Skip to main content

Tokaido Day 13 – Tuesday, 21st November: Kanaya to Fukuroi (29km)

 


A more overcast and humid day, but still good conditions for walking.

My hotel offers a free buffet breakfast, which I couldn’t pass up, so by the time I caught the train from Hamamatsu back to Kanaya I was a little later than previous mornings. No matter. 

From the station, the Old Tokaido climbed steeply, and it wasn’t long before I encountered another section of the dreaded ishidatami.


Although just as steep as the section near Hakone, this was in better condition and nowhere near as long. Still, it’s not easy walking, and once again I was glad of the pole. I agree with the Temple Guy: this is much harder than Satta Pass, and I’m surprised it doesn’t have more of a reputation on the walk. Once the ishidatami ends, there’s still plenty of hill to climb, and the route rises through tea plantations.


On those grey poles are electric fans: I’ve read that they’re used on still, humid mornings to blow away the mist that could otherwise damage the leaves.

Where the bushes are in bloom, it’s easy to see the tea plant’s relation to the camellia family:


Tea plantations are very picturesque, and I had a few goes trying to get the perfect shot. Didn’t succeed, of course, but here are the attempts:





At the top of the hill is the site of Suwahara Castle. Nothing is now visible above ground, but to judge from the depth of the moats that remain it must have been an impressive place:


The road followed the ridge for a couple of kilometres of beautifully flat walking with amazing views, before dropping steeply to the village of Kikugawa. The way down featured more ankle-threatening ishidatami, of course.

And once through the village another steep climb up the other side of the valley, this time thankfully entirely on paved surface. This was really pleasant rural walking, with few cars on the narrow roads. Eventually the route descended to the post town of Nissaka, from where a very familiar pattern resumed: broadly tracking National Route 1, and sometimes using it, but more often weaving left and right, and crossing on the diagonal. 

At Kakegawa, an important castle town, I made a small deviation to view the reconstructed castle tower but decided not to pay the 500 yen entrance fee to look around properly.


As I walked down the hill back towards the Old Tokaido, I heard a friendly shout, and was invited to join a small group of people outside a shop. The man who’d called me over spoke good English, and explained that the shop sold items relating to Samurai Japan. The other man in the group was the shop owner. I explained where I was from and what I was doing in Japan, and many expressions of astonishment and words of encouragement were offered. After that I felt the least I could do was to go in and have a look around, and I bought a keyring with the name of Oda Nobunaga, a famous Samurai warlord, to hang on my pack. It also has a little bell to scare off bears.


As usual, I asked if I could take a photo, and they happily agreed. So here are Ouba-san, Takuya-san and Matsuyama-san (the shop owner is on the right).


They asked to take one with me in it, and again I managed not to ruin it. Obviously the key to a good selfie is to get someone else to take it.


As I was leaving, the owner handed me a replica Japanese coin, inscribed on the back, he said, with good luck for my trip.


As I said my thankyous and goodbyes, even the shop assistant came out to wish me well. After a long series of bows and several handshakes, they continued to wave until I was completely out of sight. 

It’s impossible to overstate the warmth, enthusiasm and generosity of people I’ve met along the way. As wonderful the history and landscape of Japan, and as delicious the extraordinary variety of its food, it’s these encounters that are definitely the highlight of each day.

There’s not much to say about the rest of the walk itself, although there are several sections, where the distinctive avenue of pines has been preserved:


Eventually I made it to Fukuroi station and happily boarded the train back to the hotel in Hamamatsu.
 
Previous day's post
 
Next day's post

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tokaido prologue

Hiroshige, Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido . No. 26: Kakegawa I visited Japan in 2017 and 2019, on the second occasion with Fred, as well as my partner (with whom I’d travelled in 2017) and her son. Like most people who come for the first (or second) time, we took the Shinkansen – bullet train – from Tokyo to Kyoto on the line called the Tokaido. Volumes have been written about the wonders of Japan’s Shinkansen system. It is, I think, something that should be experienced at least once in everyone’s life if possible. ‘Tokaido’ means ‘eastern sea road’, and the line bears that name because it follows – more or less – the route of the centuries-old road that linked the Imperial capital of Kyoto with the Shogunate’s headquarters in Edo (now Tokyo), respectively the seats of ceremonial and administrative power. For hundreds of years, thousands of travellers made the 500-kilometre trip between the two cities (and usually back again), the vast majority of them on foot: horses were rare, t
1 comment
Read more

Tokaido Day 1 – Thursday, 9 November: Nihombashi to Kawasaki (22 km)

Link to GPS track Any sense of excitement at the dawn of the day that I would actually start this thing I’d been planning for so long was somewhat subsumed by the need to organise my gear and arrange for stuff I wouldn’t need for a couple of days to be sent on to the next hotel. The front desk staff at the Hotel Sunroute in Asakusa were, of course, extremely helpful and told me that the bag would arrive at the Terminal Hotel in Odawarra the next day. That still left me with a pack that was heavier than I’d been expecting – I guess about 15 kg – and it was with a slight sense of trepidation that I checked out and headed to the subway to catch the Ginza line to Nihombashi.  Nihombashi – which I think just means ‘Japan bridge’ – marks the start of the Tokaido and is traditionally the place from which all distances to Tokyo are measured. Today its historical significance is not immediately apparent, not least because of the dominating freeway overpass that crosses above. However, the city
3 comments
Read more