take us all the way to our end point for the day. He could have dropped us off sooner so we could walk, but it was raining hard and Risa gave me “the look”. So we accepted his offer and got dropped off at the Onsen I had marked as our target.

Right now I am in the resting room, utilizing an outlet to recharge the phone. It’s raining outside, but I think I see a couple of potential camps across the river from the Onsen. We will spend the rest of the day here, eat dinner, then go set up the tent when it starts to get a little darker.

Tomorrow we are going to hike up highway 7 to the historic towns of Magome and Tsumago. This next section of the Nakasendo is the most famous, and the entire original trail is preserved between the old towns. We are looking forward to it!

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.

Day 60 Photoset

As we went north from our hotel in southern Hikone, we passed through the wonderfully restored old style shopping district. It was great to see such a good replica of an old shopping street with modern technology mixed in without being obtrusive.

From the shopping street, we went to Hikone castle. I read that the castle here was nice, but I’m going to go ahead and say that this is my second favorite castle we’ve seen. Just under Himeji castle because, well, its Himeji castle, and nothing is going to beat that.

Hikone castle is an original, so all the old wood is intact. You can really sense the history there, so I quite enjoyed it.

The view from the top was nice, we finally got a good look at lake Biwa, but unfortunately the castle windows were covered with chicken wire to keep out the birds. This pretty much killed any photo opportunities.

The castle also has a nice garden, and it’s the only place in Japan with an original castle horse stable.

While we were there, a few little rain storms blew over, but as we left it was clear and sunny. However a few km north, it started raining. A lot.

We were lucky because it really started to come down hard right as we approached an overpass. The area under the overpass had a little intersection. During one of the red lights, some high school drop out douchebag ricer started revving his engine. We were a little worried that this worthless waste of youth would try to splash us or something. Then this wonderful upstanding young gentlemen with an appreciation of fine automobiles pulled over and offered us a ride. We would have taken him up on his offer, but he was heading the other direction. It sure was a nice surprise though!

Since we spent so much time at the castle and then taking shelter to avoid the heavy rain, we fell a couple kilometers short of our target in Semegai. We are camping in some trees behind a big shrine we found off of highway 21. The Kannushi was kind enough to give us permission to camp for the night.

We are really happy we found this shrine, otherwise we might be out by the river somewhere. It’s also really nice to camp in a spot where we know we have permission and we won’t be bothered by anyone… Except the mosquitoes, which have us surrounded.

Day 58 Photoset

Long, tedious walk today. We took a long break at a bath house where we also grabbed lunch. Besides that, we pretty much just followed the highway north.

I am constantly amazed by how many pachinko parlors there are in Japan. It doesn’t matter how big the town is, you are guaranteed at least one pachinko parlor and chances are it will be busy! I tried pachinko once. I lost $10 in about 1 minute without ever figuring out what was going on. But apparently some of those players can make a living off the game.

Towards the end of the day we left the city and came into some countryside. I like walking by the rice patties much more than the urban sprawl. It’s also cool to see how much the rice has grown since we started back in May.

We stumbled upon a sweet shrine at one point. We asked if we could camp there, but this shrine is a designated national treasure, so no vagabonds allowed.

A few kilometers before getting to our current camp, we snapped this shot. How cool is that? A Gundam made of granite!

We are now in a roadside rest area, camped off to the side of the parking lot. It’s supposed to rain tonight and all day tomorrow. Our target for tomorrow is Hikone, which apparently has a cool castle and old style shopping street.