Tsumago

Today we took a series of trains from Kyoto (bye bye Amherst House!!) to Tsumago. The trip required a layover in the boring and ugly town of Nakatsugawa, but Chloe and I were fine with it, having both been sickened by the train ride from Kyoto. The conductor had been a woman for one section of the train, and Kenji had jokingly but extremely loudly announced his displeasure at having a "female" drive the train. The other American tourists next to us did not seem particularly amused. From Nakatsugawa, we took another train to Tsumago



Tsumago is along the old post road from Kyoto to Edo, and had been written up in the New York Times. Gail had booked us into a guest house in Tsumago for the night. Someone had subsequently told us that it was a popular Gaijin destination, but we saw nothing but Japanese people when we got there! I'm not sure where all the Americans on the train were staing, but apparently not in Tsumago. We dropped off our luggage and because of the late-ish hour, took a taxi to Magome and walked the trail back to Tsumago. We stopped in at the Hinoki store:


At 8 km long, I strongly advised Kenji to take the taxi and start from the halfway point, but he refused and suprised both Chloe and I by hiking 90% of the trail and taking a taxi for the final bit because it was getting dark. We're not sure where he's getting the energy from, but he has no more excuses for not walking to Solano anymore: if you can walk five miles of mountain trails, you can walk the one mile on flat pavement. The post road itself was lovely, passing through Cedar and Bamboo forests as well as alongside small clusters of houses and rest houses.







The guest house itself was a traditional japanese house with ricepaper screens, tatami

and even a fish pond full of gigantic Koi

We had dinner,


which had small heavily salted and angry looking grilled fish:

and completely coincidentally had Koi as one of its dishes



and then took a bath. The town empties by around 6 PM, so I wandered around taking pictures with the Hasselblad for a while, then came back to go to sleep. Chloe and I slept soundly and comfortably on our futon, but my mom was kept awake by a snoring guy in the next room, who got up at 5:00 AM to chat with his wife for an hour. I have to say that a futon is really a lot better than all but the fanciest western style mattresses that you find in hotels. Said another way: a guest house futon is almost never a back breaker, while hotel matresses almost always are.

Chloe and Kenji along the main street of Tsumago