Hiking the Nakasendo Trail - Oct 12
Today is a hiking day. I’m excited to go, but I’m on my own. The hike takes on a portion of the the historical Nakasendo Trail, a samurai era highway from the Edo Period connecting Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto through Japan’s central mountains. Today, I’m doing the most popular route: Magome to Tsumago a distance of 7.7kms. I understand it’s popular because it’s the flattest section. But from experience the flattest section doesn’t mean it’s flat.
We had breakfast early as I needed to catch the JR train at 8:44 from Narai Station to Kiso-Fukushima Station and then transfer to catch the JR train at 9:19 to Nakatsugawa. From the bus station at Nakatsuguwa I need to hop on a bus to Magome. It seems to be a complicated travel plan. The first leg is necessary because only local trains service Narai. The second train is a limited express train that doesn’t stop at every station and is much faster that the pony express train. And the bus is necessary because Magome isn’t on the train route and is only accessible by bus.
I make my connections flawlessly. On the leg from Kiso-Fukushima, I meet this couple from London, England and we chat for a while. They are on their last day in Japan and are also doing the trail, but getting off at a different stop than me. I catch my bus at Nakatsugawa, get my bus ticket from the vendor at the bus line up and I get a seat on the bus when it arrives. About 30 minutes later, the bus drops everyone off at the Magome Tourist Information Office. I go in and pick up a few trail brochures, ask directions to the start of the trail and I’m off. But not before I spot a guitar hanging on the wall. For you guitar heads out there, it was a Takamine Limited 2017 Edition named Magome to pay homage to the town. It has a cool abalone “Legend of the Road” motif on the fretboard.
It’s about 11:30 and I head up the hill out of the valley where Magome sits. The walk starts off through the town, and I walk past Edo era buildings that have been restored and are now being used as coffee shops, retail souvenir outlets, ice cream shops, Japanese fast food outlets, etc. There are lots of tourists on this path including many people pushing small dogs about in carriers. I’m beginning to think Edo era towns are magnets for these types of people who like to show off their immaculately coiffed pets.
At the start of my Nakesendo Trek from Mogame to Tsumago.
On the way I spot a place that was serving up some grilled rice cakes. Mogame is known for Gohei-mochi, prepared by pounding short grains rice and shaping it into balls on a wooden skewer, then brushed with a sweet-savoury soy glaze and grilled over a charcoal fire. I couldn’t resist trying some and I can report it tasted really good.
Gohei mochi experience.
I continued up the hill and rested at the viewpoint. My calculations show that I’ve only gone 500 metres, but it was straight uphill. I learn later it was about 100 metres of elevation gain. I stood and took pictures to give myself a rest.
I continued on and to my surprise, it continued uphill. The ground was no longer smooth like it was in the town, but had changed to large uneven flat rocks. I would have liked to enjoy the scenery but I needed to make sure my feet were landing properly or risk hurting myself.
Rocks forming the trail path.
Along the way I met the couple who I had first met on the train. We walked for a little while, but Stephen was much slower because of all the pictures he took (way more than me and I thought I was a heavy camera user), so we parted ways and I moved on ahead.
Stephen, Jeannie and I before I headed out.
The climb upward continued on another 2 kms from Magome. It wasn’t uphill all the way, it did undulate somewhat, but the trail climbed another 100 metres to reach Magome Pass.
Then it goes steeply downhill about 400 metres until you reach Tsumago. Again, it’s not a straight downhill run, but had lots of undulating, mostly downhill grades. Some of these grades were pretty steep. I was wearing my Blundstone boots. They’re great for walking uphill and on level ground, but going downhill, there was way too much movement in the toe box, and I started to feel blisters coming on. Along the trail, I had some bandaids and taped up some trouble spots on my toes, which alleviated a lot of tender spots. The trail passes by a giant cypress tree. These trees were planted in 1716 on opposite sides of a trunk of freshly cut cypress tree. By 2009, the two trees have fully merged into one tree and is still growing strong.
The mammoth cypress tree.
The next memorable part of the trail is Odaki Falls (Men Falls) and Medaki (Women) Falls. Here are two adjacent waterfalls with a bridge overpass.
Medaki Falls.
Bear bell on the path. There were several of these along the trail. I often wondered if it signaled to the bears that dinner was ready.
While Judith was checking out all the dogs in carriages, I also was checking out some dogs I found along the trail.
I finished up the trail at about 2:00 in Tsumago and treated myself to a snack. I found a shop that sold steamed buns and picked up one filled with sweet red bean (adzuki) paste. The dough is made of mugwort (yomogi), an invasive plant in North America but a fragrant and tasty green leafy plant in Japan.
My bun with red bean paste and mugwort flavoured dough.
I had lots of time to kill before I took the bus to Nagiso so that I could catch the train ride home. I looked in lots of souvenir shops, but nothing catches my eye. I walked over to the bus stop which appears to be very unorganized, but I just sit and expect that it will be clear to me which of the buses will take me to my destination. I run into Stephen and Jeannie again. They decide to stand in line as opposed to me that has parked myself on a close by bench. When the bus comes, they insist that I come into the line with them, which allows me to grab a seat for the 10 minute ride.
At Nagiso, I board the train. It’s one of the limited express trains with limited stops so I need to get off at Kiso-Fukushima to catch my local train to get back to Narai. All goes well until some young man wakes me up and says I’m in his seat. I ask what stop we’re at and he says Kiso-Fukushima. I quickly grab my bag and head off but alas, I am too late as the doors close and the train starts moving. Ooops. I figure out the next stop is Shiojiri, about 30 minutes away. Dang. The young man who woke me up comes over to where I’m standing and shows me that I should be able to get back to Kiso-Fukushima by 5:35 and shows me the train route times on his phone. I thank him, but I figured that I’d get back as soon as I could and that it didn’t matter if I knew what time it was going to be. On the way to Shiojiri, we pass through the Narai train station, but of course it didn’t stop.
At Shirojiri, I quickly went to the train listings to find the local train I needed to be on to get back to Narai and from what platform it would leave from. With that information, I raced over to that platform and to my great surprise, there was a train already waiting and I boarded it. Of course, I spend some time second guessing whether I’m on the right train or not. Within a minute I was heading back in the right direction and when I reach Narai and my hotel, I had only delayed by about 45 minutes.
Judith had spent the day resting, going for a walk in search of ice cream and small dogs in carriages.
I had enough time before dinner to have a shower and some onsen time. It was a relaxing way to decompress. Dinner was at 7:30 and we didn’t get out of there until about 9:30. I was very tired, in fact, I think there was one point waiting for dessert that I started to fall asleep. The elevation was only 40 metres higher than my practice hikes up the local hill, PKOLS (Mt. Doug), but I am way further out of shape than 10 years ago. We finished our meal, and I went straight to bed. The hike was took more out of me than I expected.
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