Nakasendo Way & Gear
The Nakasendo Way is an old route that connected Edo (modern day Tokyo) to the old capital Kyoto during the Eno era. Along the route there were 69 post towns offering places to rest and sleep, as well as official checkpoints, along the 534km route.
In Japan's highway system, 5 routes were designated as official routes for the Shogun and Daimyo, and to provide a communication network through which the country could be ruled. One of these routes was the Nakasendo. Parts of this route have been maintained as National Historic Sites, the most well known being the route between Magome-juku and Tsumago-juku (from wikipedia). Some of the towns have been maintained in the original Edo style, and feel like you have travelled through time, especially in the early morning and late evening when most tourists have retired.
When I was planning my trip to Japan, I had my heart set on the Kumano-Kodo hike (which I also did, I'll write a blog about that soon). In conversation with Alfonso, a fellow photographer who runs tours in Japan (www.alfonso.com.au), he recommended the Nakasendo. This was due to the variety of scenery and the beautiful old towns that would provide fabulous material to photograph.
In researching the route, I decided to do a four night walk, staying in a new village each night. I decided to do the Magome-Tsumago-Fukushima-Narai route, and ended up doing it in the reverse order due to room availability in different towns.
As I was going to be walking between the towns and up and down hills and through mountain passes, I carried everything in my backpack. For the first time, I made use of the Yamato Transport TA-Q-BIN service, where for a nominal fee you can send your luggage on to your next destination. You can organise this at most hotels, convenience stores, or a Yamato outlet. As this was the first time I'd used it (and Ieft it too late to do at the hotel), I visited the outlet in Shinjuku, a couple of train stops from Shinjuku station. I went on my hike, and my luggage was waiting from me at my Osaka hotel 5 days later :)
My backpack was the, Wandrd Pvke pack, which is my go-to photography travel bag. I usually use a camera cube, but to fit my clothes in, I removed the cube, and attached a Wandrd Route Pack to the front via the Pvke arm straps, where I stored my camera. This also made it super convenient as I could reach down and take my camera out without needing to take my heavy backpack off.
I took my Sony A7RIV camera, Sony 24-105mm GM lens, lightweight Tamron 70-300mm F4.56.3 and a Sony 20mm F1.8 lens (which I didn't end up using). The A7RIV and 24-105mm were used in snow, sleet and rain without any issues.
I knew it would be super cold and snowing, so I was fully prepared with cold weather gear. I had Merino wool under layers from Icebreaker, along with Fjallraven Abisko hiking pants, and my usual Lululemon tops and goose down Puffer Jacket. I bought a raincoat that covered everything from Montbell in Tokyo. I also had Black Diamond Pursuit FLZ light weight foldable trekking poles with me that turned out to be absolutely essential. They helped me keep my footing, test snow depth, and generally helped save my knees with such a heavy pack full of clothes and gear.
Narai
Narai is one of the smallest towns, but so very pretty. It was quite quiet when I visited as it was a Sunday, so from late afternoon I had it to myself!
This is the town where there is an extremely famous view looking down the old street towards a tree rising up in the background. I walked around and shot a bit in the evening to find the compositions and positions I would shoot from in the morning. It was super cold with light rain, and snow lying around in patches. For this trip I'd bought a Tamron 70-300mm F4.56.3 lens for my hikes. It's really light, very inexpensive and has good image quality. It doesn't have stabilisation, so needs to be shot from a tripod as the light falls. I did find it a bit finicky to use compared to my Sony F2.8GM, but it's about 1kg lighter!! I really wanted to have a telephoto with me for shots where I wanted to compress elements together, and I made good use of it in this town. The shot below really compresses the distance between the tree and houses, making it feel like they are almost on top of each other.
My accommodation in Byakuwas incredible, and the best I've stayed at in Japan. They have a number of buildings in the town, each building has been lovingly refurbished with luxurious materials, textures and colours. They have kept true to the historical nature of the town and the buildings and incorporated that into the refurbishment. My room was in an old bento box factory, and had an incredibly high roof, with a loft space one could relax in.
The main building is in an old sake brewery. Along with the hotel, they have a stunning restaurant Kura, which features 8 course menus incorporating ingredients sourced from the local area. This is one of the best meals I've had in Japan, and the perfectly matched drinks probably helped that impression!
This is an expensive place to stay, but it was also just such a wonderful experience to kick off my journey, and the polar opposite to my no frills accommodation in Tokyo (which I still really enjoyed, and it offset the cost!).
In the morning I was up early shooting the town in the morning light. It was a beautifully clear morning, with the very crisp, clear light at close to 0 degrees celsius! There is construction going on the street, which meant that the main road was exposed dirt and gravel in parts. At around 10am as I was finishing up my shoot, the workers turned up, making a nice contrast between the modern and traditional!
After I checked out from Byaku, and I set out on a 8.5km hike through to Torii Pass to the next town Yabuhara. It's quite a steep hike through the hills around the valley, and was so strenuous, that it's one of the reasons Narai became one of the most prosperous towns in the Kiso Valley, as travellers needed to stop and rest afterwards. As I was leaving my host asked if I would be getting the train, and when I told him that I was walking, he looked a bit shocked and said 'but there's still snow on the mountain'. That made me a little nervous setting off!
Torii Pass (Narai to Fukushima)
When I made it to the trail head (after a 30 minute wrong turn), I could see what he meant. There was snow covering the trail, and I wasn't sure how deep it would be. I decided to set off in any case, and was prepared to turn back if I needed. It turned out to be absolutely fine. The snow was rarely deeper than a few inches, and only got quite deep in one place which was down a country road.
Along the way there were plenty of bear bells, but given the frigid temperature and snow, I'm sure they were all fast asleep!
The hike was hard, but so beautiful walking through snow, which I'm really not used to. I passed maybe 6 people on the hike, all going in the opposite direction. Around 2/3 of the way through the hike I came across the Toriitoge Ontake Shrine sitting there in the snow. I first saw the Torii Gate as I was walking around a bend, and spent the next hour running around photographing this beautiful mountainside shrine covered in snow!
The end of the hike was the town of Yahubara, where after buying a hot milky coffee from the vending machine (pure bliss) at the station, I caught the train to Kiso-Fukushima where I would spend the night.
Fukushima
Kiso-Fukushima is more of a quaint country town, but not really a small village that's been preserved in the Edo style, although there is a small street that is kept in that style. The town was the 39th post town on the Nakesando, and an important regional check point. While it wasn't anything like my other stops, it was still super interesting to stay there and walk around, as I've always stayed in big cities like Tokyo or Kyoto. There are a few attractions, including some museums in an old Edo checkpoint and officials' residence (they were closed when I visited). There is a large temple, Kozenji, which has Asia's largest dry rock garden. There's also some really picturesque Gakeya-Zukuri Hanging Houses that push out over the river due to lack of space on the road side. I stayed at Kiso Mikawaya, which was a largish older Japanese hotel. It's the best in the area. The rooms are big, with an onsite onsen, large meals and 24 hour tea/coffee/soft drink.
The next day to get top Tsumago, I caught the train, where there are two options to get off to hike the final stretch. One is to get off at Nojiri (a 18km hike), the second to get off at Nagiso (a 2km hike). I didn't know about the Nojiri section, so didn't have it in my plan. I kind of wish I had done that one, but I was also pretty tired, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise!
If I had taken the longer hike, I would have lost a lot of photography time at Tsumago, which was along with Narai, the most photogenic stop on the walk. The shorter hike was lovely, with some beautiful stretches along bamboo forests. There's an optional turn off where you can hike up to the ruins of Tsumago Castle and look down over the valley, although there's nothing really left of the castle.
Tsumago
Tsumago is fabulous. It's maybe three times the size of Narai, and equally well preserved. The buildings are gorgeous, and surrounded by high mountain peaks. There are quite a lot of lovely stores, and some lovely museums in residences that were kept for officials travelling through the area. One for higher ranked officials, and one for lower. One of the museums has a reconstruction of a hearth, and I've seen beautiful images of light beams cutting through the smoke. I didn't take any images as it was full of a group of European tourists who were blatantly ignoring the rules for no video, and blatantly ignoring the poor staff trying to ask them to stop.
When booking my trip, I struggled to find accommodation in Tsumago, as not all of the Ryokan have an online presence, or require a FAX or phone call in Japanese. The Nagiso Tourism Association proved invaluable - I emailed them and they booked a Ryokan right in the heart of Tsumago for me. Matsushiroya Ryokan was one of my favourite stays. It's in an incredible location right in the hear of the two, and run by the wonderful Shirota-san. He was an amazing host, so friendly and helpful, and he made me the most delicious, varied and plentiful meals. The Ryokan is the building entrance to the right in the image below.
I had a lovely time in the afternoon and evening wandering around the main street taking images. I made good use of my Tamron with it's large reach to compress some of the street scenes below. The weather turned later that evening with quite a lot of rain (see some of the images above), but that created a lovely dark and misty atmosphere.
I was travelling in late March, so there were some plum trees blossoming and some early cherry trees starting to blossom while I was there. I can imagine how beautiful it would be in a fortnight or so with pops of gorgeous whites and pinks everywhere.
The next day I would be doing the most famous part of the Nakasendo, a hike to Magome, and it was forecast for snow for most of the day. I walked around the town again in the morning, and it was lightly raining and very cold. All of a sudden the rain seemed to 'slow down' and I realised it was snowing! It was so exciting to be in such a beautiful spot and having the chance to shoot in the snow :)
Tsumago to Magome
The hike from Tsumago to Magome had to be one of my favourite days on this trip to Japan. It was freezing cold, it was blustery and it was snowing. And it was GORGEOUS! It's an 8km 2-3 hour hike from one town to the next, and covers a variety of scenery, from farms, to forests, to hills to waterfalls. It's also the most popular part of the trail, with most people visiting the area coming to Magome and then hiking to Tsumago. I was doing the hike in reverse, and came across SO many people who weren't really prepared for the conditions and were walking in ordinary clothes and an emergency poncho/umbrellas. I was warm and snug in all my gear + hiking poles.
Around a third of the way in, I came upon the Otaki - Metaki Waterfalls (Male and Female Falls). In a famous story about a samurai, he and his female companion, 'cooled their tensions' by standing in the waterfalls! Coming from the reverse, the scene is absolutely gorgeous. A bridge leads to a rocky outcrop, which leads to the waterfall. The snow started up in earnest while I was there, and my photographer spidy senses were pinging like crazy. I spent around 30 minutes there shooting, looking in wonder at how beautiful the scene was. I waited until some other hikers came across the bridge to add that extra little touch of human interest to the image.
It was a little tricky trying to work out my shutter speed in this shot - I kind of wanted movement in the water, however dragging the shutter also got rid of the snow flakes and made it look like rain. I took a bunch of different options, but really love the shot below seeing the snow flakes coming down over the scene.
Around half way into the hike I came across the famous tea house. The tea house is run by an old local man, and he offers hot tea, pickles and sweets for a small donation. He had a roaring open fire, and a cast iron wood heater pumping out warmth. After spent lots of time running around the area shooting people walking around in the snow, I started to realise I was quite cold (!!) so went inside to warm up. As soon as I went in, I think all the snow melted, and when I took my raincoat off my puffer jacket was soaked. I spent around 30 minutes in here rotating, and earned the nickname 'Steamy Luke' from a couple of Aussie girls who stopped in. Once I was dry I put all my warm gear back on and set off feeling nice and toasty warm inside.
Magome
Magome was my final stop on the hike, and I have to say I was EXHAUSTED after my hike through the snow. I was also wet, smelly and bedraggled! Magome is quite pretty, but a but more commercial than the other towns, given it is the stepping off point for most, or a day trip for most. It's still very picturesque and pretty. I stayed at Magome Chaya (pictured above), which was more like a hostel than the Ryokan I stayed at in Tsumago. It was still very comfy, but catered for to 'mass' tourism than 'individual' service. Completely fine for what it is thought and with wonderful, cheerful and helpful staff!
I didn't have much time to explore Magome. I had a few hours to walk around the town before dinner (most of the Ryokans and hotels have set dinner times that you must observe, or you miss out), and a few long exposures after dinner. The next morning I was catching the earliest possible bus so I could get to Osaka (4.5 hours) in time to check in to my next hotel, and then get across to a Sumo tournament. I took a few shots as I was walking just as the sun started to rise.
I'm really happy with the recommendation for the Naksendo Way, I really, really enjoyed it. The warm hospitality of all of the hosts in all of my stays, the delicious food, the beautiful Edo period towns, and gorgeous natural views. The snow was so amazing for me to experience, something I've rarely seen, and have never photographed.