It was not a short train ride from Kyoto to Nagoya. We had booked a rental car for 5 days via Booking.com, which was no problem. The issue was more about the driving licenses. For whatever bizarre reasons there are two international agreements in place regarding the mutual acceptance of driving licenses. Germany and Japan are party to different ones, while Austrians were smarter and had signed both. In practice that means that we would have had a heavy procedure with translations from German to be able to rent a car in Japan. On the contrary, Lisa as Austrian citizen had organised an international license which was accepted in Japan. Bureaucracy and mutual recognition at its best.
From Nagoya it was a 2 hour ride to the Gokayama world heritage region. We made a stop for a short walk in the town and a quick Ramen soup in Gujo. It would have been a nice village with some old buildings and an ancient castle, but it was raining cats and dogs, so we continued soon deeper into the highlands. We arrived late afternoon in our first Ryokan hotel – the Akakoan – which are traditional guest houses with Japanese hotel rooms (shoes are left at the entrance of the hotel, tatami mats on the floor, no beds, but thin futon mattresses on the floor), an Onsen, and a set Kaiseki menu for dinner.
We had still time to go to the Onsen (as always men and women separated) and then joined again for dinner. It was a special evening as it was the birthday of Martina. We were all dressed in the traditional “Yukata” (literally bathing clothes), taking place on the floor, and slowly adventuring through the 12 different and quite exotic dishes that each of us had in front of us. We had also ordered one large beer, but the traditionally dressed serving lady disappeared after we had started our set dinner. It was nevertheless huge fun and we enjoyed guessing what we were eating. We handed over some presents and enjoyed the evening.
The next morning we first visited a huge traditional, wooden, and thatched roof house. It was the largest in the region as the owners used to collect the goods and taxes on behalf of the regional chief samurai. It was run by the owners who are descendants of the medieval times, and they gave us same personal insights of the history of the house.
We then continued to visit the three villages in the region which are composed in the majority of similar, albeit smaller traditional houses. Houses were similar but all three villages had a quite different character and degree of commercialisation. While “Suganuma Gassho-zukuri” and “Ainokura” were rather small rural villages where people are growing rice and are living as in earlier times, “Gassho-zukuri Minkaen” was larger and the most touristic location, with souvenir shops, fast food and ice-cream. They are all beautiful and part of the UNESCO cultural heritage, and we liked them all. You need to look at the photos to see what is so special about the architecture and the fairy-tale atmosphere.
On our way further north-east, we stopped in “Takayama”, which has a long street with small traditional wooden houses with shops and restaurants inside. We were unfortunately already a bit late for our next Ryokan dinner, so we left that day, but came back the next afternoon for some shopping, a Sake testing, and a Waygu Nigiri snack – the meat looks like red-white marble and is put on a hot stone for a few seconds on each side, before you get it placed on a rice roll, like a tuna or salmon nigiri. Just awesome.
In any case, we arrived on time at the “Okada Ryokan” high up in the mountains, which is a skiing resort in winter. We then went, guess, to the large Onsen area with several pools and also a beautiful outdoor section with a large stone pool and, for once, a slightly cooler hot-pot were we could stay longer than just a few minutes. We then set together in one of our rooms in our “Yukatas” and continued to play “The Crew” which we had already started the evening before and should continue that habit also the next two evenings.
The next morning we had again a Ryokan breakfast which is also an assortment of several more or less unfamiliar and exotic dishes. We then went with our car to one of the parking spaces near the “Kamikochi” National Park to take a bus to bring us inside the park through a long one-way tunnel. It was quite costly but included the park fee. We realised only later that there would have been also a bus starting very close from our Ryokan hotel – would have saved us some time and money for the parking.
Anyway, the visit to the park was wonderful and we did a 15km hike through the valley. The first part was quite crowded as it was a weekend, but for the second part less people came across. We did not see a black bear, but bear bells were hanging along the way to keep them away and many walkers, namely Japanese ones, had a small bell at their backpack. After our second visit to Takayama, we had again a partly challenging but very interesting dinner like all the guest of the hotel which was actually quite big, before we continued our game session with a Kirin beer or two.
After a good rest on our futons and an early morning Onsen of course, we moved on to visit the castle of Matsumoto, also one of the remaining original castles from the early 17th century. We had an interesting tour from a volunteer guide of the local language school training his English skills. These guides insist to get no tip, but a broad smile instead, if you like the tour. We smiled, and then climbed up the seventh floor where he could not join us “due to covid restrictions” which we did not really understand, but so be it.
The next stop was in “Narai-juku”, the first of the old post street villages that we wanted to visit. It was a Monday and close to 16h00 when we arrived, so hardly any tourists around and shops were closed or closing when we came. Not a disadvantage, because we could visit the town, which is actually a long row of wooden buildings with former ryokans and shops selling small craftwork and uncountable chopsticks.
The old post road, called “Nakasendo” connected the new capital Endo (today Tokyo) with Kyoto when the capital had moved to Endo while the Emperor still resided. Hence, it was the most important way to keep communication open and many smaller and larger towns grew along the road for travellers to rest and buy supplies. When the railway system in Japan was established the smaller towns fell asleep and remained mainly unchanged and are today national and world heritage.
We visited another one, Fukushima, which was not so attractive before arriving in our final Ryokan, the “Nukumorino-yado Komanoyu”. We followed our beloved routine with Onsen, Kaiseki and a joint evening.
The last morning of our joint journey through Japan, we drove to “Tumago-juku”, also a small ex-post town, and started our hike to “Magome-juku” across the Magome Pass. The 8 km hike was rather easy and led us mainly through a deep green forest – with bear bells again. It was really a pleasant and recommendable walk if you do not have time to walk for several days along the Nakasendo road. Both Tsumago and Magome are beautiful villages, again a long row of wooden buildings along the old post road. Tsumago is more touristic, but also more interesting as it moves down a hill – if you go there, count in some time to visit both.
We took the bus back to Tsumago to get our car back from the public parking. We had parked somewhat more outside at the starting point of the hike, but there is also plenty of secured space closer to the center. From there, Lisa brought us back safely to Nagoya in a 2-hour ride and we could return the rental car on time to get our train in the direction to Tokyo. Many thanks again to Lisa for driving us through the Japanese Alps.
It was then time to say good-bye. Lisa and Lucas changed trains to continue their visit at the Fujisan, while we were heading to Tokyo. There we had a last delicious sushi dinner at “Sushi no Midori”, where we had to queue for 1,5 hours, but it was delicious and with very reasonable prices which we had found amongst the current in-places for Sushi. We then had to catch our plane at Haneda Airport, after we collected our third suitcase without problems.
Japan was indeed an amazing experience. On the one hand, many things were so much easier than we had expected (and read about) before, while on the other hand, in particular the food was at times more challenging than expected as we were always big fans of Japanese cuisine – but after three weeks and several Kaiseki set menus, we did not mind to have Philippines kitchen ahead of us. But what made it particular special and dear to us was that we had explored the country for two weeks together with Lisa and Lucas.
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