Day 6 - Down The Suzuka Mountain Pass From Sakashita To Seki And On To Kameyama, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
Day 6 - Down The Suzuka Mountain Pass From Sakashita To Seki And On To Kameyama, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
After breakfast, we checked out of our hotel and left them our backpacks.
We were too early to wait for the hourly bus, so we took a taxi to the Suzuka mountain pass, our last stopping point on the Tokaido.
It was a very cold and rainy day, with a strong wind that blew the rain in flurries all around us.
It was too windy to open our umbrellas.
As we walked down the road, we met a few others who were walking the Tokaido road in the opposite direction.
Some walked in small groups, but most walked alone.
We would always ask how long it was taking them to walk the Tokaido, and the answers we got varied from a few weeks to a few years, because most people did it in sections, walking a few days when they had the time.
Perhaps the most amazing answer we got, to our question of how long have you been walking the Tokaido, came from a Pediatrician from Kobe, who told us that he had walked here from Tokyo in only 8 days.
We all sighed in amazement and disbelief when he said that he would be done in 9 or 10 days.
He had been walking around 50-60 km every day, and restricting his salt and carbohydrate intake.
He only slept a little and ate a little fruit, vegetables, tofu or fish and sometimes he slept on a bench in the train station, to save time.
He gave us his contact number and email, asking us to send him the photos of him that we took.
Later he wrote back and thanked us for the photos, and said that he had gotten lost for five or six hours in the Suzuka mountains, so he finished in ten days instead of nine days.
It was raining pretty hard when we reached Seki, a beautiful old post town.
There are still 200 remaining beautiful old wooden buildings, some still operating as shops, cafes and restaurants.
In the year 1601, when the Tokugawa Shogunate established the post station system, Seki-juku became the seventh post station on the Tokaido road.
It became a wholesale traders town, with banks, stores and a camp for the animals, as well as many inns and tea houses.
According to old documents, in the year 1843, there were 632 houses, including 2 main inns and side inns for royals and high government officials and their entourages, and 42 lodging houses for non-royal people, traders and travelers.
During the Edo period, it was an important post station on the
Tokaido road because of its location near the Suzuka Pass, and also its location at the junction of the Ise-Betsu Kaido and Yamato Kaido roads.
It was perhaps the longest remaining stretch of road that we passed through, and I wanted to go slow and savour it.
Because it was raining so hard, I thought that if we sat in a cafe for a while, the weather would change by the time we left.
The cafe seemed to be very popular, and it served stone oven baked scones and a good selection of foods including a variety of pizzas, including a sweet chocolate and marshmallow pizza, which Wendy and Joseph ordered, so we took a small slice just to try it. (You are not missing anything, it was way too sweet and not very tasty).
When we finished, the rain was just a drizzle, so we walked slowly through Seki town, noticing all the beautiful clay and ceramic decorations accenting the buildings.
We walked to our hotel, picked up our backpacks and walked to Kameyama post town.
Coming out of Seki Old Town to a busy industrial roadway leading to our hotel in Kameyama, was like leaving the past and suddenly entering into the industrial present.
We were making good time, so I thought that we could continue on to Idagawa station.
Wendy said that she might not continue walking past Kameyama station, because she doesn’t like walking with her backpack, even though her backpack is the lightest among us.
I was surprised by her unwillingness to walk with her backpack.
She is doing so well and seems to be strong every day, but in her mind, she is only doing so well because she is not walking with her backpack.
Luckily, our next accommodation is in Nagoya where we will be staying for a whole week, while we walk the Tokaido road, so she will not have to walk with her backpack, but later on, this could possibly become a logistics problem, because we will have a few consecutive days of one night stays and long days of walking with our backpacks.
But even though we are walking in a group, each one of us is walking his or her own pilgrimage.
I have my own difficulties and stress from the hardship of being on my feet and walking all day, planning our walking route and translating the historical anecdotes, so I cannot devote my energy to planning a pilgrimage so that Wendy doesn’t have to walk with her backpack.
Joseph on the other hand, who is the oldest among us, is doing fabulously.
He is always in good spirits and full of humour.
He says that his back hurts when he DOESN’T carry his backpack.
When we arrived in Kameyama, we went to see the castle.
Once an impressive hilltop castle, all that remains today is a small tower that wasn’t very impressive.
Kameyama Castle and the castle tower has never been rebuilt. Most of the castle buildings were demolished in 1873 due to the castle abolition order.
It is unclear when Kameyama-juku was first established, but it is believed that the town was established at the end of the 15th century.
Kameyama Castle was first known as Ise Kameyama Castle, and it is said to have been built by Seki Sanetada in 1265.
It was the castle belonging to the Seki clan, who held great influence in Kameyama during the Middle Ages, and is believed to have been moved to its current location in the mid-16th century.
As happened all over Japan, Kameyama town sprouted around the castle and developed as a castle town.
The history of castles in Japan is interesting.
in 1615, the second Shogun of the Tokugawa Dynasty decided to keep a single castle per state, in order to reduce the power and wealth of the lords.
In 1873, after the Meiji Restoration (that is, the transfer of power from the shogunate to the emperor), the emperor ordered the destruction of the castles in order to modernize the country.
For the emperor, the castles were a symbol of ancient Japan.
During the Edo period, Kameyama was the 46th post town from Edo on the Tokaido Road, with a main street that stretched for about 2.5 km.
The town, including the castle town, was large, but there was only one Honjin (inn for royals) and one Waki-Honjin, (side inn for royals) and there were 21 inns for common people in the late Edo period. Because it was off the route for pilgrimages to Ise, it is sometimes described as a "lonely castle town" in travelogues.
Although the main facilities of the inn, such as the main inn and notice board remain, there are still traces of its former self in many places within the inn.
In Kameyama, we stopped at a small kaiseki vegan restaurant, but they required advance reservations to buy and prepare ingredients, so we couldn’t dine there.
We kept on walking, hoping we would find another place to rest and get something to eat.
In the modern part of Kameyama, we stopped at a cute cafe called Suku and, after asking the friendly young women to readjust the daily menu to remove the meat, we ate a lunch set with rice with melted cheese, veg, steamed broccoli and pickles.
I am always baffled by the lack of health oriented menus in many cafes and restaurants in Japan.
Even the younger generation is so steeped in tradition that it serves the same unhealthy foods.
But the ladies were so sweet and kind and we really needed the rest.
They were very enthusiastic about our visit, and were especially fans of Taiwan, which made Joseph and Wendy proud and happy.
This cafe was near the Kameyama station, but Wendy decided that she was doing well with carrying her backpack, so she wanted continue walking with us to Idagawa.
Along our walk to Idagawa station, we watched a Shinto priest playing a Japanese flute and chanting, accompanied by four men dancing a graceful and fluid tiger dance.
They did it in front of a newly opened shop to bless it with prosperity, but since they were already in costumes, they kept on preforming their dance along the street, in order to raise money.
On the 75 minute train ride to Nagoya, all four of us dozed, after a long day of walking under cold and rainy conditions.
Our hotel in Nagoya is modern and comfortable, but they don’t have a laundry machine, which is a bummer.
We gathered our clothes, dressed up warmly in our second set of clothing and walked to do our laundry in a coin laundromat.
It was a cold and dark night and we passed by many nude girly bars advertising pretty, sad girls, who sell their souls for money.
At the laundromat, we met a lovely Filipino woman who told us that she was married to a Japanese man.
For the first ten years of her marriage, she still lived in the Philippines,@ but she had since moved to Japan and she has lived here for the past fifteen years. She has children and grandchildren who all live together with her and her husband.
I watched as they folded loads of laundry, consisting of baby socks and school uniforms.
Next to them, we folded our tiny load of laundry consisting of two pairs of pants, two shirts, two fleeces and two pairs of socks.
For dinner, we ate Okonomiyaki that we grilled ourselves around a table that has a big griddle in the middle.
The heat from the hot cast iron griddle warmed our fingers and hearts.
Okonomiyaki is a vegetable pancake that consists of lots of cabbage and leek, mixed with yam flour and one egg, a small amount of red ginger and water.
There are many additional ingredients you can add to this base.
We added corn, mushrooms and cubes of Mochi.
People often added seafood, steak and many other things.
We got all the raw ingredients and mixed them together, then poured them on the hot griddle and formed a round pancake shape.
About ten minutes later, we flipped the pancake over using two spatulas, and waited until the other side was thoroughly cooked.
You eat it topped with a sweet thickened soy sauce, flakes of Wakame seaweed and a dab of mayonnaise.
I was happy to be back in our hotel room and out of the cold.
The hotel doesn’t have a hot spring bath, so I showered and rubbed my feet with eucalyptus essential oils, thanking them for their service today.
Sending you love and light,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
34,047 steps
23 km
Total walked: 115.5 km
Old Post Towns Visited:
Seki Juku Station #47
Kameyama Juku Station #46
