April 13

The next day marked the biggest gamble of our journey: the hike from Tsumago (really from Nagiso) to Magome. Would it be rainy? Would it be sunny? Would it be freezing? Would our luggage indeed be delivered to Nagoya that night?

As a bit of background, in the Edo period, the daimyo were required to spend a portion of every year in Edo (Tokyo), so that the rulers could keep an eye on them, maintain their power, etc. For many this required a trip through the Japanese Alps along a route called the Nakasendo, which ran all the way between Kyoto and Edo. There were many little "post towns" set up along the way, to provide food/resting place to the traveling samurai (think of it as an exit with a Carl's Jr and Motel 6 off of the 99 freeway). Tsumago and Magome are two of these post towns that have been fairly well-preserved, still keeping their old look. Parts of the original trail have also been preserved, and you can still follow it between the two towns, though in some places you walk along a paved road that has since been built there.

The day started with another train ride... train rides that we and our sore feet learned to love and cherish as perhaps the most relaxing part of our vacation. The train dropped us off at Nagiso...


...and so we started our hike to Tsumago.




As the day was still young, and we were not yet exhausted, we decided to take a little detour:



What's this?


A small cemetary with cherry blossoms falling... how beautiful and symbolic...



Going back down was a bit scarier than going up...


We passed through a bunch of little clusters of houses... I don't know if you could call them towns... but they were very cute.



These koi were really cute. They would all congregate where we were standing, and then follow us when we walked along the pond. These guys know how to get their food. They need some work on posing for photos though.








Almost there...


Tsumago!!






And on we go...



Fortunately for us, the day was pretty warm...


What is going on here?




There were some pretty waterfalls along the way too...




This was really clever...


..those look like cherry blossom petals don't they? Ha! Wrong!! They are white stones!!


Mwahahaha!!! But yeah, really clever...


Almost there!



Say what?!?!


Well I guess this detour is ok:


The view from the top was excellent (please click on this one to fully appreciate the panoramic image):


And now down to Magome itself



I apologize for the number of pictures in this blog post... I think I maybe only posted about 25% of what Erik took. The blog might take a while to load because of it... but on this hike I kind of thought the photos spoke for themselves.