Our first real day on the Nakasendo started rather well. The breakfast was even more than we expected, maintaining the standard set at last night's feast. Sorry to keep posting food comments and photos, but it really must be a highlight of everyone who visits Japan. Eating a fried egg with chopsticks was a challenge, and good for building skills.
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| A rather good breakfast |
We knew today was going to be a reasonably long day, 18km minimum, but we couldn't get away early because the museum we wanted to see wasn't open on Mondays, yesterday. So we arrived outside the doors at 9:15 for a 9:30 opening, and were let in early enough to check out the shop. We found a nice set of Hiroshige prints of the Nakasendo that we will laminate for placemats. The museum had some lovely prints of various places, and a full set of the 69 stations of the Nakasendo.
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| Hiroshige Museum, Ena |
What was lots of fun was being able to make a couple of woodblock prints ourselves using blocks, ink and paper supplied.
We were away on the walk by 10am. It took us a wee while to get used to managing the spiral-bound route guide, the supplemental printed pages, the camera, enjoying what was around us, and managing to keep moving all at the same time!
The first part of the walk was 12 km to Nakatsugawa, mostly through semi-rural, semi-urban back roads. Much was paved with the fawn and white stone chips which made direction-finding unnecessary, but other parts took a bit of checking in the route book. There was a constant flow of little statues, distance markers, mini-shrines and information panels, unfortunately mostly only in Japanese. There are still many old wooden Edo-era houses, shops and other old buildings along the route.
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| Some of the private gardens are superb |
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There are still many Edo-era buildings along the way
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We rolled up in Nakatsugawa at 12:30, rather earlier than we'd expected, having averaged 5km/h despite pauses for photos, sightseeing and route-checking, so quite a decent pace. Our book recommended a grilled eel restaurant for lunch, so that's what we did. My only previous memories of eating eel were oiliness, but this was thoroughly nice. Very well-grilled with a sweet sauce, and no sign of oiliness whatsoever.
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| Public edict board on leaving Nakatsugawa |
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| Looking out across Ochiai |
After lunch the path become more rural and interesting. Instead of being more or less level, it had some nasty little steep pitches. The last couple of kilometres were lovely - on narrow tracks through trees, with the last kilometre on original cobbles.
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| Beautiful curtain waterfall |
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| Original Edo cobbled path |
Dinner. What can I say. We are being spoiled...
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| Dinner for one |
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| Our walk guidebook |
