Day 28 - Hakone Yumoto to Odawara to Kozu, And The Teachings Of Ninomiya Sontoku, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
Day 28 - Hakone Yumoto to Odawara to Kozu, And The Teachings Of Ninomiya Sontoku, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
I slept very well at our Onsen hotel, sleeping on a futon on the floor.
There is something special to me about sleeping on clean sheets on a comfy futon, laid out on a tatami rice mat floor.
It feels so earthy and relaxing, my spine stretched out and my mind at peace.
Both Jules and I are still coughing and feeling a bit weak, but we are doing much better than yesterday and miles better than the day before.
I ate a breakfast of steamed rice, miso soup, pickles, salad and “Onsen tofu,” topped with grated ginger and soy sauce.
The weather was bright and sunny as we walked from our hotel down to Hakone Yumoto town.
By the local shrine, we met a Canadian girl who was planning to hike up the Hakone pass as a day hike.
She said that she had heard that the Tokaido’s cobblestone trail to the Amazake Chaya tea house was very scenic.
When she heard that we had just walked it yesterday, she asked for directions and how it was.
She also asked if there were good signs along the way.
I showed her the app that I have on my phone, and how to use it, because it is written in Japanese and not so easy to understand, but still, it is very helpful because it lists all the detours and road closures along the Tokaido.
Then we walked towards the town of Odawara.
We walked slowly and leisurely, because now that we could see the end of the pilgrimage approaching, we realized that we had lots of time to stop and engage with the people and places that we were walking through.
We saw a few people walking the Tokaido today, including a 79 year old man who was climbing up to the Hakone pass, who intended to keep on walking all the way to Numazu.
He must have been an excellent hiker because he had planned a very challenging day for himself, which included the most difficult part of the Tokaido.
He bought sweet lemons at a street stall, and I bought a bag too.
They were very delicious, more like clementines than lemons.
By early lunch time, we had reached Odawara castle.
The Odawara Jingu shrine is also located on the castle grounds.
Both the castle and the shrine are famous and beautiful.
There are even cafes and restaurants located inside the grounds.
I chose a pilgrim’s cafe that offered a special lunch set of whole multigrain rice and vegetable soup in miso broth.
They also have a simple and modern seating area and cafe lattes with an image of a pilgrim in the coffee’s foam. So cute!
None of us was really hungry yet, so each couple shared the lunch bowls and then drank the cappuccinos with the pilgrims in the coffee foam.
It is called the Kinjiro Cafe, and they are based on the teachings of Ninomiya Sontoku that they still cherish today.
Ninomiya Sontoku's teachings are everything that makes the Japanese people unique in the world.
His teachings run through the foundations of the culture.
He emphasized the union of ethics and economics, focusing on gratitude, diligence, frugality, and altruism.
He believed that economic activity, when guided by these virtues, could benefit society as a whole.
His philosophy is known as Hōtoku, and it influenced the development of modern Japanese capitalism.
Ninomiya saw agriculture as the foundation of a healthy society, and a way to cultivate the resources given freely by nature.
He often used farming metaphors to explain his ideas.
Some of the philosophy he advocated was printed on the water bottles that the cafe gave us with our lunch.
The bottles read :
“If you want to do big things, do the small things well.
That's because many small things add up to big things.
As is typical of small minded people, they aspire to do big things, worry about the difficulty of making things happen, and fail to do what is simple.
That is why they never accomplish anything great.
That is because they do not know that small things add up to make something big.
For example, even if it is called Hyakumangoku rice, the grains are not large.
("Hyakumangoku" is an Edo period phrase that refers to the immense wealth of the Kaga domain, known for producing large amounts of rice. The phrase was often used to symbolize an immense prosperity.
So this idea meant that even if the rice was called ‘million dollar rice’, it didn’t mean that the rice grains themselves were large.)
Plowing 10,000 hectares of rice fields, all is done by hand, one hoe at a time. (They had no mechanical farm equipment in the Edo period.)
The road to a thousand seeds is reached by walking one step at a time!
To create a mountain, one pile of earth is piled up on top of the other, one by one.
By understanding this principle and working on the small details, you will gain large amounts of money.”
The old post town of Odawara-juku was established between the mountains of Hakone and the Sagami Bay.
It was strategically located near the banks of the Sakawa River, which made Odawara-juku a famous post station.
The Tokaido road that runs from Nihonbashi in Edo to Sanjo Ohashi in Kyoto passes through Musashi, Sagami, Izu, Suruga, Totomi, Mikawa, Owari, Ise, Iga, Omi, and the mountain regions, and has 53 post stations.
Kanagawa Prefecture had nine of these post towns, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Hodogaya, Totsuka, Fujisawa, Hiratsuka, Oiso, Odawara, and Hakone.
The distance from Kawasaki to Hakone is about 80km.
Its greatest attraction is the varied scenery that unfolds along the road.
Leaving Edo, pilgrims first proceeded through Kawasaki and Kanagawa with the Edo Inner Bay on their left, and at Hodogaya, Totsuka, and Fujisawa, the sea will temporarily disappear from view due to the Miura Peninsula.
Then Sagami Bay will appear at Hiratsuka and Oiso.
After crossing the Sakagawa River, pilgrims leave Odawara and reach the top of the Hakone Mountains. Although it is a difficult journey, pilgrims will see Lake Ashi at the top of the mountains and Mount Fuji towering before their eyes.
Odawara-juku was established in 1601.
Odawara once flourished as a castle town of the Hojo clan, who unified the Kanto region, and was an important gateway to the Kanto region.
Odawara was a castle town equipped with the functions of a post town, and the town was developed around the residence of the feudal lord, with a unique layout for a post town.
It can be said that it is the largest post town in Kanagawa Prefecture.
There were four honjin and wakihonjin inns here, the most of any of the 53 inns along the Tokaido road, and there were also over 100 lodgings used by common people.
The town was lined with souvenir shops, restaurants, general stores, clothing stores, fish shops, and other merchants' houses, and the area was full of energy.
Famous local specialties, such as kamaboko (fish cake), umeboshi (pickled plums), and Odawara lanterns have been around since the Edo period, and are still popular today.
At the Odawara shrine, we said a prayer for our health and safety and walked through the amazing grounds by the castle.
It was so beautiful with its blooming cherry trees that we all felt nourished by the beauty around us.
The castle also has very lovely gates.
On our walk out of the area, we saw an elderly couple who were processing green leaves in their garage.
They told us that they climb up the mountain every day to harvest these wild fragrant Sakaki green leaves, that Japanese people use to place on altars as offerings to the ancestors.
They don’t go on very rainy days, they said with an apologetic smile.
The sakaki is a tree with beautiful bright green leaves, which is found in the western part of Ishikawa Prefecture, Shikoku and Kyushu.
It has been an important and sacred plant in Shinto since ancient times.
The word "Sakaki" is said to be derived from the word "sakai-ki", which means "a tree on the border between deities and men.”
Nowadays, it is difficult to find Japanese Sakaki, because most of the plants that are sold in florists or in supermarkets come from China or other foreign countries.
The reason is that Sakaki is grown only in eastern Japan, and it is difficult to grow or obtain elsewhere.
Therefore it is more expensive compared to Sakaki plants from abroad.
However, sakaki leaves produced in Japan are known to be thick, firm, and to last longer.
It is the ideal plant to use as an offering in a household shrine.
In the language of flowers, Sakaki refers to someone or something with modest charm, something unshakable, or something or someone honoring the deities.
We walked for an hour more and started feeling hungry.
We stopped to eat lunch at a little cafe located inside a woman’s house.
It was a humble home with a tiny garden at the entrance, a tiny bedroom, which we had to enter to use the tiny toilet, a tiny kitchen and a dining room crammed with two tables for the cafe’s guests.
There was also a small back porch for smokers.
The decor was the woman’s hat collection, some wood and glass cases filled with old dolls and souvenirs she had bought in Paris, and her coats on a coat hanger.
It was so very charming.
We ate a spaghetti set with a dessert and a tea, all for $5 each. Joseph ate the fish lunch set and said that it was great.
The lady made the small dishes well, and had a big dog named Sakura, who had given his name to the cafe.
We all loved the experience of dining in her house.
On our way to Kozu station, we crossed the Sakawa river that was at one time a difficult crossing, as was depicted in Hiroshige’s woodblock prints.
From Kozu station, we took the train and a bus back to our hotel in Hakone Yumoto.
We soaked in the hot springs and ate the dinner buffet, together with Wendy and Joseph.
We all enjoyed the day because it had had a leisurely pace and lots of fun experiences.
With love and light,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 24,743
km walked - 17 km
Total walked: 528 km
Old Post Towns Visited:
Odawara Juku #9
