Day 51 — Seki to Hikone - Tom and Marilee Retire to the Road

October 23, 2025

Day 51 — Seki to Hikone

Marilee here.

What a great day! Everything went right from the start — the breakfast at this, our second AB Hotel in two nights, was stellar. Steamed broccoli, sautéed spinach with sesame seeds, tofu in sweet and sour sauce, scrambled eggs, tiny slices of toast, even tinier cups of coffee (we make lots of trips for refills) — that is a breakfast to set you up for a day of turning pedals around!

We’d spent the evening before watching Japanese tv — not something we do a lot, as the language barrier is obviously a bit of an obstacle to full enjoyment, but it tends to be very entertaining despite that. On this evening, we were treated to a very long infomercial about an amazing cure for stiff knees. Various elderly ladies demonstrated how they could no longer negotiate stairs easily, or fold their legs to fit at traditional low tables. Then they stirred this powder into their tea and Bam! They were fairly skipping about, big smiles everywhere. I kept watching, hoping they would extend the range of the powder’s curative powers to shoulders, but no such luck. It seems to be exclusive to knees. Still, it worked a treat on those ladies.

Seki is not a big place, so we were on our way out of town fairly quickly, following the bends of the Nagara River southward. The river, on this sunny fall day, was attracting lots of fishermen to its banks. Even when Tom ducked down what appeared to be a deserted woody path for a quick pee, immediately three pickup trucks full of fishermen turned onto the road.

Our route took us over a bridge from which we could see down into the wide, shallow, clear river — and the big fish that were hanging out in the middle of the stream. At the rivers edge a class of young kids was having a field trip, wading and collecting rocks. A lot of excited chatter rose up from the group.

Japanese anemones have been blooming ever since we arrived, two months ago. This was a whole field of them, glorious in the morning sunshine.

An elementary school field trip to the river.

As we got closer to Gifu, the city downstream from Seki, the river scene transitioned from a fishermen’s wild paradise into a riverside city sports park, with playing fields and tennis courts and one almost empty skateboard park lining the banks. We took a break here, admiring the view of Gifu castle, perched high on a mountain top across the river (we were not tempted by the climb up — there appeared to be a cable car line but it didn’t seem to be running).

That’s Gifu castle, waaaaay up on the hilltop.

What to say here, except: we both laughed.

The route again was a Komoot funfest of tiny alleys, paths through fields and occasional random temples. You just don’t know what you’re gonna get.

Komoot wanted us to have a thorough tour of the greenhouse area of Gifu.

Sometimes the random turns bring you to a hillside temple across the railroad tracks

Sometimes your are in a small town’s back alleys when a temple pops up.

Sometimes you have no idea where you are

The afternoon brought us back onto the Nakasendo trail and through more post towns. We stopped in one very lovely post town with a stream running along the road all through the historic area. There was a large temple or shrine area, with a rambling garden that we rambled about in for a while. It was all very idyllic in the sunshine — unfortunately it was also basically underneath a big expressway, which is likely why it is not as big a tourist draw as the more isolated mountain post towns. But it was very quiet and bucolic, just us and two older Japanese men who were extremely interested in photographing the plant life in the roadside stream — I kept waiting for the splash when one of them went in headfirst, but no such luck

Winging down through the hills, we passed this little roadside shrine full of colorfully attired stones.

Bikes waiting patiently while the riders have matcha ice cream cones.

At the end of the day we had a long slog through Hikone during rush hour traffic to where we thought our hotel was, only to discover it wasn’t the right one (after thoroughly alarming the hotel reception staff, who assumed they’d somehow lost or overlooked our reservation). Then we had a long slog back in the direction we’d just come from to get to the right hotel. Although these were unplanned extra kms at the end of the day, they took us through a picturesque old part of town (twice!) so we didn’t actually mind.

We found the hotel eventually, but it seemed to be an abandoned building. A small handprinted sign with “guesthouse” and a shaky arrow led us into a back parking lot, where there was a somewhat less decrepit building, a lot of laundry, and random garbage strewn around . Tom was supposed to have received an email with a key code so we could unlock a room door, but it hadn’t arrived. The sun was setting, it would be dark in a few minutes. In many other places in the world, a setup this deeply sketchy would have me on high alert, but somehow in Japan you just have faith that it’s going to be okay. And it was.

A nice lady showed up and helped us unlock our door and we saw that it was quite fine inside — old but big and very clean. Then we went and bought dinner at the convenience store across the street and a nice clerk showed us how the packages had microwave instructions so we could heat up our spaghetti bolognese in the store, and then we went back to our room and ate it and fell fast asleep. A great day, done.

Today's ride: 92 km (57 miles)
Total: 2,627 km (1,631 miles)

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