As promised, I'm writing this article specifically for those who may be interested in hiking the ancient Nakasendo mountain path between Tsumago-juku and Magome-juku. Well-known domestically as a culturally interesting hike for beginners, this is a picturesque stretch of the old trade route linking Kyoto to present-day Tokyo, featuring:
- two of Japan's most photogenic towns at both ends of the hike
- fascinating traditional buildings and waterfalls along the way
- relatively easy and slow ascents and descends
- a well-maintained, clearly-marked (albeit occasionally in Japanese) trail
- a bus route running almost in parallel to the trail ... in case the weather turns ugly
- and best of all, a LUGGAGE TRANSFER SERVICE to send your heavy backpack to the other end of the hike, to keep your shoulders light
Adding this hike to a tour of Tsumago-juku and Magome-juku would make a great weekend trip, but in theory this is also doable as a day-trip from Nagoya ... providing that you arrive at Tsumago early enough and take the last bus out of Magome. Of course you'd also have to settle for only a couple hours of sightseeing at either end, which is why I recommend traveling slower and making it a two-day trip. If you need further convincing, read my Tsumago-juku article first and decide whether you TRULY want to rush through magical towns like these in a couple of hours.
One can choose to start at either Tsumago-juku or Magome-juku -- we happened to start from Tsumago-juku, where we stayed in a Minshuku guesthouse the previous night. Taking advantage of the luggage transfer service offered by the Tsumago-juku Tourist Info Centre, we paid a worthwhile 500 yen (CAD$5) for our heavy backpack to be delivered to Magome-juku. This service is also offered in the reverse direction, and the only trick is that you need to deposit your luggage at one town's Tourist Info Centre before 11:30, then pick it up at the Tourist Info Centre at the opposite town before the closing time of 17:00.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, note that this service is offered ONLY on Saturdays and Sundays from late March to late November, and daily during the peak season from late July to the end of August. We specifically tweaked our itinerary such that we arrived at Tsumago on Friday night in order to do our hike on a Saturday in late May. So check the official site (use a translation website) for the latest schedule, and PLAN YOUR ARRIVAL WISELY.
Besides depositing our backpack and picking up a trail map at the Info Centre here, we also borrowed an obnoxiously loud hiking-bell for bear deterrence. I've never encountered bears on hikes and camping trips even in my home country Canada ... so that's just in case we had the incredible fortune of meeting one in highly urbanized Japan. The 1200 yen deposit was fully refundable upon returning it at Magome-juku.
Thus began our long-awaited hike. The trail head started from the side of the coach-parking lot at the southern end of Tsumago town, heading southward through lush coniferous forests, rice paddy fields and the occasional fish farms towards the small hamlet of O-Tsumago. It was rice planting season in late May, and farmers could be seen waddling out to their artificially flooded fields to insert each individual rice seedling by hand.
Nowadays most farmers no longer try to sprout the seeds from the previous harvest, but rather purchase their desired variety in bulk from agricultural suppliers. Judging from restaurant advertisements and prepackaged-sushi labels that we saw in Tsumago, the locally-popular rice strain seemed to be the Koshi-hikari, a highly-desired variety now grown all over Japan and even as far as California.
This was the flattest section of the hike as the trail snaked through the heavily wooded valley floor, crossing over several rivers and mountain streams. At the 20 minute mark we approached O-Tsumago, a serene village of 15 or so traditional Machiya houses and the last settlement before the path disappears into the wilderness towards Magome-juku.
Having existed through the feudal ages as an unofficial rest stop, modern day O-Tsumago still serves its centuries-old purpose of providing alternate accommodations to travelers overflowing from the inns of neighboring Tsumago-juku. Perhaps most importantly to frugal backpackers, O-Tsumago's Minshuku guesthouses generally charge several hundred yens less than comparable accommodations at Tsumago-juku.
As bland and modest as they may seem, the village's informal eateries offer the very last chance for hikers to fill up on Soba noodles and bottled water for the next 90 minutes. After O-Tsumago the trail would begin its slow ascend of 400 vertical metres to the top of the Magome-toge mountain pass, where the next teahouse is located.
This was also the last public washroom for quite a while. Note that the weather was still partially sunny at this point, but it was about to change for the worse.
The route was very well marked for the most part, featuring bilingual signs and distance markers along the way. If the marker here is correct, the section between Tsumago and Magome would measure less than 8 km, quite achievable within 3 hours even for the moderately fit.
Then there were crude little signs to remind foreign hikers that they should at least attempt to learn the Hiragana for "Magome" and "Tsumago."
The Ishi-datami, or stone pavement, is one of those popular images of the so-called "Nakasendo Highway," the feudal equivalence of the modern day Route 19. In reality though the feudal government only afforded to pave some important sections of the road, and the rest was just a dirt path through the Kiso Valley's immense cedar forests. At this point, roughly an hour into the hike, heavy clouds rolled in and the sky began to drizzle.
With nowhere to go but forward, the two of us huddled under our little retractable umbrella on our cold and wet uphill climb towards the mountain pass. In better weather this would have made a fantastic walk, passing several deserted feudal houses, old wooden shrines and a seemingly random scattering of stone Jizo statues along the path. A quick optional detour led to the twin waterfalls of Medaki and Otaki (female and male falls), romanticized as the place of rendezvous between the protagonist and his lover in the historic novel Miyamoto Musashi.
We also passed by an old shrine commemorating a 16th Century Samurai and his followers who fought the local villains valiantly to the death on their way home to Matsumoto. Apparently the locals believed the bloodshed to have defiled the area and contributed to frequent landslides, and so dedicated a shrine to pacify the spirits. Another deserted building marked an old checkpoint established by the feudal government to prevent the illegal harvest and export of five species of majestic timbers out of the valley.
As the drizzle deteriorated into a furious downpour, we made the choice of taking a timely refuge at a roadside pavilion. With nothing else to do than simply waiting, we remembered the traditional energy-snack purchased earlier at the general store at Tsumago-juku. It was an unfamiliar package labelled "Kisoji Hoba Sushi" and "Produced in Gifu Prefecture and made with 100% Koshi-hikari rice from the Ena District".
Our previous encounter with the culinary use of Hoba (magnolia leaves) was at the mountainous Hida region, where the dried leaves were used as plates for grilling Miso paste. But here in the southern part of the Gifu Prefecture the common practice seems to involve the use of fresh leaves as food-preserving wrappers. This type of archaic sushi was probably very close to what feudal-era travelers packed for their journey through this same mountain pass several hundred years ago -- a cheap and simple meal of vinegared rice, a small chunk of dried-preserved beef, a couple stems of Shimeji mushrooms, a little julienned egg omelette, bamboo shoots and pickled ginger. For me this was less about the taste and more about the full experience of following the footsteps of the ancient travelers. But the truth was ... it actually tasted pretty good.
As it became apparent that the rain wasn't going to get any lighter, we continued on our journey towards the teahouse at top of the mountain pass. Named simply "Toge-no-Chaya" (teahouse of the mountain pass), it turned out to be just a tiny shed operating as a souvenir shop that also offered some snacks. At that point our retractable umbrella was on the verge of breaking, and we almost resorted to replacing it with one of those traditional wax-paper umbrellas sold as souvenir. This was when we made the discovery of the day ... the next Tsumago-Magome bus would pass by the bus-stop outside the teahouse in the next 5 minutes!
So at the end we completed only 3/4 of the hike. Although 300 yen (CAD$3) seemed a little stiff for a 7 minute bus ride, at that time we reasoned that it no longer made sense to brave the final downhill portion towards Magome through the heavy downpour. Oh well ... at least we would get to our Minshuku guesthouse at Magome before we got totally soaked.
By the time we finally arrived, the armies of day-trip tourists had retreated and the town of Magome returned to a shadow of its normally bustling self -- bad for storekeepers, great for photographers. We were soon reunited with our heavy backpack at Magome's Tourist Info Centre, a mere three-minute-walk from the town's uphill end where we got off the bus. We would spend the last night of our half-month Japanese trip right here, inside the 200-year-old Minshuku guesthouse Tajimaya.
As you can see we never filled in our names on our wooden "Certificate of Completion," an interesting reminder of the way our hike came to an unorthodox end. Well, we knew about the existence of the Tsumago-Magome bus, but we never thought that we would end up using it as our escape-route.
USEFUL LINKS FOR FURTHER READING
A useful English guide to the hike - http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e6078.html
Official website for Tsumago-Magome Bus - http://www.rosenzu.com/ontake/nagiso.html
Official Tsumago website (Japanese) - http://www.tumago.jp
Official Magome website (Japanese) - http://www.kiso-magome.com
