Day 13: Maisaka - Mitsuke (23.8km)

After a night's sleep interrupted by the sound of freight trains passing right by the window of my hotel room, I got up at 5.30am and packed my things. I bandaged my toe as I had done everyday since it became infected but left off the antiseptic ointment after reading on the tube that continued application could be harmful. At seven I went down to the lobby and got some bread, juice and coffee and took them back to my room to eat. For some reason the simple meal left me feeling positive about the day ahead.


I left the hotel at eight and headed towards the post town of Maisaka just up the road. It was a lovely fine day, and I took it easy, stopping numerous times to admire the view and take photos of the body of water that separates Lake Hamana from the ocean. I didn’t reach Maisaka until 9am.


After leaving Maisaka I came across another long avenue of old pine trees, probably the most impressive I'd seen so far, with 340 trees spread over a distance of 700 metres. It was noticeably cooler walking along this stretch of road compared to the road by the lake, although once I left the shade of the pines it got hot again. The road was flat and straight, and I took two breaks (one at 10am and the other at 11am) to rehydrate and nibble on Snacking Scroggin. At 11.30am I passed a Gusto family restaurant and decided to have an early lunch.


I continued on through the city of Hamamatsu, which was a lot bigger than I anticipated. Mind you, I did make a wrong turn at one point, and working out exactly where I was and getting back on the right path meant I spent more time there than I should have. I stopped to take a photo of the Okura Act City Hotel, whose appearance has always fascinated me since I first saw it over ten years ago, and which is still a dominant feature of the city's skyline.


It was another long stretch of flat, mostly straight road for the next seven or eight kilometers all the way to the Tenryu River. I took a half-hour break for coffee just after two, eventually reaching the river at 3.20pm. It seemed to take ages to cross the Tenryu, one of four rivers on the Tokaido that were too wide to be spanned by bridges in the Edo period and required ferry crossings. I was actually surprised at the number of major river crossings on the Tokaido. It brought home to me the fact that one of the reasons the Nakasendo, despite being longer and hillier than the Tokaido, was so popular as an alternative route between Tokyo and Kyoto was that it had far fewer such river crossings, which were dangerous if not impossible when the rivers were in flood.


From the Tenryu River it was a further four or so kilometers to my hotel by Iwata station near the old post town of Mitsuke. I arrived at 4.45pm, quite a bit later than planned. I put this down to failing to take into account the extra distance between where I stayed the previous night and the post town of Maisaka, and to spending so much time taking in the scenery around Maisaka. I guess the half-hour coffee stop in the afternoon didn’t help either.


I checked in and took up the offer of a free beer in the hotel lobby before dining in the restaurant adjoining the hotel. Since I'd already broken my "no alcohol while walking the Tokaido" policy for the day, I didn’t feel so bad about having a glass of Australian Yellowtail Chardonnay with my crab and tomato spaghetti.

Day 12: Yoshida - Maisaka (28.8km)

I got up at 5.45am, showered, shaved and got my things together ready for a speedy getaway straight after breakfast. I had 28.8km to cover, but I also had two museums I wanted to see: the one at Futagawa with the Hiroshige exhibition and one at the old sekisho (checkpoint) at Arai.

As breakfast wasn't included in my accommodation package, I went downstairs to the station building just after 7am and quickly found a café that was open. I had a muffin set, which consisted of two muffins and a cup of coffee. Back in my room, I ate the yoghurt with fruit I'd bought the night before.

I checked out and was back on the Tokaido at 8.15am. I followed National Route 1 all the way to the next post town of Futagawa. Along the way I saw a big drug store and decided to pop in to get some more bandages for my toe. The automatic doors wouldn't open, but there was a woman inside who opened them for me and let me in. I looked at my watch and saw it was 9.25am. "Thanks," I said. "I guess you don’t open till 9.30." "Actually, we don’t open till 10," the woman replied, "but please come in."

I reached Futagawa at 10.05am and quickly found the honjin and museum. I left my pack at the reception area and went straight to the back of the museum where the Hiroshige exhibition was being held. The exhibition featured prints from the series Famous Views of the 60-odd Provinces. Many of the prints were accompanied by sketches of the scenes concerned. It was fascinating to compare the sketches with the final prints and see how Hiroshige took the main features in each scene and rearranged them to fit into the portrait (i.e. vertical) orientation of the final print. I could only marvel at his skills as an artist.


After viewing the exhibition I took a quick look around the rest of the museum. It was the kind of museum I like, with lots of models and dioramas. Among the exhibits was a huge 3D map showing the routes of all five Edo-period "highways", including the Nakasendo and the Tokaido.

I wanted to stay longer but was mindful of the distance I still had to cover. In the end I didn’t even have time to look inside the honjin, and had to be content with taking a couple of photos from the street as I left. It was spitting by the time I left Futagawa just before 11am, although not enough to warrant putting on my raingear. I soon began the gradual climb to the next post town of Shirasuka. I reached the lookout at the top of the pass at around 12.30pm and stopped to admire the view out over the Pacific Ocean. I then negotiated the steep climb down Shiomizaka, which features in Hiroshige's print of Shirasuka from the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.


I was now at sea level just a few hundred metres from the coast following the Tokaido east towards Lake Hamana. There didn’t seem to be any restaurants in the vicinity, so at 1pm I left the Tokaido and found a convenience store right by the beach. I bought some food and ate it in the convenience store car park surrounded by a bunch of surfers.

I got underway again at 1.30pm and passed through another famous avenue of old pine trees along a stretch of the Tokaido known as the Hamana-kaido. It was now fine and pretty hot. I arrived in Arai at 2.45pm and had a look around the sekisho museum, the reconstructed checkpoint building, and the hatago (which I also gathered is largely a reconstruction as it looked surprisingly new). There was very little of interest in the sekisho museum, and I regretted not having spent more time at the museum and honjin at Futagawa.

Arai Sekisho

I continued on and reached my hotel (which was located part way between Arai and the next post town of Maisaka) just after 4pm. There was free coffee in the lobby, so I helped myself to a couple of cups before heading to my room. There were few places to eat in the immediate vicinity of the hotel and I was too tired even to walk down to the nearby convenience store, so I phoned a pizza place and had them deliver some seafood pizza, salad, and mango ice cream to my room. The pizza turned out to be the best seafood pizza I've ever tasted. The ice cream, on the other hand, was horrible.

My hotel was right next to a railway line. I knew this when I booked it, but figured that it wouldn’t be a problem as passenger trains stop running around midnight. I'd forgotten about freight trains, however, and was woken several times in the middle of the night by loud rumbling noises.

Day 11: Akasaka - Yoshida (13.7km)

I woke at 5.30am, read for a bit, then packed and went down to wash my face and brush my teeth.

The previous day I'd requested breakfast at 7am but was told 7.30am was the earliest it could be provided. In the end I was called down to the dining room at 7.15am. I seem to remember a similar thing happening at Daikokuya, although on that occasion we wanted to get away even earlier. Plus breakfast at Daikokuya was a real treat. In contrast, breakfast at Ohashiya was pretty uninspiring, although thankfully there was no meat, and no raw egg! There was also no coffee, so shortly after leaving the inn at 7.45am I popped into a convenience store and bought my favorite packaged iced coffee: Mt. Rainier Caffé Latte (Non-Sugar).


The next post town (Goyu) was only a couple of kilometres down the road (the distance between Akasaka and Goyu is among the shortest between post towns on the Tokaido). Along the way I passed yet another avenue of old pine trees, this one stretching for 600 metres and consisting of 350 trees planted over 300 years ago. According to a sign in English on the side the road, these trees are "listed in the register of the 100 most famous pine trees in Japan".

While reading the sign another walker arrived and we chatted for a bit. Like me and Aki, the young walker I'd met in Kuwana, he was walking the entire Tokaido in a single go. Again I noticed how small his pack was compared to mine.


The road was fairly flat and straight for the rest of the day, and the scenery grew more urban as I approached the city of Toyohashi, which incorporates the old post town of Yoshida. At 11.15am I reached the Toyo River and stopped for a rest on the stopbank. I then crossed the bridge into the city on the other side. A reached Toyohashi station at 12pm and lunched on tuna spaghetti and coffee at a restaurant inside the station building before checking in to my hotel at 1pm. It was a nice hotel, and I'd been upgraded from a single to a double room on the 12th floor. I had a lovely view from my window of the nearby port of Misaka and the ocean in the distance.

I hand-washed my Gore-Tex hat (which after ten days of constant use was beginning to smell a bit), a pair of trousers, and a shirt. Seeing as I still had the best part of the afternoon left, I then went down to the information centre in the station to find out if there were any art exhibitions on in town. I quickly spotted a brochure advertising an exhibition of Hiroshige prints. Great, I thought! But my excitement turned to disappointment when I realized the exhibition was on at a museum in Futagawa, several kilometres from Toyohashi station. The thought of catching a train there and back didn't really appeal to me. Then I realized that Futagawa was the next post town on the Tokaido. I'd be passing through it the following morning. The museum in question was in fact right next to the Futagawa Honjin.

I still had some time to kill in Toyohashi, so I went for a bit of wander around the station area, stopping at an Excelsior coffee shop for coffee and cake. I considered heading over to look around the castle, but in the end decided I'd done enough walking for the day and went back to my hotel instead. For dinner I bought some salad, cheese and bread at the supermarket in the station building and ate them in my room. Remembering my "no alcohol while walking the Tokaido" policy, I bought a bottle of peach juice to go with my meal.

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.

Day 9: Chiryu - Okazaki (12.1km)

I got up at 6am and watched the rest of The Dark Knight while breakfasting on some things I’d bought at a convenience store the night before. I'd pretty much lost track of the plot, and continued watching despite not being that interested in the outcome. I have to admit, though, that Heath Ledger was mighty impressive. I'm a big fan of Christian Bale, too. Perhaps in different circumstances I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.

Aware that this was my shortest day (as my brother Mark reminded me in an email sent to my mobile phone, in my jogging days I could have run the 12km to Okazaki), I took my time getting ready and didn't depart until 9.45am. Another reason for my reluctance to leave the hotel was that it was raining, although it was so light I only made the decision to put my raingear on at the last minute.


Soon after leaving Chiryu I came across an impressive avenue of black pines that stretched for nearly half a kilometre. According to a plaque by the side of the road, some of these were originals planted in the 17th century, while others were replacements planted following the Ise Bay Typhoon in 1959, which uprooted many of the old trees.


At 11.50am I stopped to rest by a shrine. Next to the shrine entrance I saw a large monument and so I went over to see what it was. According to the sign in front of the monument, this area had been the site of an Imperial Navy air base during the Second World War, and the monument was dedicated to the young pilots who had trained there, many of whom ended up being sent on suicide missions towards the end of the war.

An hour later I reached the Yahagi River, which in the Edo period was spanned by the longest bridge on the Tokaido. I could see the city of Okazaki on the other side. The rain had eased, so I stopped to take off my raingear before crossing the river and entering the city. Soon after reaching the far side of the river I passed the premises of the Hatcho Miso Company, where the famous miso has been produced for the last five centuries.


Okazaki was a lot larger than I expected, but as usual I couldn’t find a lunch place I liked the look of. After wandering through the streets for a while I found myself outside East Okazaki Station. There was a tourist information desk inside, so I went in and got a map and asked for directions to JR Okazaki Station, where my hotel was. I headed off in the direction of my hotel, nibbling on the last of my Snacking Scroggin as I went.

It was after 2pm when I eventually passed a restaurant that took my fancy. I went in and ordered the salmon cream spaghetti set which came with a bottomless cup of coffee. It wasn't much further from the restaurant to my hotel, so I stayed there until just before 3pm. After checking in and did a load of washing. I'd planned to go to a jazz club that evening, so I then popped across to the station to check the train timetable.

It was raining again by the time I set off that evening for the Satin Doll Dining and Jazz Bar just north of Naka-Okazaki Station, two stops from JR Okazaki Station on the Aichi Loop Line Railway. I arrived at around 7.30pm to find the band going through their final practice session. I was the first patron to arrive. I ordered a gin and tonic and a cheese platter. A few more patrons drifted in before the quartet took to the stage shortly after 8pm. But there was something wrong; there were only three musicians! There was a drum kit in the middle of the stage, but no drummer. This wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened to me in Japan. A couple of years ago I went to a concert at a jazz club in Shinjuku where the bassist failed to turn up. What made me feel doubly robbed on this occasion was that I liked the style of music the "quartet" was playing and thought the saxophonist and pianist were pretty talented. If only the drummer had been there I might have had a really good time. As it was, I nursed my drink and cheese and crackers to the end of the first set and then left, arriving back at my hotel shortly after 9.30pm.

Day 8: Miya - Chiryu (19.8km)

I got up at 5.30am and breakfasted from seven. I then checked out and headed across to the Meitesu railway station where I caught a train to Jingumae, a journey of around ten minutes. I was afraid the train would be crowded with people heading to work, but there was plenty of room. From Jingumae I walked the few hundred metres to Miya, the point where the ferry from Kuwana once landed and the starting point for my day's walk. There was a monument there and some modern reconstructions of the original port buildings, included the one below, which I presumed was a lookout tower.


I left Miya at about 9.45am and some 45 minutes later, as I was climbing a slope just before the Kasadera Kannon temple, I heard someone call out to me from the side of the road. I looked over to see a middle-aged man standing in front of a tea shop. After a brief chat he invited me in for a cup of tea. As well as selling tea, Mr Hata bought and sold antiques, and his shop was full of old porcelain and other bits and pieces. I mentioned that I liked Imari ware, and he showed me a couple of pieces from his collection, including a nice little soba bowl. Mr Hata also knew a lot about the history of the area. He told me to look out for an ancient shell mound further up the road.


Before I left, Mr Hata reminded me of a Japanese proverb I'd first heard when I was a student: Sode suriau mo tasho no en (Even the brushing of sleeves is due to karma from a previous life), meaning we should value even the briefest of encounters.

I left Mr Hata's tea shop at 10.45am and soon passed the Kasadera Kannon temple and the Kasadera Ichirizuka. I noticed the site of the shell mound (called the Hokonoki shell mound) Mr Hata had mentioned but as it was off the road (and up a slope!) I didn’t take a close look. An hour or so later I reached the post town of Narumi. Just past the town I came across this interesting billboard outlining plans to build two ichirizuka beside an overpass.


A little further on I noticed several distinctive buildings on either side of the road. I was in Arimatsu, a town famous for tie-dyeing. Although I'd done lots of preparation for this walk, I'd read nothing about this place and it came as a complete surprise to me. I love kura (traditional Japanese storehouses), and Arimatsu was full of them.


It was 12.30pm and I was getting hungry. Next to Arimatsu station was an Aeon shopping mall, so I wandered in and found a restaurant where I had a nice shrimp gratin, a salad, and a coffee. I took a whole hour for lunch, making sure I was completely rested before setting off again.

From Arimatsu I followed National Route 1 all the way to the post town of Chiryu, arriving at about 4pm. I had no trouble finding my hotel as it was right on the Tokaido. Although not as nice as my hotel in Nagoya, it was better than your average business hotel. In fact it must have been the best hotel in town, because the mayor of Chiryu was having a meeting in the coffee shop in the lobby.

After a bit of a lie-down in my room I walked down to the station area and found a Mister Donut where I had a coffee and a chocolate and coconut donut. One thing the hotel did lack was a coin laundry, so when I got back to my room I did some hand-washing. Later I returned to the station area and had dinner at an izakaya, including takoyaki, fried potato, and a tomato salad, all washed down with a large glass of beer. Back in my hotel room, I began watching The Dark Knight, but fell asleep well before the end.

Day 7: Rest day

Nagoya isn’t exactly a tourist Mecca, but having lived there for a couple of years in the 1990s I'd grown to like it and I was looking forward to spending my day off looking around the city. Unfortunately circumstances were such that I got to see very little of Nagoya during the two nights and one full day I was there. In fact my movements over that time were confined to the immediate vicinity of my hotel, the farthest I ventured being the hospital on the other side of the station.

My day began as usual at six, when I was woken by my watch alarm. After breakfast I went to withdraw some more money from a nearby ATM. I had no idea how much my hospital visit would cost, and didn’t want to suffer the indignity of not having enough cash to pay my bill. I then walked to the Nagoya Central Hospital, arriving shortly after the opening time of 8.30am.

Nagoya Central Hospital

I explained my predicament to a receptionist and after filling out a form was given a number and told to wait. There weren't many patients around, so I was hopeful that I'd be seen by a doctor before too long. A while later I was called back and given another number and told to report to the surgery department. There I filled out another form and waited some more. I was then given a third number and told to wait outside one of a row of about half a dozen small examination rooms. I was informed that as I hadn’t made an appointment I would be at the end of the waiting list for that morning. I sat and read while patient after patient was called in to be diagnosed by one of the doctors on duty that morning.

At about 11am my number finally came up. I entered my cubicle and was greeted by a friendly young doctor by the name of Dr Ono. On the desk in front of him were two huge computer screens, one of which displayed a blowup of one of the forms I'd filled out a couple of hours earlier, which included a diagram of a human body on which I'd circled the left big toe.

I showed Dr Ono my toe and told him of my desire to continue walking if possible. He seemed skeptical, but on the positive side he told me the toe wasn't actually infected. I decided that as long as the infection didn't return, and as long I could put up with the pain and discomfort, there was nothing to stop me continuing on to Tokyo. Dr Ono prescribed some antibiotics which I was instructed to take if the toe showed any signs of infection again. He was going to subscribe some painkillers, but I was worried about the cost and told him I'd make do with the medication I'd brought from New Zealand (Nurofen and Panadol).

I paid the hospital bill (3549 yen) and went to a pharmacy to pick up the prescription (2646 yen). I then had lunch at a curry place in the underground mall by the station followed by coffee and cheesecake at a Tulley's coffee shop. After looking around Tower Records for a bit (I'd left my iPod in New Zealand and was starting to miss my jazz music), I went back to my hotel room and slept for a couple of hours.

Later I went to the big Meitetsu department store across from the hotel and bought some sushi, yoghurt, and beer. Back in my room, I ate the sushi and drank the beer. I left the yoghurt for the morning. I watched TV for a bit then went to bed.