Day 10 - Arimatsu To Anjo, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan

 

Day 10 - Arimatsu To Anjo, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan

It has been ten days since we started walking this pilgrimage, and we are still adjusting to being on our feet and walking all day long.
My feet are tired at the end of each day, and my energy level is low.
I don’t have much energy left to write or look at the photos that Jules and I took during the day.

I do spend some time in the evenings examining and adjusting the next day’s walking plan, based on our progress the previous day.
Our pace of walking is slower as a group.
When we stop to use the toilets, and we do stop frequently (maybe because of the cold weather), we have to wait for four people to get ready to move again.

But having the company of friends like Joseph and Wendy on this walk is a precious gift, one not so common to us.
We almost never walk in groups, and we never travel in groups.
How often do you have the opportunity to walk a long pilgrimage with friends?

Most people are very busy with their families and work lives and cannot take the necessary time to walk for 37 days in a row.
Also, most people, even those much younger than us, can’t walk for so long every day all day, for many consecutive days.
So we feel fortunate to be able to share this experience with friends, although it is so much easier to walk alone.

It is not just about walking faster, it is also about being able to put in my earbuds and listen to books as I walk, which makes the days so much easier.
It is about not talking for many hours and enjoying the quiet music of silence….
Unless people talk to me and ask me what we are doing here, I’d prefer to stay silent and observe, rather than chat all day long.

Jules has very little sense of direction, which is why he has never participated or interfered with my process of planning our pilgrimages.
But on the positive side, when we walk alone, I never even have to explain to Jules why our walking plan is ever changing and evolving.
He instinctively understands that the plan I made at home, measuring the distances on Google maps, is just an outline, not an actual plan.

Wendy, who mostly travels in groups, seems a bit surprised if not disappointed that the plan keeps on changing.
She asked me a few times why I changed my mind or if I’d made a mistake to begin with, and I have to explain to her frequently that the plan has to be readjusted, because we didn’t achieve our estimated goals almost every day.

The weather was warm and sunny today, a lovely day for walking.
We only needed to wear a very light running shirt with a light zipped layer over it.

We started walking from Arimatsu, which we’d reached on previous days.
It is a charming post town with strong traditional crafts.
We took another look at the Hina dolls that were displayed everywhere in town and visited the local museum that featured a unique craft, tie-dye O’Shibori.
It is a very unique set of fabric folding, heating and dyeing techniques, which creates attractive bubbles in the fabric and involves both patience and skill.

I was tempted to buy something, but we are not enjoying the idea of carrying more things in our backpacks, so I admired the beauty of the items on display without the need to possess any of them.

Farther down the road, we saw the place where they store the local festival float, and even though it was closed today, the friendly man allowed us to peek inside and showed us the mechanical wooden dolls on display.

A long wooden display around town depicted all the old post towns along the Tokaido, and we revelled at how much we still have to visit and how much we have already seen.

Arimatsu is an old Edo period town, although it is not counted among the 53 post station towns on the Tokaido.

Arimatsu was established in the year 1608 between the post towns of Chiryu juku, the 39th post town on the Tokaido, and Narumi Juku, the 40th post town on the Old Tokaido Road, through encouragement by the ruling clan.
We are learning so much about the history of the Tokaido road, including the fact that it intersected with other highways, and that some of these old towns were located at those road intersections.

After we left the center of Arimatsu town, we soon began walking in an industrialized part of the Tokaido.
We did meet two walkers on the outskirts of Arimatsu who were both going towards Kyoto.
The first man had already walked ten days from Tokyo, then took off nine months before returning today to walk another ten days to Kyoto, to finish.

The second walker was a woman whose legs were hurting her today, so she was not sure how far she could walk, or where she was going to finish her day.
She said that she will walk until she cannot walk anymore, then take a train to Nagoya to rest.

We tried to get an early lunch, in a small local cafe that is known for its Big Toast, called Olympia, which had a couple of empty tables.
However, the owner, for some reason, told us that she could not serve us, because she was running out of ingredients and only had a fried chicken tempura lunch set.
She said that we’d be happier in the sushi restaurant or at the steak restaurant down the road.
We couldn’t believe why she was so inhospitable, but I was sure that with her sour disposition, we would not have had an enjoyable meal.
Instead, we walked down the road, to a very good Nepalese restaurant, and ate a fresh Nan and vegetable curry lunch.

After lunch, we continued walking until we entered Chiriyu Juku post town, Station Number #39.
I was looking for a place to sit and rest a bit, when a lady driving what looked like an ice cream truck, stopped a few meters from us.
She was selling all sorts of tofu and items made from tofu.
She had all kinds of delicious tofu, including a tofu made from black sesame and a golden sesame tofu in her refrigerated truck.
She was delivering blocks of fresh tofu to a Kaiseki restaurant nearby, and we walked over to her truck to see what she was selling.
She was more than happy to explain to us about her products, and we bought some small tofu cookies made from cherry blossoms, tofu and honey.

After we bought her tofu cookies, we sat in a nearby park and drank our tea with the cookies.
We walked longer, and finished the day at a Komeda chain of Coffee Shops in Japan.
I don’t usually go into the Komeda, because they have nothing healthy to eat or drink, no nut milks or soy milk, no good tea and no vegeterian food of any kind.
But everyone seemed to need a break and some rest time, and we were only about 1 km from the Shin Anjo station, our ending point for the day.
This station will be our starting point tomorrow.

Once we got back to Nagoya, we collected our laundry and walked to the closest coin-operated laundry.
While our laundry was being cleaned, we ate dinner at a nearby restaurant.

Sending you love and prayers,
Tali

Today’s Stats:
32,444 steps
23.5 km
Total walked: 200 km
Old Post Towns Visited:
Narumi Juku #40
Chiryu Juku #39
Arimatsu (not numbered)