Tokaido Day 6 – Tuesday, 14 November: Odawara to Hakone Checkpoint (19 km)

 

Only 19 km covered today, but what a 19 km. From more or less sea level at Odawara up into the mountains and ending at the site of Hakone Checkpoint next to Lake Ashi, with a stunning view as a reward. Although Hakone Checkpoint is about 800 m above sea level, my GPS tracker tells me I had an elevation gain for the day of 965 m, which sounds/feels about right.

I knew this was going to be a tough day and figured the key was to get an early start so I could take as much time as I needed. So 6am saw me checking out of the Hotel Terminal in Odawara and bidding a less than fond farewell to its tiny bathroom. Arranging to have my suitcase sent on to the next accommodation in Shizuoka was not easy, but the guy behind the front desk was very patient and we managed to organise it.

Breakfast at a nearby Sukiya (a fast food chain) was cheap and filling, but otherwise forgettable. It was cold and clear as I set off through the streets of Odawara, and I hoped for good views once up in the mountains. 

The first five or six kilometres are a gentle rise following Route 1. On the outskirts of town I got my first proper glimpse of where I’d be heading today: the gap between those two domed peaks in the centre of the picture. Update: I later realised that the route actually skirts just to the left of those two peaks, rather than passing between them.

The Old Tokaido turns off Route 1 and over the river whose valley I’d be following all the way to the top. It gets a little steeper as it climbs through the village of Hakone (confusingly, nowhere near Hakone Checkpoint), but it’s still pretty easy going for the next few kilometres. A house had shiitake mushrooms for sale…

… and a frog watched me pass impassively:

A Japanese take on toad in the hole, perhaps?

Soon enough, though, the real fun began. This section of the Old Tokaido is famous for having preserved more of the character of the road than any other. (The fact that it’s almost certainly one of the steepest is probably no coincidence.) What that means in particular is that the road retains its original paving from the Edo period, called ishidatami, or stone flooring.

And it’s a killer. Slogging steeply uphill for kilometre after kilometre is hard enough (I forgot to mention that as my suitcase wouldn’t arrive at the next hotel until tomorrow, I had to carry a medium-heavy pack with enough gear for tonight and tomorrow) – but those stones are very uneven, and in many places very slippery. I was enormously grateful for the pole I’d brought with me (thanks Steph!)

Occasionally the surface changed to something less potentially crippling…

… but just beyond here it dropped down to a very rickety river crossing which had me fearing for my ankles and other vulnerable appendages.

The OT joined and left and crossed the local vehicle road several times, but kept on climbing. At the start of one section of ishidatami was the best example I’d yet seen of an ichirizuka (one ri mound), with its characteristic tree plonked on top.

Things Japan is surprisingly bad at: public seating. Perhaps it’s a legacy of a culture that eschewed chairs for the floor for many centuries, but you’re often hard pressed to find somewhere to park your bum and rest your weary legs for a few minutes. I was just musing on this fact when I came around a corner and found this lovely little wooden bench in a sun-dappled spot at the side of the route. Needless to say, I made full use of it.

I decided this would also be a good place to practise selfies, which I’m really bad at.

Other than that, the slow, careful uphill slog continued until the OT rejoined the modern local road at Amazake Chaya. Ama or ame means sweet; zake is the same as sake; and chaya means tea house: so it’s a tea house selling sweet rice wine, although the zake isn’t actually alcoholic. It is, however, warm and wonderful, and to sip it while sitting in the dim, smoky old tea house was to experience what a computer game character must feel when their health bar icon is filling up. They also sold some sort of food. I have no idea what it was but I was starving and it was delicious. 

Unfortunately, however, this is decidedly not the top of the climb: there was still a couple of kilometres of that bloody ishidatami to go, some of it even steeper than anything that had come before (or maybe it only felt that way).

But keep taking enough single steps, and eventually you’ll get there. This felt like the top, and although there wasn’t anything officially signifying the fact, I took a photo in case it was.

Turns out it was – so hooray! But it also turns out that ishidatami is, if anything, even worse going down. It may not be as aerobically demanding, but there’s more danger of a nasty fall if you slip. Fortunately it wasn’t too far into the outskirts of the town of Motohakone and paved roads. 

Just inside a temple gate, a maple showed a glimpse of what I hope will be a lot more glorious autumn colours over the next few weeks.

Motohakone is on the shore of Lake Ashi and is a very popular tourist spot. I couldn’t wait to get away from the crowds, but paused long enough to ask someone to take my photo.

That view of Mount Fuji felt like my reward for all the hours of uphill toil. I’d seen Fujisan from the Shinkansen on previous visits to Japan, but never with a snow cap like that and certainly never with that clarity. I hope it won’t be the last I’ll get on this trek.

My destination for the day was the site of the old Hakone Checkpoint, half a kilometre on from the worst of the tourist crush. Edo era officials at the checkpoint were notoriously, well, officious about checking travellers’ papers, and apparently it could sometimes take days to get through. Women trying to leave Edo were particular targets of scrutiny. There’s a small but interesting reproduction of the checkpoint complex that was well worth the 510 yen entry.

Needing to get to Shizuoka, quite a lot further on from Hakone Checkpoint, I caught the bus down the other side of the mountain (which incidentally gave me a good idea of just how much I’d climbed from Odawara) to Mishima, and the Shinkansen on from there. 

Hotel Prezio is very handy to the station and the room is an improvement on the last one. The bathroom is certainly bigger!

Tomorrow I’ll aim for an early start again as it will take a while to get back to Hakone Checkpoint. I think there’s some more climbing involved but nothing like as epic as today’s ascent.

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