Late April 2025 年4月

Warning! This is a long read. You may need two cups of coffee….

Random Notes: Do you chew your toothbrush? don’t. You never know what you might be eating…..

歯ブラシを噛まないでください！

Do you like fermented Natto for breakfast?  (er….no)  Grab the offer whilst it lasts….

納豆は好きですか？

Same day service.  Mr. Quick-san will fix it…..

Quick-san. Hodogaya. 自転車の修理

Saw these in Ena city – best described as “container hotels” !?

エナの小さなホテル

Need  a nostalgic TV to fit into your bag?

🌏

It was seven years ago when I made my first trip to Japan⛩️.  I did it the hard way – alone, and determined to practise the language. As I don’t like tourist spots I decided to stay in an ordinary town in Gifu Prefecture. It had an interesting river gorge nearby. Ena  (恵那市).

Nobody had heard of it, and when I mention it to my Japanese friends now I always get this quizzical look, like “where’s that?” or “why would you want to go there?”.

Never be put off by a railway station. Even on the Chuo Line……

恵那駅

And never be put off by “significant delays”. In Japan this means the train might be 3 mins. late or something. But don’t mess with earthquakes. Get the earthquake app.

It was a unnerving but eye-opening experience 🤔 (I mean the trip in 2018, not the significant delays): The shock of entering the breakfast room of the hotel to see everyone tucking into noodles, fried fish, salads and goodness knows what else; the sense of achievement in borrowing an old bicycle from the local bike shop (no bike apps then) and sailing off on two wheels 🚲 down a country lane without an internet connection.

So this year I decided to revisit the scene of my former adventures. Even using the same hotel.

私が初めて日本を訪れたのは7年前のことでした⛩️. そこで今年は、冒険の舞台となった岐阜県恵那市にある同じホテルを再び訪れることにしました。

The hotel has been smartened up a bit, but there are still no cereals for breakfast, and I had to ask for butter (what a wimp!) . The view from the room has not changed – a “western” clothing store sign….

素晴らしい景色

But how much more relaxed I feel, with some command of the language! I even find the bike store. The couple who run it are pleased to hear that I was a former customer, and point out the dog, who is now snoozing in the corner. The guy gives me an old but perfectly good 3-gear town bike and charges me 300 yen for the afternoon. That is about 1.85 Euros. Taking the same route as I did in 2018, I head for the Ena gorge and its dam. I am seeing so much more this time, not being worried about getting lost or making some faux-pas or other.

A rural postbox…..

田舎の郵便ポスト…..

The route to the dam….

恵那ダムへのルート

It has been an unusually dry spring here, so the water levels are low on the Kiso river.

水位が低い

A pause to think thoughts….💭

考え

Years ago, when I first started doing calligraphy classes in Germany with Rena Kato, one of the first characters she taught us was this:

石

it’s a simple character, so I recognise it immediately here on this sign. Stones.

危険

Being in red, the warning of falling stones is a little disconcerting. Further on I discover the remains of the old suspension bridge crossing the Kiso river. That was 1907.

木曽川にかかる古い橋

In 1926 they built the dam, then much more recently: this road bridge. Confident and inspiring…..What about that for a nice piece of civil engineering…….take note GdLL 🙂.

素敵な新しい橋

On the subject of engineering, there are impressive road improvements underway nearby…….

日本のエンジニアリング

Riding back past a screen of bamboo…..

竹の壁

This is hot work. I park the bike and take a well-earned slug of green tea……

一時停止

They don’t seem to sell postcards here any longer. So on the way home I am denied the fun of slipping one into this postbox……(“Greetings from the paddy fields of Gifu Prefecture. Wish you were here……”)

ここではポストカードを売っていません。残念です。

The next day I board a local train to get to the start of my planned hike. But first it’s time to charge my transport card. The platform machine quite clearly displays the notice: 1.000 yen only. As if 1.000 yen would get me very far. Oh what the. I’ll stuff a 10.000 yen note in and see what happens…….

ナイジェルはミスを犯す

Naughty Nigel!  A red light flashes🚨 and a piercing alarm goes off. Out of a nearby door a uniformed station master pops like a jack-in-the-box 💥 Boing 👨‍✈️ !

With a degree of self-assurance which I never had before I just say “don’t worry – I just put the wrong note into the machine….”. But he has to open the machine, type a code in and clang the thing shut before peace can then descend on Ena station. Honestly. These foreigners.

I have to alight at a place called Nakatsugawa, where a bus takes me up into the mountains……..

“Welcome to Natsugawa” is written in a local dialect. Better not tread on it…..😂

行きます!

Off we go. It’s a local bus, but it is modern, comfortable and air-conditioned with, I noticed,  UV protective glass. It goes without saying that the windows are crystal clean. Not a spec.

We wind up into the hills, getting higher and higher, until at least we grind to a halt at Magome- juku. This little town has retained much of its Edo-era charm, however it feels a bit sanitized. There is no horse dung in the street, the loos are automatic and there are no prostitutes in the back alleys. But it is still a hotch potch of wooden houses and shops clutching to a steep winding street. It was a post town on the Nakasendo – the trade route built by the feudal lords in the 18thc. The Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868). “Nakasendo”  – it sort of rolls off the tongue, conjuring up a wild mountain pathway in the age of the Samurai. Haha. Today it’s mostly tourists. But it is fantastic.

馬籠宿。中山道

There was another route down in the plains called the Tokaido. But this one, as its name suggests, went over the mountains. But it wasn’t just a road. It spawned a cultural phenomena. Artists arrived to draw it – The famous woodcblock illustrator Utagawa Hiroshige, for example. In his prints you see labourers struggling along with huge loads, and the occasional daimyō  (feudal lord) on horseback. The surface of the road was mostly stone slabs, which must have made it hard work in wet weather (a bit like the Appian way in Rome). This print rather romanticizes the whole thing.

歌川広重

It’s all very picturesque (かいがてき  絵画的). Somehow these mountain villages avoided the Japanese post-War economic boom and subsequent construction mania. Power lines have been hidden. However, there are strict rules for residents. Even if a historic building is decaying and you as a foreigner offer to restore it, you will face immense bureacratic hurdles.

素敵。でも、きれいすぎる

I pass a colourful field of clover further up the hill,

クローバー畑

a Buddha or two to help you on your way…..🙏

仏

The trek is easy for me, with my modern hiking boots, bottle of green tea and iphone in the rucksack….

著者

Soon I had left the village behind me. Along the way some eccentric local was actually inviting people to come into their garden…..

ニース 🙂

Where whimsical things abounded…..

offerings invited….

I climbed up higher into the forest towards the boundary of Gifu and Nagano Prefectures. Those cedars….phew!

中山道の杉

Those bears……(you ring this to warn them off)…

🐻!

Ocasionally the modern road bisects the path. The mirror is there to help you. Except that this one was totally opaque. I’m sure Hermione Granger would have known the spell…….

Those flowers. It’s as if a god has picked up several National Trust Gardens in the UK and scattered them around the mountains here. Of course in history it was the other way around.

….cherries are still blooming up here (the’ve long since disappeared from Tokyo)

in so many varieties….

…this looks like a wild orchid…..

…and then, just after the Magome pass…(which is actually not very dramatic)….

790 metres

…. those waterfalls…..there are two quite near each other…

Medake Falls

Odake Falls

It was a hot day. Needless to say, the cool water was delightfully refreshing…..

素敵な冷たい水

The route is not really a wild hike and is always clearly marked.

Japanese families with their teenagers were ambling along in what looked like nothing more than town shoes. I met a father sitting on a rock, mopping his brow. He said his wife and daughter were faster than him………I think he had been persuaded to come, and would have preferred to be on the sofa at home watching baseball….

🔩

I often see a pride and fascination with all things mechanical here in Japan. As I left Ena in the morning I had passed a monumental steam engine parked outside the library……

Then later in the day whilst walking I discovered this strange foot-operated machine. I hope one of my violinmaking colleagues  (Paul? John?) can work out what it did. I couldn’t….

これは何ですか？

And later on at the end of the trail, after I had passed through Tsumago en route to Nagiso station, there was another steam engine. An even bigger one this time…….just sitting there.

南木曽駅。帰りの電車。

The notice explains…………

蒸気動力

Back to the Nakasendo. They “do” decay well here. There was no hope of a coffee at this establishment….left to rot in the woods…..

ここにはコーヒーはありません…

メールもなし

About 9km later I entered the post town of Tsumago. Could almost be a film set. Except that it is genuine. An elegant family drift by…..

This has been a long post, but there is so much to write about! I will leave you in a Japanese lane…….

As always, thank you for reading, and if you know anyone who might be interested in this blog then do send it on.

読んでくれてありがとう

See you……. matane!

Nigel 🖋️

nigelwruddock@gmail.com.

https://www.instagram.com/nigelruddock/

THE END 　終わる

Oh, just a few more buddhas to send you on your way…..

THE END 　終わる