Terraced fields of short green shoots, mature swaths of longer yellow stalks and harvested brown husks drying on wood frames, the scene looking like something from old samurai movies that had been colourized almost too vividly. Mandarin oranges, red peppers and bright green limes sprouted in a rainbow array of carefully tended gardens. Huge eggplants on the vines shone metallic purple like waxed cars. We soon started seeing a fabulous cornucopia of bounty from family-run farms. It was a surprising bit of alone time in modern Japan. But aside from these intrepid picnickers, few other hikers (and no bears) ever crossed our path. They giggled when we greeted them in basic Japanese. Several times we passed small groups of old Japanese women wearing sun hats, smocks and sandals, carrying bamboo baskets and jingling with the multiple small bells they had affixed to their outfits to ward off bears. We shuffled on noisily along the trail, past waterfalls and along boardwalks through amazingly tall groves of bamboo. While this doesn’t quite mean what the translator intended, it at least solved the mystery as to whether we should hike quietly or not. Beneath it, a sign in English instructed readers to “Ring the bell hard against bears”. Especially with those bears looming.įortunately, at a trail crossing, a large bell hung from a wooden frame. The absence of loudspeaker announcements, rumbling trains and chattering crowds seemed ominous. Farther north, in Tohoku, the historic Post Town of Ouchi-juku provides a similar Samurai-era experience.Īs we hiked up the dirt path into the hilly forest, crossing streams and passing rock formations and the ruins of ancient shrines, I was struck not so much by the natural beauty, but by the silence. To hike parts of its 500km route through forests, mountains, farms and small villages is to experience something of old Japan, with well-preserved traditional towns, family farms and a surprising amount of wilderness, just a few hours by train from the megalopolis of Tokyo.Īssuming I dodged the bears, my first stop on my four-day, 40km hike would be the old "Post Town" of Magome, a designation that came in the 17th Century from travelling samurai and government officials who posted their luggage ahead with their retinue to each town along the path. While most parts of the Gokaido network have either been turned into modern highways or lost to the past, the Nakasendo Trail (literally the “Central Mountain Route”), remains in sections similar to how it was in the Shogun era. The trail network reached its most-trafficked period during the 17th to 18th Centuries, when the Shogun rulers in Tokyo used it regularly, accompanied by their retinues of samurai warrior guards, giving the paths their unofficial moniker as the “Samurai Trail”. I was hiking a segment of the Gokaido, a network of trails first developed in the 8th Century connecting the capital of Edo (Tokyo) with regional towns from Tohoku down to Kyoto.
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