October 21, 2025
Day 49 — Nakutsagawa day off
Marilee here.
We took a day off to hike part of the Nakasendo trail. There is a famous segment between the two post towns of Magome and Tsumago: about 8km long, through forest and over a low pass, with sections of the trail still covered with the original cobblestones. It sounded lovely. We just had to take a train to Tsumago in the morning, walk the trail, and then take a bus back from Magome in the afternoon. No problem!
Well, it would have been no problem, except that we accidentally got on an express train instead of the local milk run — and the express doesn’t stop at tiny stations like Tsumago. So we went shooting past our destination and then had to spend a good couple of hours figuring out how to get back to it from the town we ended up in. Bus? Train and then a bus? Taxi? Why didn’t we just bike, it’s so much simpler!
Luckily there was a train back the other way which got us to a town where we could get a bus to Tsumago, where we arrived in time for lunch, and early enough that we could still do the hike. Hats off to the Japanese transportation system! So we ambled into Tsumago, which was preserved more as an outdoor museum, and found a noodle place and had lunch. They had an old Space Invaders game in the corner and I think Tom was tempted to call off hiking and spend the afternoon getting high score instead— but no! We had come to hike and so hiking we went!
We were not alone. Many other tourists had the same idea, so the path was crowded with a very international mix of people and languages— Brits and Italians, Aussies and Americans and Austrians — about the only nationality not represented on the trail seemed to be Japanese people. Well, there were a few, but definitely this particular trail was dominated by foreign tourists.
It was a nice little hike through the woods, with a tea house midway where you could stop and rest (cups of tea by donation). It was an overcast day, so the views weren’t as spectacular as they might have been, but the shreds of clouds clinging to the hillsides were very atmospheric.
In just over two hours we were in Magome, which was also meticulously maintained, and we managed to catch a bus (the right bus!) back to Nakatsugawa that got us into town before dark.
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