This is a diary of my walk along the Kiso Way, a small part of the ancient postal route between Kyoto and Tokyo.
When I was at the Palace Museum in Taipei last year, I spent quite a bit of time looking at old Chinese map scrolls. Unlike maps we know today, these maps mark a linear journey. They trace the way from one point to another, with landmarks painted in and annotated along the way: households, official properties, mountains, lakes and - trees! I love how trees make their appearance on these maps, as living structures because why should a tree not still be there one, five, ten or a hundred years later?
The Kiso Way or Nakasendo is linear even though we flew into and out from Nagoya city. The route we traced starts at Nakagatsuwa and ends in Matsumoto, at the foot of the Japanese Alps.
It’s a leisurely 4 day walk, covering about 12-15km a day, mostly on forest paths and bringing us to several historic postal towns. Each night we stayed in a different inn. In Matsumoto we stayed for 3 more nights exploring this small serene city. This record only shows a selection of the 70over photographs I shared on my IG.
This trip confirms my love for walking. I love its singular determination of destination, maybe even the singularity of the path - but who can count or predict the multitude of sights and diversions and detours. Death is all our destination, and we have only one life, however we choose to trod. Along the way, however - ah, who on earth has an immutable map? We only hope that the 300 year old pine with the arched back lives through our ambitions, earth’s disasters, the traveler under its shade, and the lovers whose initials will outlast their love.
Nagoya city, 090425 -
My organisation gives a special one-time “anniversary” leave when employees reach their milestone year of employment….10, 15, 20. In a flash, last year marked my 10th year at the company.
And so with the anniversary leave, I booked this holiday 9 months ago with my bestie to walk and mosey about Japan …but we didn’t realise it would be Sakura season. Lucky us! But it’s not just the season of cherry blossoms that trembled and shivered their way to the ground. From the earth comes flowers of all kinds. It’s the season of new life! Sweet spring!
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Nakatsugawa 110425 -
I “blame” Joanna Lumley for this holiday…but indeed it’s Ab Fab! This inn is the first stop of our walk on the Kiso way along the historic Nakasendo trail. We are in a 200 year-old tiny house of our own amidst thatched huts and a lovely garden. The inn is set on a hill, hence the quietly breathtaking views all around.
I “blame” Joanna Lumley for this holiday…but indeed it’s Ab Fab! This inn is the first stop of our walk on the Kiso way along the historic Nakasendo trail. We are in a 200 year-old tiny house of our own amidst thatched huts and a lovely garden. The inn is set on a hill, hence the quietly breathtaking views all around.
In this setting, the grim circus of the world has definitely left town.
It must be age and the sheer force of spring that I cannot stop noticing the flowers and taking photographs of and with them. As Dr Yeo says, we are in our last years when we can look at ourselves in photos, hehe, so take away!
The sakura blooms are so delicate they shed their petals all at once. It is hard to find a whole flower on the ground, and even if you do, it often falls apart in your hands. Their beauty overwhelms the landscape but each flower is so ephemeral, their time seemingly brief. I found one whole on the grounds of the inn and immediately pressed it in my notebook. For now, it has stayed whole with me. For now.
P/S the little house we are in…supposedly the previous Emperor Akihito stayed 60years ago! This inn is 400 years old.
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Nakatsugawa/Ochiai/Magome, 120425 -
Nakasendo is a historic trail that connects Kyoto to Tokyo since Edo times. It’s also known as the postal trail, a route connected by post-towns because the mailman needs to stop, rest, and pick up mail! Of course, the more dramatic version is to think of it as a path samurais have taken. Royalty also took this trail, but when they do, it is accompanied by lots more fanfare, such as (I learnt today) Kazunomiya who was married to a Tokugawa Shogun as a peace offering - her journey from Kyoto along the Nakasendo meant villages were fed in celebration!
Nakasendo is a historic trail that connects Kyoto to Tokyo since Edo times. It’s also known as the postal trail, a route connected by post-towns because the mailman needs to stop, rest, and pick up mail! Of course, the more dramatic version is to think of it as a path samurais have taken. Royalty also took this trail, but when they do, it is accompanied by lots more fanfare, such as (I learnt today) Kazunomiya who was married to a Tokugawa Shogun as a peace offering - her journey from Kyoto along the Nakasendo meant villages were fed in celebration!
A path exists to be used, trodden, tested. It cares little whose feet takes it on - postmen, samurais, princesses, farmers and tourists…. If it is not used, it becomes overgrown or built over, forgotten or erased.
Someone asked me about legacy recently. I don’t really think about these things. Having no children, I also have no one to leave anything to! Perhaps I have more of a farmer or gardener attitude than that of samurais and princesses (not quite sure about postmen…).
On this stretch of the Nakasendo, we walked from Nakatsugawa to the very sleepy post town of Ochiai and to the small but popular Magome. While half the walk was through forest paths, the other was on an asphalt road that had been marked with a yellow and white speckled pattern that runs through residential areas or as country roads. We were a little surprised by how quiet and deserted most places were on a Saturday, and considering this was peak tourism season. The people I saw out and about were mostly solitary elderly folks tending their patch or farmland. Everything was beautiful nonetheless - the trees and bamboo groves, the mountains, the fields, and of course, those flowers!
Some people chart new paths, some take the well-trodden. Both can be erased, forgotten or celebrated. A respect and care for nature is more important than worrying about legacy. In fact, think of humans as being part of nature and not apart from it.
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Magome/Tsumago/Nagiso/Kiso-Fukushima 130425 -
Today’s walk was 15km, reaching 790m at one point, had a steep 1.7km ascent through the Magome Pass followed by a gradual descent - all of it in rain! Towards the final stretch, because we had spent too long resting in a forest teahouse (it’s you again Joanna Lumley!), we brisk-walked 3.8km in 50min.
It was a walk that called out to your senses - the sights, smells, cold, winds, terrains and experiences.
We hiked across bamboo, cypress and cedar forests. There were waterfalls and beautiful shallow ravines carved by streams. At one point we walked by a 300 year-old haunted cedar. Haunted by who or what we do not know.
We rang many a bear-bell on the forest paths, each time still feeling the kind of amusement that is heightened by nervous imagined danger.
We saw a rock that resembled a carp that is fallen over, one that resembled the head of a snake (it looked more like a coffee bean), and countless carved stone statues along the forest paths bearing, I think, blessings.
A real blessing was this beautiful volunteer-run teahouse in the middle a forest clearing offering travelers free tea. It had a wood fire, darkened walls, a stone floor, and light whose main work was to cast shadows.
We walked by tiny hamlets that were either abandoned or inhabited by retirees. Among the houses we passed was one belonging to an artist. It was a beautiful double story house right beside a narrow stretch of the Nakasendo. An elderly woman, perhaps the artist, was standing in front of the house chatting with a middle-aged neighbour. “Konichiwa”, she said when we passed. The side of her house was a stretch of glass doors that have become a kind of gallery for her works - large wooden sculptures of the human form.
We also crossed two well-preserved postal towns with both shops and shuttered fronts. In a small shop where every thing spoke of a distant past that had been stilled in dust, the old lady pointed us to the swallow nests high up on the ceiling, saying “tamago tamago” - the birds darted in and out of the shop door bearing their own goods for home.
Can you tell how tired yet satiated we are?
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Yabuhara/Torii Pass/Narai 140425 -
Today was our last hike on the Nakasendo, crossing the highest point of the Torii Pass at some 1200m.
Because we kept telling ourselves the walk up Torii Pass would be difficult, it felt a lot less strenuous in the end… or else we have gotten more fit after these few days of walking! And because we were relaxed, we took loads of selfies, rang the bear bells with more ease, and composed several haikus along the way!
The colours were iridescent on a crisp Spring day.
The forest glowed with moss - on tree trunks, rocks, the earth. Colours sprung from the tips of branches and the earth. The dried leaves on the ground were thick with every conceivable shade of umber. And the skies were a bejeweled blue.
Besides the usual cedar and cypress, we saw birch and chestnut trees. But the find of the day was the Fukinoto, also known as the Japanese Butterbur Sprout - a sort of forest plant or vegetable that resembles a dense cluster of flowers! It sprouts from amongst the dried leaves. We ate it as a tempura at a soba shop we visited.
The third and final “preserved” postal town on the Nakasendo is Narai. It is also the prettiest and has the best craft shops. If you avoid the usual tourist shops, you may find several shops with elderly owners - some unique lacquerware by local artisans, a couple of vintage bric brac shops, a woodblock print shop of a Narai artist Nakanishi Koji (he died in 2014 so his wife runs the shop now selling postcards of his art), and several ol’skool coffee and tea houses.
As you can imagine, everything we bought were from elderly shopkeepers who gave us tiny gifts as we parted - a piece of candy, an origami yukata, and a small lacquered spoon! We celebrated the end of our hike with a gleeful photo of our shopping.
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Matsumoto 150224 -
n front of this misty curtain is the most perfect rainbow I have ever seen.
n front of this misty curtain is the most perfect rainbow I have ever seen.
Its arch rises so gently from behind the roof of one house and across several other rooftops before lowering itself into another. Its thick band of colours are at once brilliant yet diffused - the strangest impression of light. And it is so low and close I feel I can almost touch it, if I wasn’t in a taxi to my next inn in Matsumoto, closer to the mountains.
The mountains - the “Japanese Alps” is their nickname - are hidden behind this same misty curtain. They seem like an endless stretch of highlands encircling this city. From below the misty curtain’s hem, maybe you can just about see the lower reaches of the mountains, make out their faces.
Oh mist! How it reveals and it hides!
The phone’s camera from behind the moving taxi’s windows barely captures the rainbow (if you zoom into the image you may be able to see it!). Neither can you see the mountains fully in this image. But whether you believe my words or not, the mountains, the mist, the rainbow, the houses, the taxi - they were at that moment together in that image! And so I share this the way one may whistle on a walk alone or make a doodle on a page or scratch a cat between its ears… that maybe you will hear a snatch of the tune, chance upon a doodle in a library book, or better yet, have a creature place its head close to you.
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Matsumoto 160425 -
This beautiful city is the birthplace of Yayoi Kusama. And so Matsumoto Art Museum has a permanent exhibition of her works, including a few of her confessional poems on the wall.
This beautiful city is the birthplace of Yayoi Kusama. And so Matsumoto Art Museum has a permanent exhibition of her works, including a few of her confessional poems on the wall.
I always wonder why people are drawn to her works as expressions of joy. Today’s exhibition confirms for me that the works speak of a painfully lonely person. The dots obliterate a self that is tormented by her hallucinations, insomnia and suicidal impulses. But the mirrors, happenings, outsized sculptures…they ironically also multiply, accentuate and maybe atomizes the self. There is seldom a sense of community in her works, unless one considers her world of consumers as a community! Her inward gaze is all-consuming. The outside world, in any case, is increasingly chaotic.
Growing up surrounded by nature, did it not help to soothe the spirit? Is that not conceivable in the avant garde? I thought as I walked out of the museum into the glorious sun of Spring.
But nature, on the other hand, can be harsh. I imagine winter here to be especially hard. The brilliant blue skies can be fickle - and their sudden change, deadly. Mountains make no exceptions for individuals. Animals, having no guilt, their actions are free in their instincts; and in this, us humans are alone in our struggle. And death is never far from nature.
Prior to the museum visit, the morning was spent walking around the old quiet onsen district Asama, right at the foot of the mountains. Like much of Japan, it has its share of abandoned houses and shops. Its residents are also mostly elderly. But there isn’t a depressed air about this neighbourhood. In one abandoned shop window I spotted a pot of plants with two brilliant red blooms! Light bathed the streets. And every now and then, I witness small acts of human warmth.
Neither nature nor art can redeem or save us from our loneliness. Most of us also can’t save ourselves! But occasionally, another human can be an extension of the love that surpasses all understanding… this love, we can trust for our redemption.
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Matsumoto/Hokata 170425 -
Today could well be titled “The dreams of Akira Kurosawa and Osamu Tezuka”…
The first set of images set amidst cherry blossoms and water wheels were actually taken where Kurosawa filmed one of the 8 vignettes in “Dreams”, his 1990 film made 45 years after his previous. You wouldn’t guess it but this location is part of….a wasabi farm! The Daio Wasabi Farm is supposedly the largest in Japan.
Going to the farm meant going some 20Km north of our onsen district, and brought us closer to some peaks that were still snowcapped! It was breathtaking - seeing these highlands so close. In the afternoon while waiting for our train back, I looked up at the sky and saw a cloud formation that looked exactly like a mountain top! It was strange.
Gently, gently the evening descended. In that magic hour the colours get together and make a pact. What they speak of is a secret. I read in a book that the words denoting colours in the Japanese language also refer to human feelings or state of being. This sunset where the mountains, the sky and clouds all seem one - I want to know what is the word that names this human feeling, this feeling akin to being in a dream.
p/s oh wait, did you spot the tezuka drawing in one of the images? I saw it in a traditional little confection shop run by a very old and elegant lady. The shop sells just 2 trays of 1 thing: a wafer shell in the shape of a chrysanthemum with red bean paste inside it. My theory is that the Tezuka portrait was of her.
p/s oh wait, did you spot the tezuka drawing in one of the images? I saw it in a traditional little confection shop run by a very old and elegant lady. The shop sells just 2 trays of 1 thing: a wafer shell in the shape of a chrysanthemum with red bean paste inside it. My theory is that the Tezuka portrait was of her.
