So, we are sitting here in our cotton kimonos, sipping green tea, looking out over a small Japanese style garden and cute little wooden properties with traditional grey slate roof tiles, framed by a forrest of mature pine trees to the left and right, decorating the valley walls. It’s a warm evening with a cool mountain breeze. It’s bliss…but how did we get here?
Day 5:
Yesterday we travelled by bullet train and bus to reach Magome, a quaint little mountain village. It’s lovely, with cobbled streets (it reminded me a little bit of Dinan or Eze) and traditional wooden buildings. We arrived just after lunch and sadly all the restaurants and cafes were closed so we had nothing to do until dinner time at 6pm. Given the choice of napping outside the tourist information centre or in our Ryoknan, we chose the shelter from the cold. Unfortunately, you might describe our lodgings that evening as the Japanese equivalent to a youth hostel. The bathroom was shared which is fine but it also ran out of towels. And you had to make up your own futon bed from scratch (which was actually quite fun as I had to look up how to do it on YouTube). The room was lit by a single florescent tube and heated by one of those combiheater/aircon thingies that dry out your eyes. We certainly felt a far cry from the 34th Floor “Mount Fuji view” of our Tokyo hotel. In fact, by this point, we were feeling a bit cold and woeful. The situation was made better by the food, which was absolutely lovely.
Day 6:
Today, we had no option but to have breakfast at 7:30am. After breakfast there was nothing to do but forward our travel bags to Tsumago and start our trek (and I mean, nothing…nothing at all…).
The walk was 6.64 miles on mountain trails, undulating up and down through the valley…mostly up at the start and then lots of down after about a quarter of the distance. Phil started talking about “lines” and mentioning things like “loamy”, “gap jumps” and “only with a full-face on”. It was beautiful. We had to have lots of little stops because of my hip but that was fine because we got to appreciate the scenery. We even stopped for a picnic of apple (it was the size of a coconut!), raisins and chocolate near the river.
We arrived in Tsumago around lunch time. It’s picture-post-card perfect here. We spent some time just sitting (we’d done enough walking!), people watching and eating ice cream. The local speciality is chestnut ice cream and I felt it was my duty to to try at least two different sellers (just to make sure the quality was consistent).
Our Ryoken is lovely and we enjoyed a lovely soak in a traditional Japanese wooden bath before dinner. Although the bathrooms here are also shared, you can have privacy by locking the door, so you can make full use of the little wooden tub heated by a hot spring - mmmmm - lush!
Our room is large, simple (in that Japanese minimalist kind of way) and the futons are already made up for us (so, no honing of my new found skills this evening).
Dinner was AMAZING. We even tried bee larvae (it’s not as bad as it sounds and you only get a very small amount). The host was so endearing, he explained all the dishes and made us feel very welcome The food was excellent quality throughout. Just what we needed after our trek.
After dinner we wondered through the little lantern lit streets in full kimono, experiencing what Japan would have been like in the days of Edo. Such a very special experience and one to treasure.
- Hippie -