upon escaping matsumoto, i headed down towards the only thing in the area i had left on my to-do list: back to the nakasendo. i was eager for a chance at redemption after having completely failed to hike it over usui pass into karuizawa, where instead we’d ended up on a combination of the old usui pass rail line through the tunnels and the curvy historic route 18 road. but usui pass was not the only segment of the nakasendo i had on my list mined from C**** M** (we will be free of him soon), he also strongly recommended hiking the most well-known section between tsumago-juku and magome-juku in the southern kiso valley, about an hour or two south of matsumoto. it’s the most popular section because both tsumago-juku and magome-juku are among the best preserved/restored historic post towns along the nakasendo, with a picturesque streetscape of old buildings lining the road through themi am not sure if this has had any responsibility for the segment’s popularity but saddleblasters later informed me it’s also the setting of a famous book titled “before the dawn”.

the “recommended route” was to get off the train at nagiso and then walk south from tsumago-juku to magome-juku before catching a bus back (or staying the night), however it was noted that hikers in good shape could probably make it as far as the train station at nakatsugawa (there is no rail line near magome). since i have a strong preference for trains, the latter seemed like the best option for me. “SURELY it should be easy for me to crank that out, that warning was probably for boomers and couch potatoes,” i thought, “20 kilometers? pssshaw, that’s probably only like, what 5 miles?” to be fair, i don’t think i was getting all that cocky because after all, just the week before i’d conquered usui pass and with a big backpack to boot, something i’ve never really done before.

maybe it would have all been completely fine had i not made two ill-advised stops near matsumoto station right before getting on the train, at book-off and surugaya. the book-off in matsumoto was incredible, it occupied a full floor of a multi-story mall, the aisles were wide and they weren’t crammed with people browsing, a completely different experience compared to the cramped and crowded tokyo locations. thanks perhaps to the diminished patronage, the shelves weren’t picked clean either (especially in the discount section) and because it was all so cheap i found myself with little restraint, grabbing volumes of manga i only had a vague interest in and eventually ending up with something like 12 volumes which the cashier rang up for a grand total of $7. then, to make matters worse, i went over to an outpost of surugaya in a nearby building... i have NEVER seen a better-stocked surugaya, the shelves were filled to bursting and the aisles were easy to navigate despite being about as narrow as tokyo locations because almost nobody was there. i am beginning to think the real place to do otaku shopping might be at random surugayas outside tokyo and osaka... even though i was so low on cash and bag space that things had to clear quite a high bar before i would even consider buying them, i did end up leaving with one thing: figma sae from hidamari sketch... look, i can explain, i already had the yuno and miyako nendoroids, for some baffling reason they never made nendoroids of hiro and sae (truly inexcusable) but they DID make figmas and i already had the hiro figma (don’t ask) so i figured why not complete the set? the sae figma wasn’t that common either, this was the first one i’d seen after quite a bit of browsing the selection in akiba, i may not find another one... what’s more, the sae figma is actually 2-for-1, it comes with an extra head that can also make it a nori figma... anyways, in total i added maybe 3-5 kilos to my bag weight just before getting on the train in matsumoto.

still feeling the budget crunch, i opted to take the local train down to nagiso which takes about two hours, i can’t complain because it’s a scenic ride running right through the heart of the kiso valley. as the train approached nagiso, a bunch of white people with hiking gear clearly aiming for the nakasendo too suddenly materialized on the train... maybe they were C**** M** fans... as soon as the train pulled in to nagiso i shot out of the train and rocketed ahead to put some good distance between us. i set out from the station in what seemed to be the obvious direction without consulting any maps, figuring that the nakasendo route would probably be well-signposted considering that it is supposed to be a big tourist attraction, the most popular segment of one of japan’s most famous historic roads. but between nagiso station and tsumago-juku the nakasendo in many places was literally just another rural road completely indistinguishable from all the others in the complex web of little country roads local residents driving kei cars used to get around. in fact, there were quite a few houses literally on the nakasendo, some tried to capitalize on the foot traffic by opening stands selling drinks and snacks, others had signs up saying things like “the nakasendo is THAT WAY, the road over here is NOT the nakasendo, it is my DRIVEWAY”.

as a result, most groups i saw coming the other way had at least one member glued to their phone navigating, meanwhile i hadn’t even bothered picking up a paper map and was going at it using pure dead reckoning. yes, i did end up going down the wrong road a couple times, the costliest mistake happened within the first fifteen minutes when i was still fresh and innocent to the ways of the nakasendo, i saw a trail going up a hill and figured “oh, maybe this is the part when it finally becomes a walking trail instead of just being a random road”. after huffing my way up the hill really feeling that extra pack weight, those 12 extra manga volumes coming close to being the proverbial straw, i discovered that it was just a dead-end path to a cemetary and shrine on top of the hill, sheepishly hurrying back down before any other nakasendo-goers would notice my mistake.

i noticed one odd thing on that first section: the other people i encountered walking the nakasendo were ALL white, not a single japanese tourist even, i really thought this was going to be one of the most obscure places i’d go but evidently only for domestic tourists. it was probably mostly because the weather that day was bad, japanese tourists are well-known for refusing to go out unless the weather is perfect which means places are usually super crowded those days, if you don’t like crowds and have a bit of resilience C**** M** even recommends going places when the weather is slightly bad because it can reduce crowds significantly. that day it was hot and humid (as always during the summer) with light showers every hour or so, only the foolish white people were out and about in that weather, often without even umbrellas gasp. i didn’t even care that it was raining lightly every so often, it was nothing compared to the downpour on mt. takao, plus within the first ten minutes i was already completely soaked in sweat anyway, once again i vowed “THIS IS THE LAST TIME I GO TO JAPAN IN THE SUMMER!”

it wasn’t long before i made it to tsumago-juku, it felt like i was making good time though in retrospect it isn’t that far from nagiso station, only about 3km away, and the recommended way of getting there via public transit is taking the train to nagiso and walking the rest of the way. clearly most of the visitors in tsumago-juku hadn’t taken that route because it was way more lively than the trail had been, i also discovered that it was where the japanese tourists had been all along, presumably they had driven there to just walk around the historic town a bit. i went into a public restroom and changed out of my soaked shirt with hopes of appearing respectable enough to be accepted into a restaurant to grab a bite to eat, but of course i hit town right around when everywhere closes after lunch. i kept walking down the nakasendo (which is also tsumago’s main street) hoping to find something, and without encountering any other restaurants quickly found myself alone outside town on the trail, once again proving the “tourists never walk more than five minutes from the big attraction” rule.

⊕past tsumago the nakasendo finally became the actual hiking trail i had imagined earlier, buildings and signs of civilization gradually disappeared until it was a lone path through the forest, no more ambiguity about which direction to go. it was refreshing at first, finally doing some “real” hiking in nature, but as the uphill sections continued relentlessly my mental and physical state deteriorated. i got stuck in a kind of limbo in the middle of the forest where every sign on the trail i passed by for an hour all said MAGOME-JUKU 4.7KM. i was getting hungry from skipping lunch and extremely thirsty too, i didn’t have a water bottle or anything, i assumed there would be plenty of vending machines along the nakasendo like everywhere else in japan, maybe clad in wood to fit in with the historic atmosphere, but didn’t end up finding any. i was getting quite desperate, judging based off the wetness of my shirt (soaked already again) i’d lost a significant quantity of fluid, i started to consider sipping from some highly questionable water sources like the little handwashing stations outside shrines, “japanese sewer water is probably cleaner than average american tap water” i thought to justify it. i started going a little crazy in the forest alone, i thought about how i hadn’t encountered a single other solo hiker on the nakasendo, it was all little groups or couples... then i thought, oh but i’m NOT alone and pulled out the sae figma, taking some pictures in the middle of the forest where there was conveniently nobody else around to see me doing something so embarrassing.

despite being about 700m up (or rather, because of it), magome pass ended up being the lowest point on the entire trip for me. that little bit of extra pack weight made every uphill step on the trail (steeper than the usui pass road) take what felt like ten times as much effort as it would normally until i was completely drained to the point where i thought for the first time “i can’t do this, it’s OVER, in my recklessness i have finally bitten off more than i can chew”. it genuinely felt like i couldn’t go any further, i came close to keeling over and collapsing on the trail, leaving my body for the next hiker to discover. there were no other options besides pushing ahead or that, i was completely alone in the middle of the forest, no possibility of bailing out by getting on a bus or calling a taxi.

i went into survival mode and forced myself to continue ahead no matter what, reduced to shuffling forward with little baby steps. luckily, that near-breakdown occurred maybe one or two switchbacks away from the top of magome pass, which of course lacking a map i had no idea of at the time⊕the funny thing is that magome pass isn’t even in the “extra” portion to nakatsugawa station that was recommended only for strong hikers, it’s part of the normal route between tsumago-juku and magome-juku. soon i was back in civilization, rejoining the road that parallels the nakasendo over magome pass, spotting a sign over it in the distance that said “GIFU PREF. - NAKATSUGAWA CITY”, a MUCH bigger relief to see than the “karuizawa city” sign over the usui pass road. i was instantly revived, cherfully passing by some people closing up a teahouse by the side of the road at the pass as if i hadn’t just been in the depths of despair minutes ago. going downhill felt almost effortless, i could keep going downhill forever, and even though i still had a lot of ground to cover i felt optimistic because it was almost all guaranteed to be downhill. the gifu section of the nakasendo had other improvements too, despite going back to being a road for the most part the route was always clearly marked by being paved with white pebbles mixed in (which at the start i thought were white petals laying on the path). i was so revitalized by making it over the pass that i almost forgot how thirsty i was until i almost stumbled into some vending machines conveniently placed by the path, into which i immediately inserted a thousand yen and bought TWO drinks at once, which i have never done before.

⊕when i finally got to magome-juku it was pretty quiet along the road through town, every tourist attraction in japan is basically dead by 5pm, which of course means that every restaurant was already closed and would not be reopening for dinner because all the potential customers had gone home. i did manage to find one place that was open and grabbed something to eat to hold me over, it looked mid and slightly overpriced but i knew this was not the time to be picky. i hit the road again as soon as i could, the sun was going down and i was getting worried about making it to nakatsugawa station before the last train to where i would be staying for the night. i couldn’t have chosen a better portion of the nakasendo to be on for the sunset, the road winding through fields down a hill with a great view of the surrounding area, including my eventual destination of nakatsugawa.

when the road dipped into the hillside forests, the nakasendo deatched from it and became the “ochiai cobblestone path” that had been hyped up by various signs i had seen. by this time it was completely dark and there was naturally not a single other person to be found walking the nakasendo through the spooky forest, but i didn’t have much of a chance to be afraid because of how much walking on the cobblestone path in the dark SUCKED, i would have much preferred even the shoulder of a busy road. the “cobbles” were not the tidy little square paving stones that i usually associate the word with, the ones they pave roads and public squares with in historic european city centers, they were just a bunch of random uneven rocks glued together with cement that were hard to walk on and presented constant tripping hazards in the dark. the path was also wet from the rain earlier, most of the time it wasn’t an issue but one out of every twenty rocks would randomly be super slippery, sometimes it felt like i was jumping between rocks trying to cross a rocky stream without slipping into the water.

past the cobblestone path the nakasendo entered the outskirts of nakatsugawa and became a lot less sketchy, it was just walking through a normal japanese city. in an attempt to get to the station faster by taking a shortcut i made an unceremonious departure from the white-pebbled route of the nakasendo (still helpfully marked in the city) and immediately bungled it by going the wrong way for ten minutes, but in the end made it to the station with plenty of time to spare before the last train, enough to go into the big “accessible” restroom and swap out my sweat-soaked clothes again, one benefit of hauling around the big backpack is that i had plenty of changes of clothes on me ready to go.

i had had some difficulty earlier finding a hotel for the night, the reason being because it was for a saturday night. it seems that everyone in japan goes on a trip every weekend which means that saturday nights are by far the most expensive nights to stay at hotels, if you can even find availability in the first place. even the cheapest places are more expensive saturday nights than much nicer hotels are during the week, i had to look quite far afield before finally settling on a place i’d wanted to stay for a while, a chain called hotel R9 the yard (or as i like to render it, hotel r9 “the yard”). it had been tough to make it work before because their locations are always on the outskirts of towns, they always have plenty of parking and seem to serve primarily as motels.

the reason i wanted to stay at “the yard” is because they have an extraordinary gimmick: each location is composed solely of a bunch of shipping containers converted into hotel room trailers, all parked next to each other on a big paved lotsome business hotels try to lure in customers by offering free breakfast, but R9 “the yard” was the first one i saw that offers an included dinner, better than breakfast because i didn’t have to wake up early for it. it’s nothing fancy, though: at check-in they guided me over to a chest freezer where i could choose from a selection of frozen meals to heat up in the microwave each room was equipped with for that express purpose. the lobby is in a container too, parked at the entrance, and so are the rooms with laundry and vending machines. they’re all painted black and finished stylishly, it’s like staying in a chic disaster evacuee camp. it’s a brilliant concept, i imagine the room trailers are all made in one place and then hauled across the country wherever they need to go, and if a location is a bust or if the landlords try to raise the rent, they can always pick up the entire hotel and move it somewhere else easily. i can’t deny, though, that despite the flawless execution the whole thing does have a faint undertone of “you can kind of tell japan has run out of money at this point”.

probably the most hilarious thing about hotel R9 “the yard” is that as soon as you climb up the three metal steps and enter your shipping container room, the interior is absolutely indistinguishable from the typical japanese business hotel, in fact the one notable difference was that the container-room was actually a bit more spacious than the typical business hotel room (especially APA). after the long day and several nights staying in hostels i was grateful to have a room to my own again to unwind in, the japanese hostel dorms aren’t bad but they do have a tendency to get stuffy in the summer, the dorm rooms do have air conditioning but the privacy curtains for each individual bunk tend to trap a lot of heat in there with you. i unpacked my bag, gingerly extracting the sae figma from where the outermost pocket of the bag where it had been subject to all sorts of abuse... the box was now in rough shape, ITEM:A BOX:D, i thought about how if the box had been in that condition when i bought it twelve hours earlier it would have been a third of the price...