Hike & Chill in Japan

WHTW #5 – A few more days without my job, before flying back to Taipei – the second half of the short but well deserved holidays in Japan.

Trying to be Spontaneous

The Czech guy in Osaka stayed in the hostel for long term but during our chats he still promoted spontaneous travelling, corroborated by real life examples from his past. I already planned everything for my upcoming few days on the Japanese countryside but hadn’t booked anything yet. Under the influence of the Czech guys stories, I decided to leave it like that, and for every day I only choose my place to stay in the afternoon of the same day. Who knows, maybe this flexibility results some magical stories for me too and I end up in totally different towns than expected. Spoiler alert, nothing like that happened, even with this spontaneous approach I almost did the same as I was planning originally.
But only almost.

Old Nakasendo Trail

From Osaka I took a bus to Nagoya. Just as planned. When I got off the bus, it was raining and also getting late. Originally I was going to book a good rated hostel a few streets further away. But luckily I was in spontaneous mode. I didn’t want to walk anywhere in the rain, in the dark, in an unknown city so I just chose a shit rated but very cheap and close hostel instead. I only needed it to fall asleep and get up anyway.
Being even more sure than before that I don’t want to waste my time in Nagoya, I took a train next morning to Nakatsugawa. That’s where my planned hiking route was supposed to start. The route was part of the Old Nakasendo trail, the ancient road where people were walking between Kyoto to Tokyo before shinkansen was invented. Most of that road is completely gone now (replaced by highways) but a small portion is very well maintained, to attract the amateur hikers for a day trip.
The main part of this section connects two small towns, Magome and Tsumago but if you arrive by train, you get off in Nakatsugawa to reach Magome and get on in Nagiso after leaving Tsumago. After I got off in Nakatsugawa I saw buses going to Magome but I prefered hiking all the way instead so after buying all the necessities in the 7-Eleven, at around 10:30, I turned on the route planner on google maps and followed its kind suggestions towards the Old Nakasendo trail.
After reaching the edge of the Nakatsugawa, the Ochiai Cobblestone Path started, a stone pavement going through the forest. Since it was Wednesday, a workday for the Japanese workforce and the tourists haven’t flooded the country yet, this section was totally empty, making it my favorite part of the whole day.
I reached Magome about 3 hours after departing from the Nakatsugawa station. It’s a small tourist town, the local bus from the train station but also many long distance busses stopped here which means that the quiet time was over for my hike. Magome has many souvenir shops, many restaurants and the view is nice. As I said, a tourist town. The way from here to Tsumago was 8 km long and took about 3 hours. The highest point is the Magome Pass, also serves as the border between two prefectures, until that there is a sometimes really steep uphills, after that there is a quite pleasant downhill path through a forest again. Based on which I had the impression that the hike is probably better in the opposite way, at least for the ones who don’t like to walk up on stairs too much.
One hour before reaching Tsumago I saw a free tea house, an old man was sitting there but when he saw me, he stood up, poured some green tea for me and started to chat with me. This tea house is created and run by the local government, he said, and he really likes to work here because he can talk with foreigners. Hangarii, Hangarii, no, I’m the first Hungarian but he has met several Australians earlier today.
Tsumago, the other very touristy little town was the end station of the hiking section. The way to the Nagiso station from there took another hour and was quite boring. I arrived to the Nagiso station a few minutes after 5pm, just to miss the opportunity to buy a train ticket. I was in spontaneous mode, I still haven’t booked anything for the night but no, I didn’t want to stay in Nagiso. It turned out that it’s possible to purchase tickets on the train and pay for them whenever I get off. Finally I made it to Matsumoto, a larger city I didn’t know anything about but it had some good looking accommodations and it was well connected to Tokyo.

Last days in Japan
I arrived really late there and I was quite tired too so it was obvious that I spend at least two nights there and look around on Thursday. Little did I know that Thursday was a national holiday in Japan. One of the main roads close to the Matsumoto Castle was closed for cars and a large crowd was strolling on it between various food stands. At a few spots there were dancing and juggling performaces too. It took a really long time to reach the castle which was very crowded as well, mainly by domestic tourists.
Unlike Nagoya, Matsumoto is a very pretty city, surrounded by mountains that in the autumn had really nice green-yellow-red colors, some of them even snowy tops. It reminded me to Sapporo more than anything before: I arrived there in 2014 at a similar part of the year, similar weather and somewhat similar views.
I took a bus from Matsumoto to Tokyo on Friday. Again, I only booked my hostel after arriving to Tokyo and only for one night. Spontaneousness! The hostel I booked close to Tokyo Station was very crowded and I didn’t feel like becoming social again, Osaka was enough, thanks, so for my last two nights I went to a spa & sauna capsule hostel to chill hard instead.
I have been to Tokyo a few times before, it’s really hard to avoid if you visit Japan so I wasn’t very excited to see it again. Most of my time was spent in the spa or the sauna. I went out for shopping souvenirs once, and met up an old friend who’s living and working there.
Tokyo was more about having some rest than exploring new things. I woke up on Monday at 6am to go to the spa for one last time but the pool was empty, they were replacing the water. I took the local train to the Narita Airport which took almost 2 hours, used my last coins to play around with the vending machines at the airport and flew back to Taipei. The flight from Tokyo to Taipei was almost 4 hours, much longer than the one from Taipei to Osaka, but I was lucky enough to have a triple seat again so I could sleep through the whole way.
At the end this spontaneity project didn’t have any game changing effect but it was just the first step. I will keep experimenting with it because it does have potentials the strict planning does not.