Day 24 - Fuji Town Through Yoshiwara Juku To Hara Juku, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
Day 24 - Fuji Town Through Yoshiwara Juku To Hara Juku, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
Last night, Wendy messaged me saying that she felt much better after a long sleep, and that she intended to do the entire walk tomorrow as planned.
She would leave Shizuoka City later than us, hoping to visit the local castle in Shizuoka first thing in the morning.
I was delighted to hear that she was feeling better and able to walk.
After seeing how ill she was at the end of the day yesterday, I suggested that she take the day off and just take the train to Fuji town.
But she surprised us all and made a speedy recovery.
We started our day late, because we slept late.
We ate breakfast in our room, of rye bread with cheese, avocado, cucumbers and tomatoes and had a hot tea at the Starbucks across from our apartment.
Then we walked to the train station and returned to the Fujikawa train station near Fuji Town, where we had stopped walking yesterday.
From the train station, we walked up a small hill above town, following the Tokaido road.
We stopped to photograph the ichi Ri Zuka Iwabuchi (Milestone marker) earthen mound, located in this small yet scenic village on the Tokaido road.
In February 1604, the shogunate built these wide earthen mounds measuring five ken (approximately nine meters) square, and planted Zelkova trees every ri along the Tokaido road, calling them "milestones."
These milestones were intended to make the journey easier to measure for the daimyo and other feudal lords who were traveling to and from Edo.
This place is located on the border between the villages of Iwabuchi and Nakanogo, and the area was lined with tea shops selling Iwabuchi's specialty, chestnut flour mochi.
The zelkova tree on the eastern side of the mound died in 1967 due to insect damage, so a second one was planted in March 1970.
From the village, we walked down to the bridge crossing the Fuji river.
To our left, we could see the very top of Mount Fuji, which was covered in snow.
The base was covered in clouds, giving this highly revered mountain the feeling that it was floating above the clouds.
During the Edo period, people traveling along the Tokaido road used ferries that connected the east and west banks of the Fuji River.
There were three ferry landings, one each in the Upper, Middle, and Lower parts.
A place with a gentle river flow was chosen for each landing.
The furthest downstream ferry landing on the east bank was located in a forested area by Matsuoka Village, which is still known as a ferry village, a "Senba", even though ferry services are no longer available.
You can still feel the remnants of the Edo period in this area.
This forest is home to a “water god” and a shrine built in the early Edo period was used to offer prayers for a safe voyage on the river.
It is still used today by people who climb Mount Fuji starting from the Tokaido Road.
Construction work is ongoing, attempting to prevent flooding along the Fuji River, one of Japan's three most rapidly flowing rivers.
The background to this is that this place is an exposed site of a lava flow (Suijing Lava Flow) that flowed from Mount Fuji approximately 15,000 years ago, and the ground is solid, meaning it is unlikely to be submerged or washed away.
A stone monument with the inscription "Fuji-san Road" has been relocated next to the shrine's tori gate.
This stone monument was erected in 1758 a little east of the shrine for climbers heading to Mount Fuji from the Tokaido road.
It appears to have been an important landmark for climbers, as a climbing guidebook published in the Edo period states that it was an especially good place to see the mountain.
At Fuji town, we stopped at the Starbucks to rest and get a hot tea.
The Barista lady said to me,
“Wow, you look so fit and strong, are you here to climb Fuji-San?”
I told her that we were walking the Tokaido.
Her eyes opened wide and she told me that her mother has walked the Tokaido 4 times!
To make sure that I understood her Japanese, she repeated that it was not her, who is too weak, but her mother who has walked the Tokaido four times.
I expressed my admiration for her mother.
We dropped our backpacks at our hotel in Fuji town, and continued walking on the Tokaido.
We walked through Yoshiwara Juku.
Some stores were open, but most were not.
It looked like some stores were permanently closed some time ago.
The Yoshiwara-juku was originally located near the present-day Yoshiwara train station, but after a very destructive tsunami in 1639, the post town was rebuilt further inland.
In 1680, the area was again devastated by a large tsunami, and the post town was again relocated to its current place, farther away from the sea.
Although most of the route of the Tōkaidō in Sagami and Sugura Provinces was along the seashore, as the Tokaido name "The Eastern Sea Route" implied, at this area and the next, in Hara -Juku post town, travelers walked away from the sea.
Up until this point in the journey, Mount Fuji could always be seen to the right of the travelers coming from Edo.
However, as they traveled inland, they could see Mount Fuji to their left, and the view came to be called "Fuji to the Left" (左富士, Hidari Fuji).
During the Edo period, there was a long colonnade of pine trees lining the route along the Tokaido in this area. This is depicted in the classic woodblock print by Hiroshige from 1831–1834 which shows a groom leading a horse with women travelers seated on the horse down a narrow path lined with pine trees, with Mount Fuji to the left.
The old post town had a Honjin inn.
The main role of the inn was to provide porters and horses for the lords and to provide accommodation facilities, as needed.
In order to carry out that business, various facilities were set up in various places, and more inns were formed.
Around town, there were many signs about the old Tokaido.
An old map of Yoshiwara-juku that has been restored showed the location of the facilities and services around town.
Due to the increase in traffic on the road, there was a shortage of horses and assistants, and in order to make up for it, neighbouring villages were designated as “Sukego” and were required to help in the provision of the necessary people and horses.
In the year 1714, when the burden of transportation at the inn increased and it became impossible to handle, Yoshiwara-juku appointed the neighbouring Denpo Village as the “Kajuku”, and they helped share the workload of the inn.
We saw the site of the Wholesale market, and the Kajuku wholesale market.
The wholesaler was the most important facility in the post town, and was located in the centre of the town.
The wholesaler was filled with officials who carried out administrative procedures such as handling the luggage and assigning the porters and horses.
The positions of wholesalers and village headmen were inherited in Yoshiwara-juku, as they were in all the post towns in the old days.
Later on, they were selected by open bidding, from the middle of the 18th century.
When Denpo Village was appointed as a Kajuku, a Kajuku wholesaler was set up around Hosenji Temple, and the work of the wholesaler was divided between 20 days a month at the main inn and 10 days at the kajuku.
However, in the year 1803, it was abolished because Denpo Village was far from the Tokaido, and less people walked the Tokaido, so there was no longer any need for help in conducting business.
Then we walked through an industrial area with little to see.
We stopped at the ichi Ri Zukas along the way, and Jules did his best to pose near it, instead of Joseph, who is our usual model and does an excellent job at it.
Midway to Hara-Juku post town, we passed by Kashiwabara.
There was a need to establish a rest area between Harajuku and Yoshiwarajuku, and Kashiwaya was chosen to establish the teahouse.
Kashiwabara-juku was located on the Tokaido since the Heian period (794) and it is said that it was famous because there were 9 other teahouses in the area, and that the area was also famous for the Ukishima-numa's grilled eel dishes served by these tea houses.
The Tokaido in this part runs right by the main car road, which felt uncomfortable to walk on.
The sidewalks were very narrow and I was worried about cars spraying pebbles on us, from the loose gravel on the sides of the road.
There was an alternative road paralleling the Tokaido, that ran through a pine forest by the sea, but I didn’t want to miss the historic signs and the Ichi Ri Zuka mile markers, so I delayed taking that quiet and scenic route.
We made a lunch stop at a small cafe on the Tokaido.
It was run by a nice couple who seemed to attract a loyal lunch crowd.
Even though it wasn’t on the menu, they made us a pizza toast, loaded
with potatoes, corn, onions, peppers, tomatoes and cheese.
They also served us tea in charming old porcelain teapots, which they carefully covered in “tea cosies”, a thick padded fabric to keep the tea hot.
We drank some tea until Wendy and Joseph caught up with us at the cafe.
They ordered something that could be made quickly because Jules and I had already spent an hour at the cafe.
Before we left, the couple running the cafe told us that we were heading into some days of bad weather, and that we should be careful.
We could hear the loud roar of thunder and lightning over the dark mountains on our left.
Fujisan was completely dark, with a dramatic display of flashes of lightning crossing in front of its dark silhouette.
I prayed for the weather to hold off for a while.
I prayed for a dry walk for the last 6 km that we still had left until Hara station.
It seemed like a lot to ask, because the rainstorm seemed so imminent above us, and I was asking for almost two hours more of dry weather.
But I am a student of Miracles, and there is no order of difficulty in Miracles.
One is not smaller or bigger, more achievable than the other or not.
Whatever transcends the order of the physical world, is a loving miracle.
A small miracle like holding up the storm from raging over us, is not smaller than curing incurable cancer or a recovery of eyesight for the blind.
And… it worked!
It didn’t rain on us and we arrived at Hara station before the storm started.
We took the train back to Fuji town and then a taxi to our hotel.
We expressed our admiration to Wendy about how well she had walked.
Yesterday, she looked so sick, and today she did excellently, completing all the walk with ease.
We did our laundry and soaked in the hot springs bath at the hotel.
It was a business hotel, but there were no other hotels in the area except for business hotels.
But at least it was clean, and had a laundry room and a hot bath.
We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, which had almost no vegetarian food except for grilled rice balls and boiled soybeans and cold tofu.
With love, and light,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 33,934
km walked - 24 km
Total walked: 478 km
Old Post Towns Visited:
Yoshiwara Juku #14
Hara Juku #13
(Travellers passing by Mount Fuji)
