Walking the old postal road

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Tsumago to Magome

After looking round the Daimyo (lords) ryokan we walked 8 kms along the old postal path to the village of Magome, it was a pleasant woodland walk with a couple of waterfalls, fish-farm, warning bells for bears and a rest house. We were treated to a cup of tea, sour cherries and a dried fish each at the rest house from an old man, but disappointingly we didn't encounter any bears. For a country that has used wood for much of it's construction of temples and housing and rebuilt itself numerous times due to earthquakes, eruptions and fires, it has managed to retain it's forest covered mountainsides and valleys.

We tried a few local sweets/snacks on the way; we had sticky rice balls in a sweet soy sauce, grilled beef, rice crackers and a pastry ball filled with bean curd and a sweet chestnut, very tasty.

Once we arrived at Magome we travelled on to Nagoya. We ended the day visiting a firework display at a temple festival which consisted of one firework at a time for around one hour! It's was quite underwhelming compared to the firework displays we see back home. The most interesting aspect was seeing the Japanese dressed up for a festival. There were numerous ladies in colourful yukata, the schoolgirls all dolled up with school skirts hitched up and a variety of other fashion statements could be observed.

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