I’ve posted a map to give some idea of the day’s route, but I completely stuffed up the GPS tracking and so don’t have a record of the actual path taken.
The day dawned grey and showery, but on the plus side my ankle was a lot less sore, so I caught the train back to Fujikawa and set off. I didn’t take many photos in the early stages of the walk, partly because there wasn’t a great deal of interest and partly because the rain steadily increased and I was too busy holding the umbrella.
From the station I climbed back onto the slope where I’d been the previous night, and at one point had to pass under the Shinkansen tracks through a low, narrow tunnel that forced me to bend double.
A bullet train roared past when I was 50 metres down the road beyond the tunnel exit; quite what the effect would have been inside the tunnel I can only imagine.
Wayfinding, which has been very inconsistent along the route so far, was today helped by the frequent use of road markings, the three kanji on these ones reading (left to right) ‘to’ (east), ‘kai’ (sea), ‘do’ (road or way). So Tokaido literally means ‘eastern sea road’.
By the time I got to Kambara I had a problem. My backpack had proved to be less waterproof than I’d hoped, and the contents ranged from damp to soaked. The local weather app suggested the rain would continue for a couple of hours, so I decided to hop on the train back to the hotel, dry out as much as possible, and then pick up where I left off when the weather improved.
In the event, I never really did get the pack and contents dry until that night, but the weather did clear up as promised and at least I had somewhere warm and dry to have lunch while waiting. Within a couple of hours I was back at Kambara and on the trail again.
Entering Yui was this fine old wooden building. I think this is an Edo-period style, named after the time when the Shoguns ruled from Edo (now Tokyo), which is generally dated to 1603–1868. (If anyone reading this knows more about Japanese architecture, please correct me.)
Just a little further on is the Shizuoka City Tokaido Hiroshige Museum of Art, housed in another lovely old building:
Unfortunately, photography was not allowed inside, but it contained a couple of very interesting exhibitions on Hiroshige and other ukiyo-e artists, including a detailed description of the woodblock print making technique.
At the museum gift shop I bought a very handsome edition of Hiroshige’s 53 Stations of the Tokaido as a momento of my trek.
The cover shows the famous view looking east from Satta Pass, which I would be climbing shortly.
Outside the museum, a pool featured charming, lifelike statues of turtles on rocks … until one of them moved. There wasn’t anything for them to feed on, so presumably they’re supplied with food by the museum or the local community.
Near Yui station is this gate, which brought to mind Australia’s similarly kitsch Big things (Big Banana, Big Merino etc).
Wikipedia tells me that Yui is well known for cherry shrimp, a type of small shrimp found in nearby waters. There’s a strong whiff of seafood throughout the town, and many shops along the road sell the shrimp. I should have stopped to sample them, but the afternoon was drawing on and I was conscious of wanting to clear Satta Pass before dusk.
The start of the pass is marked with an abundance of signage…
… and a steep change in gradient as the old road peels away from the new:
Once upon a time this was the only way onward: here, the mountains meet the sea and cliffs plunge straight into the surf. Modern engineering has solved that problem, constructing a tangle of roads and railway at the foot of the cliffs and out over the sea.
Still, the old route is not without its compensations. This was the view back towards Mount Fuji, a fresh dusting of snow on its summit from the same weather system that had caused me such nuisance earlier in the day.
And here also I met Camille and Romain, who were snacking on some of the fallen citrus fruit from the orchards that crowd the hillside. They were from Lyon – and when I say that’s where they’re from, that’s not just where their home is: it’s where they started cycling. Eight months and an impressive list of countries later, they were just three days’ ride away from their final destination, Tokyo. No wonder they looked happy. They have a website explaining their trip, which if my French is still up to scratch involves delivering a recipe created by an illustrious Lyon chef to an equally renowned counterpart in Tokyo.
Theirs is an extraordinary achievement that puts my much more modest trek in perspective, as tough as it sometimes feels.
There’s not much more to report about the day’s walk. Unfortunately, the west side of Satta Pass was closed, so I had to follow a road down the back of the mountain and into the back streets of Okitsu. The original plan was to continue another 5 km or so to Shimizu, but having lost a couple of hours to the rain delay in the morning and knowing that the next day was a rest day, I decided to jump on the train at Okitsu station and head back to the hotel. I promised myself I’d make up the missing section the next day.
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