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Japan, Travel

Walking Tour Day 2: Hosokute to Ena

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Writing a blog is harder work than you would think. Probably not as hard as being an influencer and having to pretend that your life is amazing and spend hours a day on videos and “content”, but you know, for instance, today is a day off and I have to get my hair cut, and plus, I’m reading a fun book (a REAL book, not on my kindle, which means I need light) and I could be doing that instead of blogging. BUT I want to do this, it is a hobby I greatly enjoy, and I also know that my mother and other people enjoy reading it, so here we go.

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

Day 2: Hosokute to Ena

  • Distance: 12 miles or 19 km
  • Elevation Gain: 1125 feet or 350 m
  • Elevation Loss: 1650 feet or 500 m

Here is what the guidebook said about this hike:

“Time for a long and rolling hike. This 19km goes over the Biwa Pass with its amazing original Edo period cobblestones. After the ancient post town of Okute, it is time for the 13 passes. This long, rolling section gets quite meditative as it finally emerges in the town of Ena, formerly called Oi.”

I really enjoyed that paragraph. 13 passes though, that sounds like a lot! Let’s see how it went.

Day 2: Breakfast was at 7 am, so we were up and at ’em early. But we’d gone to sleep early, so it was actually a really restful night. We would need it! (spoiler alert, haha).

All kinds of good things for breakfast! I must say, (and maybe I already said this in a previous post, but!) I had worried that I wouldn’t like Japanese breakfasts, but it turned out that I adored them. I miss them! There wasn’t a single day in Japan that I wished I had a western style breakfast, I loved all the pickly bits, the slimy veggies, the salad for breakfast, the rice and miso soup. The only thing that I didn’t like was when we couldn’t get coffee, but that was rarely the case: Japanese people may not have loved coffee but they knew that we Westerners love it for breakfast, so it was usually on offer.

Wearing my yukata. The yukata is a robe that you are given to wear around the ryokan (traditional inn). I wore it over my pajamas in this case.

After breakfast we packed up and headed out. We left our suitcases to be transferred to the next stop, and we said our goodbyes to our hosts, the owners of the hotel. They were so wonderful, hospitable, friendly, and the food was SO GOOD.

A picture with Mr. and Mrs. Sakai from Daikokuya Ryokan.

Japan is known for its vending machines, but still we were surprised to see a tobacco vending machine.

A battery vending machine, how fun!

We walked on the road for about 5 km, which wasn’t my favorite. It wasn’t a busy road, so that wasn’t a big deal, but the road is hard on the feet! I was wearing some hiking shoes–honestly, I made some mistakes with my footwear, and it started with a toe injury in March, and I’m still figuring things out. This was a hard day, as my pinky blisters were acting up, and really nothing I could do seemed to help. But–

We passed by this lovely place. It is called Benzaiten-no-ike and is a shrine to Benzaiten, the goddess of all that flows including water, music, words, and time.

Louie walking across the bridge.

It was turning into a hot and sunny day, so we made sure to stay up on our sunscreen and water. We stopped for a little snack at one point and enjoyed some salty edamame snacks, which actually seemed to be like a pringles type snack, that was reconstituted into the shape of an edamame bean.

We saw some interesting and strange things on the trail, such as this snowman!

Oh hey, more rice paddies!

Finally the path turned to grass rather than a road, it was a true relief! We passed by a house with an amazing garden of various strange sculptures, lots of cats and frogs.

The trees and ferns and undergrowth was so pretty, we couldn’t resist a photo together.

According to the guidebook, this stretch of the road is very much like it was in Edo period, and these huge ishidatami cobblestones were recovered in the late 1990s.

Nothing about the trail was that wild: people took good care of it, the shrines, the temples, and here, a bird house. But it was natural, and not busy, and we couldn’t get over how nice the air was.

Then we entered the post town of Okute. We tried to imagine living in a tiny town like this. We were always struck by how LOVELY everything was, even in the country, the houses were well cared for and the gardens neat and tidy. We would see exceptions here and there, but for the most part the places we walked by and through seemed loved and respected.

This was the notice board for Okute. Travelers would find information and notices here, as well as the town people.

This was a very large stump from a very large tree! The tree was around 1300 years old and was struck by lightning in 2004 and slowly died after that. It sits in front of the Okute Shimnei Shrine.

We found ourselves in Marumori next, an old hatagoya (inn) which is now a museum. We were walking by and a few elderly people waved us in and insisted we sit down. I was fine with this! Then they offered us what I assumed would be a cup of tea, but it was actually a cup of soup, a bit of a shock! We had said our greetings using Japanese, and one of the people asked us how good our Japanese was. We laughed because the answer was, no, our Japanese is TERRIBLE. We spent 5-10 minutes there trying to converse with the one woman who spoke a little English and using hand gestures and such a lot. We were surprised that a tiny museum in a tiny town had 5-6 volunteers working, but maybe it would get busier later? Or maybe there just wasn’t much else to do!

Then we headed along the trail, waving goodbyes and with them all watching us. We immediately hit a “T” intersection and started pulling out our navigational aids to see what to do, and then all the people from the museum were motioning and calling out “right! right!” which was indeed correct. It was quite a moment of embarassment for us!

We entered the forest again, and saw this sign–watch out for bears, I assume!

This was a cave with 33 horse-headed Bato-Kannon statues. These Kannon (part of Buddhism, I believe) offered protection for travelers and took donations in return. Often we would see coins outside of various shrines and temples, and it seemed that nobody bothered these coins, or stole them. Of course, we wouldn’t notice if the coins were all gone, would we? But again, it seemed that in Japan, people took pride in having nice things.

For lunch, we took a small break and enjoyed some onigiri (rice balls) that we had gotten that morning from the ryokan. We had some trouble finding a place to sit that wasn’t overrun with flies!

This is me standing between two mounds. These mounds were distance markings for ancient travelers, called ichi-ri-tzuka. A “ri” was the distance you could walk in an hour, so things were measured in ri. These mounds were originally built for every ri, which is about 2.44 miles, but most were demolished during the modernization of Japan. We definitely saw a few during our walks. (St Louis has its own history of mounds, so we felt right at home!)

Some beautiful homes and gardens we walked by.

As the day went on, it got hotter, and we grew weary. We took some breaks and drank plenty of water, but I really just wanted something cold. And then, in the distance, we saw a vending machine…with cold drinks! Right by a bathroom as well, which was nice to use.

I should say a few things about the bathrooms on the trail: usually we had no trouble finding one–there were plenty around, or in the towns. We rarely had trouble finding them when we needed, and of course made sure to use them when they were available. Usually they were in excellent condition, sometimes only good condition, but rarely did they seem like public bathrooms in the States.

We saw some wildlife along the trail, but no bears.

A lizard!

Me below a huge electric tower.

Very important signs, either that you need to bathe any pigs you come across, or that you need to bathe after petting pigs.

I don’t know why all my pictures of Louie are in the shadows, but for my excuse, I was exhausted and my feet hurt. You can see the mountains in the background.

As far as the 13 passes went, we didn’t count that many. We would go uphill and then downhill and some were obvious, nothing too terribly difficult, or at least if every step didn’t hurt they wouldn’t have been, but sometimes there would be a tiny uphill and we weren’t sure whether to count it. Either method of counting, I only made it to about 9 or 10, but as we finally started getting into the town of Ena, I knew we must have miscounted. Oh well!

The last mile or so of the walk was really tough, along a busier road in Ena, we were exhausted (well, I was, and maybe Louie was too, unsure!) and it was still hot and sunny. But we finally made it to the train station, where we would take a train from Ena to Nakatsugawa, our home for the night.

It was a short but painful walk from the Nakatsugawa train station to Onn Nakatsugawa where we were staying. We made it though, and it was a huge relief to take off my shoes at the hotel!

We freshened up, hitting the onsen, which was quite enjoyable. I was getting more used to the bathing (you sit on a stool and use a hand held nozzle to clean yourself thoroughly before getting into the bath, nude) though I noticed very few westerners seemed to be comfortable with the setup.

After freshening up, we went in search of dinner. Sadly I had to put shoes back on: note to everybody, BRING SANDALS. We found a wonderful izakaya a short walk from the hotel.

Not this place, though I do assume it was good, if it was around since 1953. Who doesn’t enjoy spaghetti and coffee?

A lovely view of the river.

Look at us, all cleaned up!

We sat at the bar, and enjoyed some drinks and bar food (that’s what an izakaya is, and you might be charge a seat fee, don’t panic). We also ended up chatting a bit with a friendly Japanese man who sat down by us, he was in a large group who he said were his colleagues on a business trip and enjoyed practicing his (very good) English and I think, talking to people who weren’t his colleagues.

This is what they mean by the large dishes lined up, there were a variety of plates of food on the bar, which was great because you could see exactly how things were prepared!

We shared everything and enjoyed quite a feast! After a long day of walking, it was so great to sit and eat and relax. After dinner, we headed back and fell asleep easily.

Japan, Travel

Walking Tour Day 1: Mitake to Hosokute

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I’m sorry for my delay in writing about this trip. Life hasn’t been that busy, but I have been busy enough…it’s also been challenging transitioning back into “regular life”. I finally caught up with photos enough to blog about some more of the Japan trip!

For previous posts:

Nagoya: Not boring at all

Starting off in Tokyo

Off to Kyoto on a very fast train!

Takayama for a few days

One Night in Inuyama

Day 1: Mitake to Hosokute

  • Distance: 7 miles or 12 km.
  • Elevation Gain: 1400 feet or 425 m
  • Elvation Loss: 400 feet or 120 m

So, we last left off at the Hotel μ Style Inuyama where we had spent the night. We got up early and Louie went to the onsen first, and then we had breakfast, which was fun. It was a big room, and there was a buffet set up with a variety of Japanese and Western food, but you first went through a line to have a salad made, with some choices on toppings. After you got the salad, you had unlimited choices as to what else you wanted to eat. We both made sure to eat a hearty breakfast as we had 7 miles or so of walking ahead of us!

After breakfast we packed up and headed down to checkout. We had our stuff organized with a carry on size suitcase and a hiking backpack for each of us. Our luggage would be transported to our next destination for the night, so we just had to leave it there. The front desk people seemed confused though, so I did message our company, Really Rural Japan to make sure everything was taken care of–they responded quickly that they called and it was all good. We also stopped at a Family Mart at the station to pick up snacks and lunch, as we were told there wouldn’t be many places to eat today. We got a few different sandwiches as well as some salty snacks and nuts.

We used our Suica cards to travel from Inuyama to the transfer stop, Shin Kani, but then grew worried that we would need a paper ticket for the next stop and wouldn’t have time to make it all work. We were very stressed by the time we got to the station, and then we quickly discovered that it was literally a 20 second walk between platforms, and the station master easily helped us scan out with our Suica card and then buy tickets–the whole procedure took less than one minute and we made the next train with no issues whatsoever.

We got off the train at Mitake, which was a very small station, with clean bathrooms…but you had to squat. And then it was time to get walking.

As the guidebook said, “You are about to get very rural, very fast.”

We were so excited! It was very different from being in a city already, the air was fresh, and we “only” had 7 miles ahead of us. Nothing to do today but walk. We had a guidebook with the written instructions as well as GPS routes through an app called Gaia, and it took a little while to get used to navigating.

I was a big nerd and had decided to use a belly bag to store things that I wanted easily accessible like my phone for pictures, a place for my sunglasses and a few other things. This worked out really well even though I look like a weirdo.

One of the first things we noticed was the rice paddies. They were everywhere! Sometimes people were working in them, but usually they were just there, you know, growing rice. I was surprised by this at first: I think I assumed there would be huge industries running the rice paddies like the corn farmers and dairy farmers here, but it seemed to be a lot of individual people growing their own rice, just as one here in the States might have a backyard garden.

We walked along a road for awhile, maybe even the first mile, but finally we went off onto a grassy path instead. It was so lovely!

The road was less road-like in this picture.

We saw many many shrines and temples along the way, ranging from very tiny to larger.

So, what is the Nakasendo Trail? It was originally a route from Kyoto to Tokyo (formerly known as Edo) and it went through 69 different little towns, called “Post towns” where travelers could sleep, eat and get information and supplies. We would be walking on the Nakasendo Trail for 5 days, so only a little bit of it, but doing what we were told was some of the most beautiful parts. The first two days would be parts that were less commonly walked and then we would be into a part that was walked quite a lot.

Bamboo Trees in the wild

We walked on various types of paths, paved, dirt, grass, and cobblestones.

Cobblestones were obviously the most scenic!

As we got closer to lunchtime, we also got closer to “La Province” which was advertised as a cake shop that we shouldn’t miss. We decided to first eat our sandwiches, so we stopped at a place called “Gotemba” for that, and it is “where Princess Kazunomiya rested on her journey to Edo to marry the 14th Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi.”

We were surprised to see that the cake shop was a French cake shop! It was an absolutely gorgeous setting, up on a mountain/hill with a great view, and a beautiful garden.

We ordered cakes and coffees, and were thrilled to sit down for a bit as well. They also filled up our water bottles with ice water for us, which we super appreciated.
There were more things I would have to liked to eat from the display case, but we didn’t want to make ourselves sick.

Louie got artsy with photos in the garden, haha. It was nice to relax and enjoy food for a bit, as well as freshen up in the bathroom a bit. We felt like we were a little dirty and sweaty for the place (you could also drive there) but no one seemed to mind.

Then it was back on the path! By now we were getting the hang of the navigation, Gaia worked best rather than trying to follow the written directions, and then there were plenty of blue signs that said Nakasendo, as well.

This was one of my favorite parts of the path for a bit: it was shady and downhill, hah! It looks like this part was about 3 km long, so you do the math on that.

These are Buddhist monuments along the way.

Watch out for bears! We did get a lot of warning about bears, and we had bells hanging from us that the company supplied to make a little noise as we went so that we wouldn’t sneak up on bears. Those signs are pointing the way to the Nakasendo Trail: we learned those characters soon enough!

As the afternoon went on, I was getting more and more tired. The last few km were on a road in the sun, and I was exhausted… and then we saw it, our hotel for the night in Hosokute Juku, called Daikokuya Ryokan.

Louie took some pictures first, and as we were outside doing photographs, the owner came out to greet us. It was just past 3:00, so not the longest day, but it felt long! I was thrilled to take my shoes off and yes, our luggage had arrived. There has been an inn in this location for hundreds of years and has been passed down through many generations in the Sakai family. This building was built in 1859 to replace another one that burnt down in a fire. It is, as you can see, very traditional and inside there are tatami mats, sliding doors, and futons.

We loved it! It turned out that we had two large rooms to use: one for sleeping and one a sitting room, and though the bathrooms were down a flight of stairs, one bathroom was reserved for us and the other bathroom was for the other guest: yes, there were just three guests that night! We freshened up and lay down for a bit, there was wi fi as well so that we could send texts and check instagram.

You can see some of the wood here–this was from a hallway sort of around our rooms. I was poking around to see what the layout was, and it looked like the area where we stayed was at one time at least 3 different bedrooms. I imagine now they charge more for guests and have less of them–we were lucky to get this place and I don’t know how much it cost.

The futons we would sleep on. I grew to really love sleeping on futons, though sometimes getting up and down wasn’t easy!

We chose 6:30 for dinner to maximize our bathing and rest time beforehand. Dinner was downstairs in a middle area.

They invited us to the morning exercise, but it seemed like a bad idea with all the walking we would do the next day. It looked like a unique opportunity though!

We headed downstairs for dinner, wearing our yukatas. The table was set with the cold dishes and veggies.

There was tea and water, as well as sake for extra money. (Cash)

So the Nagazara and Kobathi were already on the table, and after we finished those they brought each following course. Fish, Taro Ball, Tempura, and then rice and miso soup–they asked if we were still hungry for it, and we were.

This was the best tempura we had in all of Japan, not just so far on our trip. We didn’t know it at the time, though we suspected.

Some fruit. I’m not sure if there were more pieces and I forgot to take the picture earlier, ha!

And green tea ice cream. The owner told us that this was a special treat for Really Rural Japan folks, lucky us! The whole meal was so delicious, everything we ate was delicious, though especially the tempura, plus all the little dishes at the beginning. Just phenomonal. We were so happy to be there, and so happy to be at the start of a 5 day walking tour!

How were my feet? Okay…they didn’t feel too terrible at this time, though my soles were tired by the end of the day. I had wrapped them in these specific blister bandages I’d bought in Nagoya, and it was working okay at this time.

After dinner, there was absolutely nothing to do, but that was okay as we were exhausted and breakfast was at 7, so we just went to bed.

I’ll leave you there, but I promise I’ll be back soon with another day of our trip!

Japan

One night in Inuyama

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After this post, I may have to take a break and catch you up to more recent happenings in my life, but for now, onward and upward! Let’s continue the recaps of my recent trip to Japan.

Nagoya: Not boring at all

Starting off in Tokyo

Off to Kyoto on a very fast train!

Takayama for a few days

Day 11:

Breakfast was “meh” as the day before.

We checked out of the Lamp Light Books Hotel and got some blister bandaids for me before going to the train station. Louie and I had some confusion about which train to take and then we ended up having to stand for most of the trip from Nagoya to Inuyama, which was not great. It was about 40-50 minutes of a ride, and we did get to sit by the end of it. The good thing was that our hotel ended up being literally right across the street from the station in Inuyama and we easily dropped off our bags. We were staying at the Hotel Myu Inuyama Experience, which was the first night of our walking tour, and seemed like a really nice hotel, but we would have to return later after check in time.

We got on a bus just on the other side of the train station that took us to our destination for the morning, Meiji Mura, an open air museum! The bus was easy to ride and we got there shortly after it opened, at 10 am.

Truth: my feet were hurting but we enjoyed walking from house to house, from building to building. The place was huge with various different areas, all filled with houses and buildings and even bridges from all over Japan and brought there to show. The rooms often had displays of various artifacts too, sometimes only in Japanese and we needed to use google translate. Sometimes we had to take our shoes off to enter and others we didn’t–it depended on if there was a tatami mat or not.

This one was shoes off, as that is a tatami mat.
An old phone display inside an old telephone building.
A truly ancient phone.

Shortly after noon I was suddenly very hungry so we found a place to sit down and eat. Unfortunately we had to wait in line for about 40 minutes, and then the food wasn’t very good. Not my finest decision.

Omelets with sauces: Louie’s had tomato and mine was a brown gravy.

We wandered around some more after lunch: some highlights included the Old Imperial Hotel Lobby designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and a machine building with various machines Louie loved.

Also a prison
The Imperial Hotel
Inside the lobby. We enjoyed a coffee and cake at the cafe as well. It was hot outside and nice to rest.

You might be asking, how were you planning to walk the next day if your feet hurt so much. Well, yes. I was wondering that as well! But remember, Louie and I have a motto in our relationship, which is, work harder, not smarter.

Anyway, finally I was just beat, so exhausted. Louie ran off to hit another place and meet me though, because he was able to walk much faster and he wanted to see a few more things. Meiji Mura is a huge park and we could have probably spent a few more days there and still not seen everything! It was really amazing though, and very enjoyable.

How did they move a whole cathedral?
Me standing next to some machinery thing.

Louie almost couldn’t find me then, and I really wanted us to catch the 3:30 bus, and then, we did! But we had to stand the whole way. Like, it was totally packed, and it absolutely sucked to stand up but I embraced the hardship and we did it.

Then we went to check in: there was a bit of confusion as I was supposed to get some things at check in from the tour company and they weren’t there! But then the hotel staff realized that the stuff was already in our room: bear bells, guidebooks, and luggage tags.

At this point, we were both exhausted, and poor Louie was also feeling sick from his cold, so we just rested up in the room for a bit and went to the onsen. The onsen was really nice: it had indoor and outdoor pools which was delightful! I enjoyed both sides–the outdoor water was a bit cloudy as well from the minerals, and that was nice.

Around 6 or so we went out to find dinner. We had trouble deciding where to go because I was struggling to walk with my blisters and tired feet, but we settled on a place that was perhaps highly rated on Tablelog (could also just have been another place entirely, there was no way to know), but it was friendly and looked like a cool place. They had ramen and beers and didn’t speak English, and seemed to be in a temporary building with plastic walls. The cooks were outside when we got there and encouraged us to come in, so we did!

After dinner we walked to 7-11 to get cash and ice cream and then we happened upon a good pharmacy where Louie was able to get some more cold medicine. We actually got to talk with the pharmacist, which was super helpful.

Sunset from the room that night.

And that concluded our day in Inuyama. The next morning we would be starting our 5 day walk on the Nakasendo Trail, so I’ll save that for my next post!

Japan

Japan Trip: Takayama for a few days

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To continue, we recently got back from an amazing trip to Japan.

Starting off in Tokyo

Off to Kyoto on a very fast train!

Day 6:

Louie woke up early and used the onsen, but I just relaxed and then packed up. We enjoyed another large breakfast at the Ryokan.

For this breakfast, we had things we needed to grill atop those black pots. It was fun to be interactive haha.

You can see the food grilling in this picture: meats and veggies.

We had a little menu card telling us what we were eating. It was really lovely, and we really enjoyed our stay overall at Nishiyama Ryokan.

The breakfast room was very beautiful.

This is a picture of the garden at the hotel. I would stay here again, no hesitations.

After breakfast we checked out and headed to the train station to catch our train to Takayama. We first took the subway to Kyoto Station, and then learned our Shinkansen from Kyoto to Nagoya was delayed about 15 minutes, which left us with only about 8 minutes to make our connection for the Hida Express from Nagoya to Takayama. We spent the whole train stressing about it as there was only about 1 per hour or longer, but then we ended up making the connection with time to spare: it was a quick transfer gate and to the next platform. I think it took us 2-3 minutes, and we ended up having so much time!

We had bought sandwiches and other snacks to eat en route, since we wouldn’t arrive until 2:15 pm or so.

On the train.

A happy little dessert.

The train ride was quite beautiful as it headed into the mountains. It was definitely less smooth than the Shinkansen however.

We got to Takayama around 2:15 and walked a short distance to our ryokan. I had struggled with decision making in Takayama, where to stay? I made and canceled a few reservations before settling on Ryokan Kaminaka. I had still worried about it, but we ended up enjoying our stay. I’m also sure the other places I found would have been lovely in different ways.

But! We entered our ryokan, and immediately had to put on slippers. The lobby was VERY traditional, with tatami mats, and I got fussed at not to bring my suitcase any further into the lobby. A man came and cleaned off our suitcase wheels and then we checked in and were shown to our room. We were led up the stairs, around a corner, and down a hall, and it seemed very confusing at first. We got to the room and the owner insisted we put the suitcases in a closet, I was NOT to put it on the tatmi mats! We left our slippers at the door and then there was a step to the area with a toilet and a sink/shower room, and then room proper, with sleeping mats.

The hallway. It was gorgeous and…we learned later that originally the building had been part of the red light district. Our room was further down the hall in a newer part of the building without those fancy doors, unfortunately.

Louie and I enjoyed a little tea and snack in the room and then headed out to walk around the town. We found the river and then wandered around old town.

Very historic street!

We found a sake brewery that you could purchase a little cup and get a bunch of samples for 500 yen and you poured them yourself, so we had a few samples.

We had made a bath reservation at the ryokan for 5 pm so we came back for that. It was a private onsen–there were two at the ryokan but instead of sharing by gender they had it reservation only. I enjoyed the hot water as usual!

Next was dinner! We had a reservation at Kyoya, ironically the same name as the okonomiyaki place we had eaten at our first night, but very different.

Various signs I saw in the afternoon.

A beautiful bridge we saw on the way to dinner.

We were glad we had a reservation, because the sign out front said they were full unless you had one. It was a very traditional/old place with floor seating and a fire/grill at each place (in one area, there was another area without fires). We ordered a meal that included several different kinds of Hida beef–this is something that Takayama is known for. We had Hida beef miso served from a magnolia leaf (cooked over a little stove pot), and then beef slices we grilled ourselves on the grill.

This was the table across from us which was the same as our table, so you can see it a little better.

The beef miso cooking.

Anyway, we cooked our food on those grills in front of me, and then we ate it, and it was very enjoyable.

After dinner we weren’t quite ready for bed, so we found another place to go, a bar called Yu. It advertised sake cocktails. This place rocked! We did have to wait a few minutes for the table and the owner was very apologetic: then we had to wait for our ordered drinks and he sent over sake while we waited! We just had one drink there and then headed home to sleep.

Day 7:

We had the hotel at 8 am and it was great! Very lovely room with garden views and we had floor seating, which was different. We had salmon, salad, and some miso on a magnolia leaf over rice.

After breakfast we walked up to morning markets by the river and wandered a bit. It was fun to see the market stands and the river was pretty.

We got coffee at a place by the river and sat and enjoyed that for a bit. (One thing breakfast lacked was coffee! Tea yes, coffee no.) We started walking to Hida no Sato Folk Village. My foot was hurting: somehow I had developed a blister on my pinky toe and it was bad at this point. I should have worn my other shoes but I didn’t think it would be that bad. So instead of walking the 40 minutes, we decided to called an uber instead. And I was quite glad as I saw the trip was longer looking than I expected plus a lot of uphill.

The museum/village was really cool. They put us to work right away.

The buildings were from the Edo period (as all the old building you see are, pretty much), and we learned about the history of the area. The gassho houses (that’s the ones with the really steep roofs) were very impressive and the weather was great! I limped around the village for a few hours.

You could go inside quite a few of the houses as well and see the inside. Even though we were staying at a traditional inn already it was still cool to see. You have to take your shoes off to enter most of the houses, unless the floor was dirt. From my point of view with my feet hurting, it was a relief to take my shoes off!

There were so many different types of houses too. I have a special fondness for houses with grass roofs.

Then we got coffees from the tiniest truck. I had a iced coffee with cream and the liquid sugar (simple syrup I suppose) and it was delightful.

You can see part of a rice paddy in from of this house.

We got an uber back to old town after that, and walked around for lunch: we had seen a ton of places to get street food so we thought it would be fun to do that for our lunch.

“Hida beef sushi” which was fun. We also had some steak on a stick, a meat and potato croquette, little filled pastries, and some grilled mochi balls.

Then we found another sake brewery and did more samples: 10 coins for 1000 yen bought us two cups and 8 pours. There was also a tasty yuzu liquor, which I would have bought a case of if it didn’t seem too tricky to bring home.

We wandered more, and found one more sake brewery and enjoyed a few more samples, but no souvenir cup. And then, bath time again! We headed back to the ryokan to relax and clean up.

After relaxing, we were hungry again, but didn’t have a reservation for dinner. We wanted to try an Izakaya, but we didn’t have any luck: one that looked good online was closed and another said “reservations only” when we peeked in, though we wondered if it was actually “no foreigners”. This wasn’t uncommon: some places had signs that you shouldn’t go if you didn’t speak Japanese and I had also read of places where it wasn’t even whether or not you could speak Japanese. (However, most places were very welcoming and we did our best to communicate.)

We found a little area with a bunch of places to eat, like a tiny outdoor mall, and we found two seats a a ramen place. We had ramen, dumplings, and a drink, and all was very tasty.

We also found a hamburger vending machine, but weren’t hungry.

We ended the night back at Bar yu for a cocktail: we got lucky again. When the bar was full the owner put out a sign that said “full” rather than letting people wait. It was full, but after we strategically sat a minute to rest our feet suddenly it was open again, so we got to go in!

Day 8:

We had 7:30 breakfast because we were meeting a tour. I wasn’t sure if it was a small group but it ended up being a private tour. Our driver and guide was named Yama–he was very friendly but a little quiet. He was happy to answer questions, and over the course of the day we got to learn so much about Japanese life from him.

He drove to Shirikawago first and we walked around. Shirikawago is a village filled with gassho houses, but it is ALSO a place where people live. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site and it can get really busy. You can take a bus tour there from Takayama but I wanted to get ahead of crowds so we did a smaller tour.

There is a large parking lot across the river from the village for the tourists to park and then walk over that bridge. We walked through the village and then up to an overlook to see the village from above. What a cool place!

From above! You can also see the rice paddies as well as the houses. They needed to be built a certain direction so the sun would dry the roofs. And the people used to make silk and breed silkworms in the upper floors, I don’t think I mentioned that earlier.

By the time we got back down from the overlook the tour buses had started to arrive and it was getting busier in the village.

We went inside one of the houses and learned how to people lived, how the houses were built, and how the roofs are repaired. We also learned about the fire safety plans for the village and how if a fire started the other houses would get soaked with water in the hopes that only the one house would burn and not all of them.

We saw one of the roofs being replaced. In the past the whole village would get together and replace a roof in one or two days. Now one person is doing it and it will probably take weeks.

We got to catch a demonstration of rice planting, complete with singing and coordinated movements. It was fun to see!

Next we were heading to an onsen, but an outside one. It turned out that this onsen actually needed bathing suits and we hadn’t brought any: oops. Like even to Japan, so our tour guide took us to find some. Louie had no trouble, but I couldn’t find anything. Think of bathing suit shopping in general, and then think of shopping in a country where absolutely everybody is smaller than you, and how that makes you feel! Not great! I decided to find a pair of athletic suits and wear them with my sports bra. It was not a happy time.

After that fiasco we had ramen for lunch. We went to a place that served the noodles on the side so you would take the noodles and dip them into the soup part. Very nice!

Next we drove awhile to get to a hike to Hirayu falls. We went further into the mountains for this, up to nearly 5000 feet of elevation, which was a lot of fun to see. The hike was nice and the waterfall was beautiful. My blister was feeling better (I had lanced it the night before) but not great, so Louie and Yama did another hike without me, to a big tree while I just hung out.

After that we did more driving to a hot springs in the open air. It was a public springs down by a river. Louie and I went in together with our makeshift suits, and enjoyed relaxing until we were out of time–which worked out well as it was just starting to rain. It was very fun, though there were two little kids in the water which was a little less relaxing haha. It was fun to do an outdoor sort of wild onsen, even with the clothing challenges.

The onsen from above
The onsen

After that Yama took us back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner.

I had made reservations at a place called Heianraku which was supposedly a Chinese restaurant. I had to email to confirm using a password “horse” and then they sent an email showing how the doorbell would be hidden and we would need to ring it and say the password. I figured either these people were insane or just very particular, but the food was supposed to be excellent so we went with it!

It turned out that I think they were just having a lot of fun. The restaurant was run by a couple: the woman spoke English really well, and they definitely wanted people to come if they had a reservation. We got a set meal with a drink, side dishes, gyoza, one entree of choice, and a dessert of choice. I had a shochu yuzu cocktail and it was delicious. Louie tried some sakes and couldn’t really decide so they gave him a glass of each of his favorites for no additional charge.

We got a mapo tofu with chicken, and tofu and cabbage with miso for our entrees.

There were only 4 other customers when we arrived and we were the last, even though they had all kinds of signs outside saying they were full–we thought they had room for more! I guess they were happy with the amount of customers. We chatted with the woman owner quite a bit at the end: she had us sign a world atlas with where we were from, and she asked us questions about US politics.

Louie wanted to go back to Bar Yu again but it was full. We waited a bit but nothing changed, so we went to a place called Bacchus instead, and then popped by one more time. Still had the sign out. I was exhausted at this point anyway, so we (reluctantly) walked back home.

Ryokan Kaminaka at night.

I’ll end there: tomorrow we would be headed to a new city, so that’s a good place to stop.

Japan

Japan Trip: Off to Kyoto via a very fast train!

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We recently got back from an amazing trip to Japan.

Starting off in Tokyo

A few questions have come up: one being did I plan this myself or use something? I did do the planning for the majority of the trip on my own, but there is one portion where we did a 5 day walk on the Nakansendo Trail (recaps to come, wait on the edge of your seat) where I used a company. I’ll tell you about that later, because they were fabulous.

I used guidebooks and the internet for my planning, and it was so much fun. I really enjoy planning trips and it can be sort of all-encompassing when I get into it. One thing I don’t like to do is watch videos though: besides the fact that I much prefer reading about something to watching a video, I want to leave something to when I get there. If you see too many videos, I worry, it will be underwhelming to actually be somewhere. That may not be the case for you! I also like to read fiction or historical fiction to get a sense of a place.

Okay, so onto my recap of Kyoto.

Day 3:

We woke up in Tokyo and had another terrific breakfast at Ito Ryokan. This is a gem of a place to stay if you want something traditional, well located, and inexpensive. The bathrooms were dated and you have to use the stairs, but it was very clean and quiet.

Our breakfast the second morning was also delicious. You can see rice, fish, miso soup, various pickled vegetables, rolled omelet (Tamagoyaki), strawberries, and a few other things. I loved my Japanese breakfasts, and never missed western style food.

Then we got a cab to the train station: we could have used public transportation but it was raining a bit and I got a little worried. I mostly stayed lower stress this trip, but this particular time was stressful for me for some reason. We had shinkansen tickets (bullet train) to Kyoto, and since we’d never done this before, I wasn’t sure how tricky it would be to find our way around. Spoiler alert: super easy, and we were plenty/too early.

We got some snacks to eat along the way (rice balls and nuts, I believe) and then waited for our train. I had prebooked our seats with the hope that we might be able to see Mt. Fuji along the way, but it was raining and cloudy and there was no chance. It was an uneventful train ride.

Train seats are much more comfortable than airline seats, and the bathrooms are also so much nicer that you would expect if you were American. The train took 2 hours and 15 minutes and then we were in Kyoto. We had to board a subway line and then walk up some stairs and about 10 minutes to get to the next hotel, Nishiyama Ryokan.

We dropped off our bags and then headed out in search of lunch. We found it very nearby, a soba restaurant called Soba Roujina. This was a find using tablelog and we enjoyed it. There was a counter to sit at, and we each ordered cold soba.

After lunch we walked around a bit until it was time for the tea ceremony and a show at the Pontocho Theater. I had gotten tickets for the Haru no Odori which is the Spring Dance show of the maiko (geisha apprentices) and geiko (full geisha). I also got tickets for the tea ceremony ahead of time, but I wouldn’t recommend that part: it was rushed and not very interesting. It was fascinating to see the theater though, and the show was a lot of fun. There was singing and live music, dancing, acting, terrific costumes and stage sets. The show consisted of two acts with two plays, and the plots were a little silly: it reminded me of opera. All the actors were women which was so much fun.

It was the last show of the spring, so everybody came on stage afterwards and they talked for a few minutes. However, they talked in Japanese, so we didn’t really know what was going on, or even who that man is. Nonetheless, it was very interesting. We sat in western style seats, but there were plenty of seats around where one would sit on the floor instead.

After that we went back to the hotel to check in. Check in was very easy, but a little weird because the staff member took us up to our room and showed us obvious things and then kneeled down and bowed very low to us! Before the bow it felt like the thing where they would just want a tip, but you don’t tip in Japan so I think it was just over the top customer service.

The beds for this hotel. Futons on the floor again, which honestly are very comfortable. Yes, it can be tricky to get up and down, but that’s good for us, right?

We decided it was onsen time next. Let me tell you a little bit about Japanese onsens. They are hot springs, and you’ll find them in many ryokan around the country. Usually they are separated by gender, and you go in completely nude: there’s a dressing room where you leave your things in a basket or locker, and then you walk into the shower/hot pool area naked. Then you shower so you are completely clean, and you shower sitting on a little stool with a hand held shower. They usually provided all the soaps and conditions you would need, along with a small white towel that you bring in with you. After you are clean and rinsed, you get in the tub itself, which in this case was large and overlooked a little garden (nobody could see in, obviously!). There was one other woman there when I started but she left, so I had the place to myself. If you visit Japan, I recommend you do this. It was so nice to soak your body after walking a bunch, and really, you get over the nudity thing fast.

After soaking, you can shower again if you want, or not. I rinsed off I think, though I didn’t always: some people think the mineral water is good for your skin. Then you go back to the dressing room and finish getting ready. I just put clean clothes on or a yukata (bathrobe type thing that was provided) but you could also use a sink area, dry your hair, etc. Definitely drink a lot of water before and after!

We both relaxed for a bit before dinner, and then we found an Izakaya for dinner. It was called Akagakiya and was something I had starred on google–during my research I would star places that came up for whatever reason, and then by the time we went there I had no idea why. But this was a great choice.

An Izakaya is basically a pub but Japanese. Many of them charge a “seat fee” but then give you some snacks right away. You are also often required to order a certain number of drinks in order to stay, though those drinks can be with or without alcohol. Basically they don’t want you sitting there and not paying, which is very reasonable. When we arrived we were also told there was a 2 hour time limit.

We ordered sake and a bunch of different foods to try, and loved it.

One of the things that I’ve read to do to identify AI is ask “who is taking this picture?” For this picture, it’s Louie. I guess I’m holding one of our food items.

Some slimy fermented seaweed. I have learned that I love all the weird Japanese food. With the exception of natto: I tried natto a few times but I do not love it. Slimy seaweed, yes. Noodles, of course. Tofu, for sure! We had other things like eggplant and fried fishes, and more. Now, the menu didn’t have prices, but the google reviews said it was “reasonable” and it was. At the end of the night, the whole thing cost less than $50 for the two of us including plenty of sake and lots of food.

We were exhausted after that and walked home and went to sleep.

Day 4:

As usual due to jet lag, we woke up earlier than needed. And we needed to get up early, because we were meeting our bike tour at 8:15 am about 40 – 50 minutes away. It was too early for our ryokan breakfast, so we stopped by 7-11 and got the internet-famous egg sandwiches and coffee drinks for breakfast. It’s a good egg salad, but the bread is like, super soft and fake tasting. It’s a white bread with no crusts. Anyway, a decent breakfast but strange. We started on our train journey, and managed to mess up and get off one station early for the transfer, but we had a little time to spare. We were still early for the 8:15 meeting but everybody else in the group was there already! We were doing an all day tour with Kyoto Bike Tours where you see the “five major sites” of Kyoto. I had opted for an e-bike but Louie did a regular bike: it turned out he was the only one other than the guide on a regular bike, but he did great.

Our guide was named Roberto and he was great. We started with the Arashiyama Bamboo forest, which is a huge tourist attraction–everything we were doing that day was. It was already crowded but not terribly so, and was very beautiful. The way the tour worked was we would ride to a site, then get off and walk and Roberto would tell us all about it. We learned that bamboo grows very quickly and some of the trees were only 3 weeks old!

Next, we biked around an hour to get to Fushimi Unari Shrine. We learned about Shinto and Roberto explained how he had grown up Mormon in Utah but found it hard to be Mormon in Japan. He talked with his dad who suggested he practice the religion of people he lived among as it would be much easier. He said to Roberto, I’m Peruvian and I’m a Mormon because I live in Utah!

Selfie on en route. It actually wasn’t that hard to bike as it was an e-bike, but I look pained for some reason.

The shrine was quite crowded too but very cool with the red torii gates. We learned what they were for and what the shrine was all about. And then we walked through it.

It took some patience and quick snapping to get photos without anybody else in them!

Next we biked to an udon place for lunch.

I had udon with tempura on top: this shrimp tempura was so good and I would have eaten a lot more if given the chance!

Our next “stop” was coffee in Gion. Gion is the area where the geisha live, but there aren’t very many of them.

Me posing on a bridge in Gion.

For our next stop, we had to bike pretty uphill. I was thankful for my e-bike, but Louie was working hard, and keeping up really well. We ended up at Kiyo Mizu, the Pure Water Shrine. I loved this one, up on top of a mountain looking over all of Kyoto.

And then back downhill, back on the bikes, towards our last stop!

One thing I noticed was how CROWDED the streets were leading up to each shrine or temple. There were many many souvenir shops and eateries and people. It was a very festive atmosphere. I could complain about the amount of tourists, but I have to admit I was one of them, and part of a medium sized group of bikers that didn’t make everybody happy. One older Japanese lady got very upset at an intersection and starting yelling at people to let her through. (We did.)

That’s Louie in the blue. For this tour I often rode behind him because he knew I could always keep up with the e-bike.

And then our final stop of the tour: the Gold Pavilion. It was so shiny!

Okay, maybe this shot is a little overcast.

Honestly, this stop was lovely, but so crowded it was less fun. Roberto said since post-COVID Kyoto has been crazy busy.

Then we had to bike back to where we started. First a bathroom stop!

We biked through another temple on our way, and it was completely empty, yet still very beautiful. There is plenty to see in Kyoto that isn’t overwhelmed!

The biking was fun but a bit scary at times! We went fast and there was traffic (cars AND bikes AND pedestrians) to deal with, but the guide, Roberto, was excellent and kept looking out for us. I would highly recommend the tour.

After that, Louie and I took the train back to the ryokan to shower and spend time in the onsen. The hot water felt great on my muscles!

Dinner was at 8:30 at a Jiki Mizagawa. We were the first to arrive and then it was only one other couple from Melbourne (for a counter seated Kaiseki meal). There were basically two people serving us the whole dinner and it was delicious. The internet had said that the sesame tofu was “life affirming” and I agree.

Not only was the food beautiful and delicious, each plate or bowl was a work of art itself–we learned that they scoured flea shops and used pottery shops for beautiful dishes to serve on. Some were hundreds of years old, which made us very nervous, haha!

The beef had these peppers on it that sort of made my mouth numb for a short time after eating them.

A bit of dessert, and then of course, tea!

After dinner, we went back to the Ryokan and I fell asleep pretty much immediately.

Day 5:

As usual we woke up earlier than needed. I read a bit, and then we ended up making tea in the room. This morning we had signed up to have the hotel breakfast, and it was at 8. I gasped at first at the spread!

It was quite a lot of food, and quite a lot of different things! The wooden boxes had a sort of hot pot in them, if I recall, but weirdly I didn’t take a picture. We thoroughly enjoyed our breakfast.

Next we sort of puttered around the hotel because we were planning to take advantage of some things there: a tea ceremony and a then a free walking tour of the area. The tea ceremony was fine, but it ended up taking longer than advertised, plus we had had some matcha the night before at dinner, so it was less exciting to me. While we were finishing the ceremony we saw the walking tour guide waiting for people, so we waved at him that we were planning to go, and that worked well. We ended up being the only people on the tour!

We walked around the area near the hotel and saw a temple and a shrine. (Temples are Buddhist, Shrines are Shinto, Japanese people practice both usually).

That’s me and Hoishi, our guide.

We saw the beginnings of a parade where the temple would be showing “the deity” out, which only would happen once a year. There were lots of men in white outfits!

We watched for awhile, but it seemed like they had a lot to do before really starting, so we headed onwards towards the imperial palace. The emperor doesn’t live in Kyoto anymore (he lives in Tokyo) but they stay ready, just in case. We visited a house where some of the nobles would have lived when the emperor lived there.

Our last walking tour stop was a museum of fragrance, where we could smell all kinds of scents for incense.

After the tour, we were hungry, so we found a nearby yakitori restaurant. One thing about Japan is that restaurants are usually very specific in what they serve, one kind of thing, udon, soba, tempura, yakitori, etc. So you’ll get variations on that one thing, but not a bunch of different things. I think this is part of why the food is so good: when you focus on one thing you are more likely to be better at it!

After lunch we headed towards the Philosopher’s Path. It took a while to get there, and we passed by tons of shrines and temples en route. We also saw a flea market and tried some matcha gelato.

We knew we were close to the Philosopher’s Path as it became more crowded. Anyway, it was a lovely walk, with things to see along the way, and we even stopped for an iced coffee at a little cafe. In Japan they serve iced coffee with liquid sweetener, which makes it delicious.

We visited Otoyo Shrine along the way, which was a shrine to rats, and a few other animals too. Evidently the monkeys liked it there too, though we didn’t see any.

The path ended near the Silver Pavilion, so we figured we should visit. It was near the end of the day so the crowds were thinning out, at least.

I loved the beautifully raked sand.

There was a path to get up higher and look over it and the city as well, so of course we had to take that.

After finishing our visit, we decided we had walked enough for the day so Louie ordered an Uber. We had a little panic over which side of the street to be on and then the car arrived so we got in. The driver didn’t seem to know where we were going which was weird and after a minute we realized we had gotten in the wrong car! We just started apologizing profusely (lots of hands together, head bowing as well) and jumped out because the right car was behind us!

After that it was a smooth drive back to the ryokan, and time for, you guessed it, shower and onsen! We relaxed a bit before our last event of the evening, which was dinner, this time at Kiyama, which had a Michelin star and was only a short walk away.

We were met at the door by an employee and were taken great care of. It was so good. We had thought the night before was good (and it was !) but wow, this meal blew us away. The staff were amazing and they explained well, showed us various foods before they prepared them, and basically made an amzing evening out of it. There were 10 people at the counter from all different places, and this may have been the best meal of my life.

More of those peppers that make my mouth a little numb. They did for Louie too or I would have worried I was simply allergic to them.

At the end we could choose from 5 different rice dishes, but of course we wanted to try them all so we did, no additional charge. And then tea and matcha too plus really good sake.

The other guests had fun too, we chatted a bit with a couple from Thailand sitting by us and 3 of the 5 couples were on their honeymoon trips! At the end the chef said goodbye to everybody at the door and we took a picture with him.

We were very full when we left, but it was soooo good. Luckily we had a short walk rather than no walk at all. Anyway, we got home and straight to bed. Or straight to futon, depending on how you look at it, haha.

I’ll end this (really long) post here: the next day we would be heading to Takayama so it’s a good place to stop. Any questions or comments, please let me know! I love hearing from readers.