Day 10: Okazaki - Akasaka (20.9km)

I woke at six after a sound night's sleep and went down for breakfast just after seven. It was a beautifully fine day outside. My groin felt OK, so for the first time since starting the walk I began the day without taking any pain medication.


After checking out, I walked across to the station and caught the 8.45am train to Naka-Okazaki from where I walked to nearby Okazaki Castle. I wandered around the grounds taking photos, eventually rejoining the Tokaido at about 9.30am. As mentioned previously, the Tokaido often doglegs as it approaches strategic towns. Okazaki must have been the most strategic of all these towns, because here the road famously doglegs 27 times within the space of less than five kilometres. This really tried my patience, and I have to confess that I cut a couple of corners as I left Okazaki, one of only a handful of occasions on which I knowingly strayed from the original route of the Tokaido as shown on my walking map.

At 10.30am I took my first break beside the Ohira Ichirizuka. I'd finished the Snacking Scroggin the previous day, so I tucked into the Scrummy Mix for the first time. I couldn’t believe how delicious the Scrummy Mix was. The two were as different as chalk and cheese.

I reached the post town of Fujikawa at around 11.45am. Here there was another impressive avenue of black pines trees, consisting of some 90 trees stretching over a distance of one kilometre. I looked for somewhere to have lunch, eventually settling for a convenience store meal of fried squid, a cold piece of deep-fried fish, a slice of fruit cake, and an iced coffee.

I left Fujikawa at 1pm and arrived in the town of Honjuku at 1.45pm. It was a further 5km or so to the post town of Akasaka, my destination for the day. I arrived there at 3pm, and as I wasn't expected at the inn I'd booked until 4pm, I had coffee at a michi-no-eki and then looked around the town for a bit.


Like Daikokuya on the Nakasendo, Ohashiya started life as a hatago in the Edo period. Although the building has been added to and extended over the years, the oldest part of Ohashiya (including the bit at the front and the rooms above it where I slept) was built more than 300 years ago. According to several sources, Ohashiya served as the model for the building that appears in Hiroshige's print for Akasaka in the famous series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.

I arrived at Ohashiya just after 4pm. I was shown up to my rooms and had some tea and relaxed before going down for a welcome soak in the (modern) bath from around 5pm. I had the three large rooms on the second floor of the oldest part of the building all to myself. There were two other guests staying at Ohashiya that night, but as it is the innkeeper's policy to have only one party staying each night, the other guests were put up in a newer section of the inn at the back.

The "stairs" (or perhaps "ladder" would be a more accurate description) up to my rooms

Two of the three rooms I had to myself on the second floor

Dinner was interesting. Despite having told the innkeeper once when I made the original booking and again when I confirmed it that I didn’t eat meat of any kind, one of the dishes had chicken in it. The rest was pretty nice, although I wasn't exactly blown away by the local delicacy, tororo (grated mountain yam), which looks like sticky porridge and is eaten spooned over rice or noodles.

Tororo!

Overall, I enjoyed our experience at Daikokuya in 2007 much more than I did my experience at Ohashiya. On the positive side, my toe felt good - better than it had for days, in fact. I was in bed by 8.30pm and asleep by nine.