Tsumago and Magome

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Tsumago and Magome

After a long morning of travel from Tokyo involving all scale of train from the Shinkansen to a tiny dodeskaden train run by a slightly wacky engineer talking and gesturing to himself, we ended up in our next destination Tsumago. In this tiny rural mountain village we spent the last two nights in a very traditional ryokan. A little like camping on tatami mats. And there was the temperature difference of about 15 degrees. Here it froze at night.

We spent the first afternoon walking around the tiny Tsumago. This was one of the first towns to be at the front of a movement to preserve old historic towns in Japan. Tsumago was one of the villages on the old postal route from Edo (Tokyo). It dates back to the 1600s. Basically a linear structure with beautiful old dark wood facades to either side. We visited an old house which was used to receive the Shogunate Lords on their travels. This house also received the first Meiji emperor after the revolution against the Shogun. They even built a special toilet for him. We were not allowed to enter it. We were fortunate to have a tour guide who spoke English very well. She explained to us how the house was used and could answer all of my questions about the architecture.

Dinner at the ryokan was amazing. Fresh sashimi, local sake, vegetables and many things I could not identify but tasted wonderful.

The following day we took the bus to Magome and walked back to Tsumago along a section of the old postal route. It was a great chance to see some of the natural surroundings of the area. Many of the Japanese maples were bright red and yellow. Most of the other trees were cypress. Sometimes there were also persimmon trees full of the bright orange fruit. What made it so different were the large groves of tall bamboo trees. And the occasional monkey shaking a tree branch. With a red face. Or was it a baboon?

Apparently there have been problems with bears in the area because there were bells placed along the route to scare them away. We were not afraid to ring them.

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