Japan, Travel

Japan Trip: One Night in Matsumoto

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When we decided to go to Japan, I asked (myself), can we go to Matsumoto? This is where Shinichi Suzuki had his school, this is where he lived when he pioneered the Suzuki method, a method, a philosophy really, of teaching children to play music by using music in the same way that a child learns his native language. This is the method I learned violin through, and it greatly informs how I teach the violin. One thing that turned music teaching upside down was Dr. Suzuki’s idea that all children had the capacity to learn music, and that they should start very young, during the years when language was still being acquired.

I grew up listening to recordings of all the music I was learning and going to learn in the next year or so. I listened constantly! My mother attended lessons with me, and she practiced with me when I was younger. We attended “institutes” in the summer to play with other students (we didn’t have the group classes that are a big part of the method after my first year or two just due to circumstances) and to learn from other teachers. It was a lot of fun (not always, with practicing) playing the violin, especially playing with others!

SO! Matsumoto had always been in the back of my head as a magical village where Suzuki taught everybody to play the violin. I started looking on the map as I started planning this trip, and then I saw you could do these walking tours on the Nakasendo Trail and end in Matsumoto! Though we didn’t technically walk to Matsumoto, we just took a very short train. Oh, and Matsumoto is a mid-size city, not a village. Was it a village before? Probably it was much smaller, and I’m sure it was magical.

We left off in Narai, at the end of a 5 day walking tour. We caught the train to Matsumoto and walked about ten minutes with our luggage (oh, so sad, no more luggage transfers included!) to Hotel Onyado Nono Matsumoto, which had actually been recommended by my friend Stephanie. It was a bustling place, with lockers for your shoes and a mat to put your luggage on to have it cleaned off. We checked in and got unpacked, and our first step was to clean up and hit the onsen!

Our room had a nice view, and it was very comfortable. We grabbed our things and our robes and went upstairs to our respective onsens. Mine was very nice, with an indoor and an outdoor pool, which I tried both.

After getting cleaned up and relaxing, it was time to seek out dinner. It was raining a bit, off and on, and I didn’t want to walk far.

Louie found an Izakaya called Furinkazen just a few minutes walk from the hotel with excellent tablelog ratings. As soon as we walked in, they said “no English menu!” We said, that’s fine, we will manage. They looked doubtful, but really, we aren’t that picky, and we figured we would use a translator app to help us.

Sitting at the counter of the Izakaya (a sort of Japanese pub).

Well, this was the menu. Not as helpful for a translator app, but very lovely! One of the workers came over to try to help us, and he spoke English well enough. We basically asked his opinions, and tried to explain we just wanted a variety of dishes, and didn’t care too much! But no horse. There was a horse pictured and neither of us wanted to eat horse.

Look, we got the egg from the picture!

I don’t remember what we ordered, and looking at pictures it’s still unclear. Egg with greens, fish, all kinds of delicious stuff.

And then we had asked for some vegetables, wanting to make sure we had a balanced meal. We asked what he thought was good. Well, they brought out this radish and greens dishes. Raw.

I honestly thought maybe they were just messing with us, because it was so weird! Louie and I ate it, dipping the radishes in the sauce, because we figured the roughage was a good thing. I don’t know though, was this a real dish?

Anyway, we had a lovely evening, and then went back to hotel and slept very well in the lovely bed.

Day 2 of Matsumoto:

We woke up and went downstairs for breakfast. Stephanie had said they had a great breakfast, and she was correct. It was a giant buffet with many stations of delicious looking food. It was hard to stop filling our plates!

Then we had to pack up and store our bags, since we had a train later in the day. But first, much sightseeing!

This was some of the most blatant law breaking we saw in Japan.

We walked along the river a bit heading towards the historic part of town.

This area was called Frog Street.

Nakamachi street: such a beautiful street with old white buildings!

Japan is known for its vending machines. This was a pizza vending machine!

Louie needed little rest so he had a seat.

We walked over to Matsumoto Castle, one of the 12 original castles left in Japan. We just walked around the outside.

It was surrounded by water, as a good castle should be, and it was beautiful and dark.

Our next stop was the Suzuki Memorial Hall, which was a museum in the house where he lived. It was a 15-20 minute walk along a busy road, but it was sort of interesting.

We got a private tour of the house: there was one man working there and he gave us a private tour. It was very nice to see everything! You took your shoes off, of course, and put on slippers that were pretty small for my feet.

This was Dr. Suzuki’s work room where he listened to all the graduation tapes students from around the world would send him.

I was there!

I believe this was in his handwriting. These are some songs that he wrote for the first volume of pieces, and if you stop by my house in the afternoons, you’ll hear my students playing them.

There was also a large living room area filled with recordings and pictures. We listened to a recording of Ave Maria that inspired Suzuki to become a violinist! Louie didn’t know much about him at all so he found it quite fascinating to learn about the method and the man. He thought it was quite interesting that Suzuki himself learned the violin starting as a teenager yet dedicated his life to teaching young children to play.

It was a wonderful visit to the house, and I was happy to be there. I had reached out to the local Suzuki school about visiting, but they were on vacation while we were there.

After that, lunch! We took a cab back to the main area of town, and found an amazing soba place, Marushu. It was a little busy when we arrived so they had us wait outside until they were ready.

We sat at the bar and really enjoyed our lunches.

We had a little more time then, so we just wandered around heading towards the direction of the hotel.

We had a ticket to Tokyo leaving around 3:30 or so: we ended up with sort of a short connection in Nagano, and then the train seemed to be running a little behind so we were a bit stressed out about catching the next one. It ended up being just fine, but I would say to people: if you want to be less stressed, choose a longer connection when possible.

I got a picture of the Shinkansen train arriving at the station in Nagano. By the way, the train ride was absolutely beautiful from Matsumoto to Nagano and then for the first part to Tokyo: the mountains! We would love to go back and explore that area more as well.

Pictures from the train window aren’t the best, but you can see there are mountains.

We got to Ueno station and then took a subway to Asakusa and walked about 8 minutes to our hotel for the remainder of the trip, Sake Bar Hotel Asakusa.

Two beds, something we were pretty accustomed to, haha. This is considered a nicer room than a room with one bed.

A large tub as well as a Japanese style shower. This place didn’t have public onsens, just one you could reserve and use once for free. What it did have was free sake to drink and a foot bath on the roof.

We got some laundry going in the hotel’s machine and then went out in search of food. We settled on a nearby ramen restaurant with very high tablelog ratings. Noriaki Bibi Aged Miso Ramen Asakusa, which was right around the corner from our hotel.

You ordered from a machine and then got a little ticket that you’d hand to the counter.

They asked if I wanted a bib and I looked around and saw many people were using them, so I said YES. They only offered one additional raw egg unlike a previous place where there were unlimited. (One is enough for me). This ramen was really delicious!

Yummy! After dinner we wandered around the area a bit more, just to stretch our legs.

And then back up to the rooftop foot baths. It looks like it was even a little chilly!

Tomorrow will be more exploring, and I’ll leave us there for now. We will see how soon I can get back to telling you more about Tokyo 🙂

Hiking, Japan, Travel

Japan: Walking Tour Day 5: Yabuhara to Narai

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Okay, so I’m going to tell you about our last day of the walking tour. This isn’t the last day of our trip, but it IS the last day of the walking tour part. As a reminder (or if you are new, WELCOME), we did a trip to Japan in late May/early June, with part of it being a lovely 5 day walking tour on the Nakasendo Trail supported by and booked through Really Rural Japan.

Day 5: Yabuhara to Narai

  • Distance: 4 miles to 7 km
  • Elevation Gain: 320 m
  • Elevation Loss: 305 m

Okay, so this was it, the last day! I was all in on the hiking, and hopeful that my feet would survive one more day.

Breakfast was a spectacle as we thought it might be, though not as much as the “Shogun Dinner” the night before. It was tasty though, and filling. There was a western breakfast option, but we didn’t take it.

We had to catch an 8:55 train from Kiso Fukushima Station to Yabuhara Station. Though the walk wasn’t super long, it was probably about 15 minutes, and the hotel had offered to shuttle us, so we took that offer. A bunch of us loaded into a van and got dropped off at the station with plenty of time to get tickets. It was a short train ride and then it was time to walk!

We were a little slow getting out of the train station and pretty much people left us behind, no problem there. We prefer an empty hike anyway! Except for bears, maybe there’s safety in numbers?

We walked through Yabuhara Juku, under some railway tracks, and then past a nice fountain. The guidebook suggested we empty our water bottles and fill them with “the good stuff” but we just topped off.

The water tasted good, and we didn’t get sick, so yay!

And then we got to the footpath, the woods, the fun parts! I enjoyed walking through towns to see them, but the woods were always so nice.

A nice cobblestone path through the woods, isn’t it lovely? And green?

Big different between very often and not very often, glad they cleared that up. We kept ringing the bells and had little bear bells attached to our bags. After so many days, we hardly noticed them any more. Perhaps the bears didn’t either.

We did run back into some people, and actually passed a few going uphill, I couldn’t believe it! The hike wasn’t bad today, just up for a bit, and then, down. You know, normal. We had one place where we had a little navigation confusion but it worked out, and another place where there were bathrooms…but they were super gross so I didn’t use them. Very usual for a hike, very UNusual for Japan.

We kept crossing paths with various members of a multi-generational family group that we had seen on previous days. It turned out they had booked with Oku Japan, another company I had looked at. They were happy with their hike and the details as well.

Misty mountains.

There was a shrine at the top of the pass, which is named Torii Pass. That meant to me that it was the high point, and that meant it was downhill from here!

This is the torii gate that the pass is named for.

How people looked back in the day. Lots of pipe smoking and glaring, and way more snow on the mountains. Less trees though.

Showing us how bears look from the side.

And from the front.

This was the last bear bell on our journey! We knew because it was labeled as the first bear bell coming the other way and all kinds of instructions. I rang it loud and clear and all the bears scrambled away from us.

Our first view of Narai from the path.

So, we made it to Narai, the final destination on our walking journey. Our day wasn’t over yet however. We had to take a train to Matsumoto later in the day, and we had to wait until after 3:30 for our luggage to be delivered to the train station, so that meant we were planning on the 3:52 train.

So, it was time to eat lunch and wander around Narai. It was a lovely old town.

Don’t get your semi truck stuck on the tracks!

We found a highly rated soba noodle restaurant, Kokoro-ne.

The table next to ours: we were sitting on the floor on those cushions, very traditional.

Soba noodles with tempura vegetables. It was so tasty! You dip the noodles in the sauce.

After lunch we wandered the town for a bit–it’s a beautiful street, though it IS open to delivery trucks. There are some museums but the weather was so lovely we didn’t want to be inside.

This little guy was all over. It is a Tanuki statue and is mostly a symbol of good luck and prosperity.

We wandered over to the river and there was a lovely bridge to walk across. We took lots of pictures and wandered around.

We got coffee at Matsuya Sabo, which made siphon coffee–sort of like a chemistry experiment where the coffee is made in a glass goblet. Why didn’t I take pictures, I don’t know. But here’s the coffee.

And finally our luggage was at the station so we went to check things out. We decided we needed a break, so we bought our tickets and sat with our luggage, waiting on the train for a little while. We chatted with other people near us: mostly from the aforementioned family group. And then the train arrived and we were off to Matsumoto!

I’m going to stop there for today, as it’s the end of the walking tour. Next I’ll tell you about Matsumoto, and then I’ll try to get the remaining days in Tokyo as compact as possible, hahahaha! How do people do this? I guess if I didn’t have a job or other hobbies recapping my trips would be so much faster (in weeks, not the actual amount of time spent typing and looking at pictures/links/notes/etc.) But alas there are other parts of life (sadly, because traveling is so much fun!).

I gave Really Rural Japan excellent reviews online. We had never done this sort of tour before, but we felt supported and everything worked smoothly. When we had questions we could send messages via Whatsap and they responded quickly. We also had great GPS files to use via the Gaia app as well as a guidebook and other printed materials (and pdfs of everything). The hotels were great, the included meals were terrific, and the suggestions for things to do along the way were also really good–everything that we tried that was recommended was tasty and unique. So if you want to copy my trip, I highly recommend it, or to use them for another trip.

Random thoughts

Two weeks done already?!

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The time flies, doesn’t it? I’m already two weeks into the school year, though for my college job that means I’ve only taught some students one lesson rather than two. It will be Christmas before we know it.

I read something on the internet the other day, it was a 20 year old asking older people, how long does it feel to live from 20 to 60? The first answer I read was, it feels very long while you live it, and then like no time at all when you look back at it. I suppose that’s true for everything in adulthood, isn’t it? The day of teaching feels plenty long, when you are helping students tune, making them “suffer through” their scales, making them slow down to practice things properly, bugging them about their technique, etc. And then at the end you go, where did the day go?

Since getting back from vacation we’ve been trying to make sure our day-to-day life isn’t just work/work/sit in front of tv/sleep/work/work/etc. It’s easy to get in that habit, and while I don’t think it’s bad for some of the days of the week (we’ve been enjoying 100 Years of Solitude on Netflix and watched Dark Matter before that), I want to keep getting out of the house and doing things.

Last weekend we had a flurry of activities: dinner at Madrina with Ben and Roz, dinner at Robin with Louie (I loved this place, it felt somehow more different than other restaurants around here), and then we had tickets to the Cardinals on Sunday and went with friends as well. I don’t take food pictures on a day to day basis like I do on vacation, which is a bit of a shame and maybe I should, but it feels weird when I’m a local, you know?

We had been worried about the weather/heat last Sunday, but our seats were in the shade and there was generally enough of a breeze going that it was quite enjoyable.

I only look a little crazy in my selfie there?

Anyway, the Cardinals lost, but our tickets included a hot dog and a soda so that was nice. We took the Metrolink both ways which was easy, and it was PACKED after the game, which made it feel like we lived in a really cool city. Also the B.O. was an issue, but luckily the ride wasn’t toooooo long.

This past week I mostly just taught then, and then last night we went out to visit a couple of friends who have a pool so we swam and then ate dinner together. No pictures, because, well, I just didn’t. Am I a real blogger or not? (Not, as those of you waiting to hear more about Japan and then Alaska know.)

Today is a wedding in Hermann and tomorrow an outdoor (perhaps ) concert, and then Monday totally off. I’m debating if I need to send a reminder to my students of NOT having lessons Monday, as the system I use only sends reminders of when they DO have lessons and sometimes people get on autopilot. (I actually just went and did this, I don’t want anybody showing up on Monday).

I’m ready for fall weather! This heat is horrible. We are in our fall schedules, we need some cooler weather!

Random thoughts

First Day of School

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I’ll take a break from (not very quickly) writing trip reports to writing about my day to day life as is. And technically yesterday was the first day of school, but today is the first day for some people.

The last few weeks before school started went by quickly, and I didn’t get very much done. I had some high hopes for a few home projects, but I found myself just wanting to catch up on my reading and podcast listening.

One thing Louie and I both did that has been fun is we joined a gym. We have been debating this for a little while, and we decided to join the Wash U gym, which is a great deal. You have to be careful about when you go because it gets horribly busy, but the first few weeks were great. Yesterday the students were back, but I found mid morning still wasn’t too bad. When we toured the gym the student made sure to inform us of all the pickleball options and also pointed out that most faculty show up early, around 6 am to get their workouts done before the work day. We are not most faculty, I guess!

Other fun things: Leslie stayed for two nights en route from New York to Arizona. We had food, chatted, and took a long bike ride on the Katy Trail.

Her cats lived in our music room for the time. My cats were upset by this, as you would expect.

I went to an art class at Bowood Farms.

Muriel enjoying the couch on another day.

We’ve also been to an opera and out for dinner for friends, and I’ve met up with a variety of friends for lunches and brunch. So, it’s not that I haven’t done anything at the end of my break, it’s just that my constant guilt of say, not having completely finished decorating the house kicked in.

I am looking forward to a good year! I am limiting my new students, in fact, not taking any new students at home for now. My schedule is pretty good and I have plenty of students, and the nice thing is that I only teach past 8 on one night instead of 3, so that’s better for getting to bed early, plus it’s better for the nights I have to reschedule for rehearsal: less students to reschedule. So either I get free time/more sleep, or simply less stress. And when I reschedule, it doesn’t always work out so I often lose that teaching income, so my hope is that having slightly less students still works out well.

Performance wise, there’s nothing terribly exciting in the immediate future, but more fun stuff later in the year. Maybe I’ll keep you posted!

The other fun thing later is that I finally caved and got an apple watch. This fits in with my gym going: I’m working on improving my fitness so we can do a bigger hike in Europe next summer, in addition to healing my feet, ha! So having a watch is a great way to monitor my heart rate and activities, but I learned yesterday that it picks up violin playing and counts it as steps, oops! So from here on when I play unless I want it to appear that I have walked extra miles, I have to turn off fitness tracking for it. I wish there were another way, but that’s what the internet tells me is the best solution: do you have any better ones? And putting it on another wrist isn’t an option, and I’d rather not just take it off.

Japan

Walking Tour Day 4: Tsumago to Nojiri

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So, this was a day that didn’t turn out quite right, due to some personal things and my toes being a hot mess. It’s worth noting that SINCE this date, just the other day both of my pinky toenails fell off. There are little tiny new nails growing in, but on the night in Tsumago, I thought, man, I’m going to lose those nails. And then I didn’t, so I thought, ok, dodged that bullet, and then the other day I looked at my right little toenail and it looked weird, and I realized it was totally bent upwards, and I didn’t even feel it. So yeah!

Previous posts. This is ridiculous, right, that I can’t manage to do more than one day at a time for this thing? We’ll see how things go in the future, but until then: Day 4!!

Day 4 started poorly. I woke up around 2 am to use the toilet, and saw I had a variety of texts on my phone about a family emergency happening back home, so I was wide aware for probably about 1 to 1 1/2 hours being upset and trying to figure out if I needed to do anything. Since then things are better and it turned out okay for the most part, but at 2 am I didn’t know that. Between that and my toes and basically complete inability to walk without massive pain, Louie and I decided to split up for the day.

Me at breakfast. It was very nice and as you can see, Japanese.

The hike: Tsumago to Nojiri

  • Distance: 12 miles or 19 km
  • Elevation gain: 625 m
  • Elevation Loss: 520 m

It was still raining at breakfast, another thing that held me back from wanting to hike. We technically weren’t in Tsumago, but were in a nearby hamlet called Otsumago. We could have walked to Tsumago, well some of us, but the Australians staying at the same Inn had booked a cab, and we fit in, so we rode along.

Tsumago was very nice! It’s an old, traditional town. At one point, hardly anybody lived there and nobody bothered to tear down the old houses, so when tourism came back, it was still there, ready to be visited by Japanese people from the cities, and then by international tourists. We were there early, in the rain, before anything other than coffee shops had opened, so that was nice.

Louie and I had a cup of coffee together and then he headed out, to meet up at the next hotel. My plan was to slowly explore Tsumago, then catch a bus to Nagiso. From Nagiso I would catch a train to Kiso Fukushima for the night. Louie would hike to Nojiri and then catch a train to Kiso Fukushima.

I enjoyed visiting Tsumago, and managed to get around okay. I bought a few small souvenirs, and then went to catch the bus to Nagiso. It was an easy and uneventful bus ride, and then hilariously I saw Louie again in Nagiso! I guess it was an easy enough walk. We both went to a grocery store together to get lunch for him, and a snack for me, and then said goodbye again.

Louie sent this, with a bust of Beethoven.

Another picture from Louie. The rain made everything so lush and green!

There weren’t many trains each day so I bought tickets for one that left shortly at noon. I didn’t want to walk anymore so I sat in the train station and read for awhile until it was time to go to the platform. At one point Google Maps told me my train was canceled, but it turned out that incorrect and I got on the train as scheduled.

Another picture from Louie: Please have a thing out of the sound.
Louie’s hike was spectacular! He said it was a great day of hiking.

I arrived in Kiso Fukushima and was quite hungry, so I wanted something to eat first. I had a little trouble finding something that looked good and ended up first having only a cup of coffee at a cafe (there was great difficulty communicating) and then I found a bakery and just bought a few things. My next step was to find a shoe store and find something new.

This was a grand adventure, as I spoke no Japanese and the woman who owned the shoe store spoke no English, but with hand gestures and google translate, I managed to find one pair of slides that fit well enough to shuffle around without killing my toes. It was a great day!

While Louie continued hiking…

There was a public foot bath in the middle of town and I thought I’d try that next: I had time to kill before hotel check-in, but I still didn’t want to walk too much, so I was just doing light sightseeing in a fairly small town, though bigger than some we had stayed in.

Relaxing!
Always love finding inanimate objects that appear like faces.
A vending machine Louie sent me.

Louie had thought he might get to Nojiri Station in time for an earlier train, but instead he would have to wait until the 5:26 train. He texted here and there just to make sure I was okay, and of course I hoped he wouldn’t be attacked by a bear.

I visited the public library and had another coffee in the cafe there and sat and read until it was time to check into the hotel.

Tonight we were staying at a place called Onyado Tsutaya. It said it was very old, but it had been renovated and was a very modern “old” hotel. It was nice!

Another picture from Louie: the Japanese Alps.

I unpacked and then went to the onsen. I had it all to myself, and there was an outdoor part, which was amazing. I was poking around the hotel more and I heard from Louie that his train had been canceled, completely! He was absolutely stressing out about what to do, so I left a message with Really Rural Japan for help, and he was trying to get a cab with some other people who were there with him. It was tricky. I also tried to get the hotel to help, but again, language problems.

Louie thought he might have a cab lined up, and I ran into the people we had met the night before, so I sat in the hotel lobby bar with them and chatted while waiting on him to get settled. Finally he said he was in the cab with some others on his way, and then I had also heard from Really Rural Japan by then, but I told them it was settled. He arrived just before dinner and was exhilarated from the hike and the experience: though I missed hiking with him, I was thrilled he had had a wonderful day exploring and not bogged down by me.

Dinner time: it was absolutely cheesy and fun. The hotel leaned into the tourist experience and our dinner was called “A Shogun Dinner.”

We were encouraged to wear the Yukatas, so we did. I appreciated that there was a variety of sizes and colors to choose from.

Yes, there was a short movie.

And there was food in a helmet.

But the service and hospitality was top notch, and we had a huge meal with a wide variety of food. It wasn’t my favorite meal, nor was it the most traditional, some stuff was definitely made a bit MORE for western tastes, for instance, sweeter tasting. But it was cheesy and fun, and overall very good.

We did a sake sampler

Various foods. I mean, I ate it all. I was hungry as I hadn’t even really had a proper lunch.

Dinner took awhile, and then Louie and I took a little walk around town (I wore my slides). I wanted him to see the foot bath!

Outside of the hotel.

I believe this was the Kiso River.

After that, we went back to relax. Kiso looked like a cool place, and there were other restaurants and people out walking about. Maybe there was even more going on the evening than there had been in the afternoon, ha! But we needed to get some rest, and I hadn’t slept well the night before so I was particularly exhauted.

The next day would be our last day of walking, and it was a shorter day. I hoped to walk it after giving my feet a rest! Stay tuned to see what happens!

Japan, Travel

Walking Tour Day 3: Ochiai to Tsumago

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I’ve received many in person comments on my blog, which is a little funny to me. But so few on the internet comments, which would be a lovely thing as well. If you are reading and want to tell me, please do! I love hearing from readers. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

For previous posts about my trip in Japan in May/early June, click here–

Day 3:

Originally:

  • Nakatsugawa to Tsumago
  • Distance: 11 miles or 17 km
  • Elevation Gain: 550m/1800 ft
  • Elevation Loss: 435 m/1490 ft

So, the guidebook said we could cut the hike down in size, and due to my poor pinky toes, we decided to do that, and change our day’s hike from Ochiai to Tsumago, which would be “only” 12 km.

We woke up and had a nice buffet breakfast at the “Onn”.

There were a variety of Japanese foods to choose from as well as some western style foods if one wanted. You can see I chose Japanese foods. After breakfast we checked out, left our suitcases to be picked up and attempted to get a cab on our own. This failed, so we had to go back inside and get the hotel to call one for us, which was successful. It was lightly raining off and on, but at least it wasn’t too hot!

We got dropped off in Ochiai-Juku, the old part of Ochiai, and started walking. I am not going to sugar coat things here, every step I took was painful. I tried a variety of things with socks and bandages and whatnot and finally settled on a way that I could go forward. And we did.

We were trying to follow the directions, but at one point we took a wrong turn, and a man in a truck stopped and asked if we were trying to hike the Nakasendo. We said yes, and he told us we had missed a turn and needed to turn back, haha. It wasn’t much off the path, luckily!

It must have been really funny in this picture!

We got to walk through trees that looked like this. So beautiful!

We were climbing a bit as we headed towards Magome, the next post-town of the day. The views were beautiful and pretty expansive.

We always loved the cobblestone parts, so scenic! I could have posted a dozen more photos of Louie or I standing on the cobblestone, but I shall spare you.

We were getting closer to Magome, which meant closer to getting a break, haha! So, the next part of the hike was the most popular on the trail. Many people would come to visit Magome itself, as it is a little traditional village that was rebuilt after a fire in 1915 and is super cute. The guidebook had a great point: “Vendors sell the classic food items of Nakasendo (soba, oyaki, gohei-mochi, etc) from their shopfronts, much as they would have done in the Edo period, making tourism today feel like the tourism of hundreds of years ago. And in that way, I can think of nothing more authentic.”

There aren’t many post towns that are so well preserved as Magome and then later in our hike, Tsumago. In a way, it is because the railroads were built and then these towns because less popular, so people left, and there was no need to tear things down. For Magome, tourism started in the 1960’s and as things were still much like they had been in 1915, it was a matter of simply making people keep them that way and helping to provide funding to do so. So the whole town is fake, yes, but also a living museum. And so cute, and car free for most of it, and totally uphill.

First we did a little shopping and tried some mochi balls. There were busloads of people and it was a little disconcerting after being around so few people the past two days! Then we needed coffee and stopped at a lovely place called “Hillbilly Coffee” that was recommended by our guidebook.

It was a rainy day, just lightly raining, so I kept being uncertain, did I want my raincoat on or off?

We got lunch next, at a soba place called Mikazukian. It was recommended by the coffee shop owner and also in our guidebook, and we both enjoyed it.

I ordered soba with tempura and Louie got one with lots of mushrooms.

We also had unsweetened tea at the table for no extra charge, and that was a nice change from water for a bit! The restaurant was busy but not overly crowded. I enjoyed my meal quite a bit.

The notice board.

We kept walking, up and up through Magome.

We were mostly at the top by now!

Then it was time to start hiking down a bit, then up a bit. Here is where there were other groups of hikers, as well as many signs warning us of bears. We had our own bear bells on, but along the way there would be large bells to ring to warn the bears you were coming.

Around here is where we saw a sign that we were entering Nagono prefecture from Gifu prefecture, where we had been hiking. We had to cross a busy highway, but we managed to avoid getting run over. This was the Magome Pass at 790 m, the highest point of the hike.

I don’t know why I was ducking underneath this bell, but this was one of the bear bells we would ring as we went by.

This was one of the higher points on the trail: after this, we really did mostly hike downhill from Magome to Tsumago.

It was a beautiful hike! There was a light rain so it was glistening and so green. I was hurting, yes, but trying to enjoy it anyway.

After walking downhill for awhile, we got to the Ichikokutochi Tebata Tea House. It is a tea house that is around 230 years old! The tea is free, but takes donations.

It was nice and cozy inside, with a fire going. We enjoyed some cups of tea.

There was a man working there, but he didn’t seem to want to chat. Perhaps he didn’t speak English, and we didn’t speak Japanese. We did thank him on our way back out into the…rain. It was a nice respite!

Another bear bell! I enjoyed ringing them. I think Louie found it a little awkward.

At one point, there was a side hike where you can go to see two waterfalls, with a 500 m round trip to see them. I was not up for it, but Louie wanted to go. We decided to split up and ring the bells even louder and he would catch up with me along the way.

Louie made it to the waterfalls! And I forged ahead, trying to go as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast, haha.

He caught up with me shortly before we got to our inn for the night. It was raining heavier at this point and we were both ready to be done. And then, there it was, Tsutamuraya!

We actually had an awkward time figuring out how to enter, as what we thought was the door was actually just a window. We saw people inside around a small fire, but we couldn’t figure out the door! It is the white thing, and you have a large step to go over.

Anyway, we made it in, took off our shoes (glorious!) and had some tea around a small fire. There was a group of Australians there already, who had been hiking as well, 6 of them.

This inn was very old and traditional. We had shared bathrooms, low ceilings, paper walls and paper on the windows. We got to our room and hurried to get to the bath in order to beat the crowds, haha. There were baths to use, but only two. Louie and I got showered and got into the tub, but as I was getting in, I sort of tripped over a step and ended up stubbing one of my pinky toes which was ALREADY a mess. So that sucked, but it was nice to relax in the bath and be clean, of course.

Then I took a look at my toes, and it was a bit scary. They were huge and misshapen–I had a sewing kit so I sterilized a needle and tried to pop the blisters. I realized I had been keeping them moist at all times with these special bandaids I was using, but Louie thought I should have been keeping them dry, so it was a mess. Who even knows. What I really needed was probably a pair of hiking sandals for the future, but I only had my sneakers and my hiking shoes, both of which were squeezing my toes.

Anyway, then it was time for dinner. We went downstairs and officially met the rest of the guests–the Australians, a rowdy group of three couples doing a similar walk to us with another company, and a family from New Zealand of a mom, dad, and two younger kids. The mom taught Japanese and had done a study abroad and personally knew the son of the owner of the inn, so they were just doing a road trip around Japan. The kids were great, and the older one was very friendly and talkative–he was about 10 years old.

We enjoyed our dinner–it was tasty, and we ordered some sake with it that the owners brewed themselves. All the food was from the property: they farm their own food, breed their own fish, and brew their own sake. The sake was cloudy, something we hadn’t had before, and we really enjoyed it.

At one point during dinner we were talking about our walking tour companies, and we said we were with Really Rural Japan, and the others said, who? And we saw it again, and we realized how difficult saying Really Rural Japan was, and how it reminded me of the Rural Juror from 30 Rock. I think laughing over that idea really made us all loosen up and be more amenable to talking with each other as well, ha!

It was a bit of a maze to get around the house–we had to duck under some low ceilings, go up stairs, around corners, down long hallways. And then there was another bathroom closer that you had to go downstairs for. It was pretty crazy!

During dinner they closed the windows to the outside due to the constant rain. There were wooden shutters over the paper windows.

This is with the shutters open. Our rooms overlooked a lovely garden in the back yard.

The bedroom without the futons–we had to unpack them from the closet and lay them out and I guess I forgot to take a picture!

A narrow hallway to our room.

More narrow hallway!

This was a little newer: a stairway down to a sink and toilet area. We also figured out that you could sneak through there to get to the dining area instead of going all the way around.

Anyway, after dinner there wasn’t much to do, so we just went upstairs to relax and read. The rain continued and made for a nice backdrop to the evening, though we were both quite worried about what the next day’s hike would look like. To be continued…

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.