ryanjapantrip

Today started at 330am. I woke up with a stuffy nose and couldn’t sleep. Sleeping on the slightly thicker futon at this hotel did not help either. I quickly looked up a drug store nearby and tried to leave the hotel but the door was locked. I shouted sumimase or excuse me and no one answered. So I unlocked all the doors and hoped that I could still get back in on my way back to the hotel. In Japan at 4am the sun isn’t out but it’s still bright outside. Through the rain and abounded streets I arrived at the drug store to find that I have no idea where the Tylenol or advil was. I found the nearest attendant and with the help of Google translate she pointed me to an herbal sinus infection remedy along with K tape and bandages. Over the past 4 days I have developed blisters on my heels, big toes, and pinky toes. I had already ran out of my supply of bandaids. I gathered up a potato salad egg sandwich with ham and a pocia sweat (their version of Gatorade). I went back to the hotel and bandaged myself up, packed my bags, and awaited Jose and Mark to wake up. We all left the hotel around 630am. I was impressed the boys are getting it together. We had quite a day of traveling. Around 4-5 hours of it with transfers from local subways, high speed trains, and even a couple buses to get to our destination. We arrived at Nagoya station from the local Ito line a giant transfer area. Jose and Mark were hungry so they decided to order some food from one of the dozens of restaurants. We still had a train to catch in 45 minutes which required me to wait in line for 30 of them to get our tickets. Jose paid the tab we met up with 10 minutes to spare I downed some rice and we were off just barely catching our train to the nakasendo valley. Once we arrived in the mountains we took a bus to the small town of Magome and forwarded our bags to Tsumago. Jose decided to wear jeans a decision that he soon regretted as we ascended the almost vertical paved landscape at the start of the trail. The trail we are doing today is an old road that Samurai, Poets and just regular townspeople walked for thousands of years. We walked through dense forests ringing bells to scare any bears away. About halfway through we came across an old house welcoming in hikers for a glass of green tea and a local Japanese plum. The plum was the size of a pebble and very sour. A couple hours later we reached Tsumago a very small town with a population of less than a 1000. We went to the visitor center where are bags were that showed a map of Tsumago and Jose asked “where is our hotel on here?” No jose our hotel is another 2 hours away we have to take another bus and two trains to even get there. Everyone was quite tired and hungry it was about 4pm at this point. We arrived at the train station and went to the connecting town of Nagakawasaki (something like that) where we missed our connecting train. Having an hour to kill, Mark found a local soba noodle restaurant. It was only one man working the entire restaurant. He was also the owner. He told us that he had grown up in this same town and opened this restaurant 12 years ago. There were only 3 choices of noodles and when I asked which was his favorite he pointed to the cold soba option. He prepared the dish meticulously from the boiling of the noodles in a giant pot of water to picking out the noodles that were too small or fat. I was presented the noodles on a basket top with a side of walnut based dipping sauce. After you finish the noodles you are supposed to pour more hot water in the dipping sauce and drink it like a soup. The best bite of the trip so far. After the meal we practiced our Japanese with the chef and explained our itinerary. How tomorrow we would hike the holy mountain Ontake-San. He must have enjoyed our company because he gave us some local artist bandannas to keep the sweat out of our eyes on the hike. We went back to the train station to catch our 630pm train to kiso-Fukushima a small mountain town in the southern Japanese alps. Me and the boys were exhausted still with our luggage in hand. We had messaged the staff on the train and ordered our second dinner at the hotel. Skipping lunch and having two dinners would become a trend throughout the trip. Once we arrived at the train station we had two options: 1. Walk another 20 minutes to our hotel or 2. Buy our first taxi of the trip. Jose had the overwhelming fear that we would be taken advantage of (price wise) by the sweet old Japanese men and women that drive the taxis here. Even though Jose shouted at me and Marc to “fucking stoppppp” in a childish girly screech we continued on to the taxi ushering it to get us the fuck to the hotel. The trip was 700 yen which is like 4 dollars. He even charged us less than his initial estimate of 1000 yen. Once at the hotel we checked in, dropped our bags off, and enjoyed our second dinner. Finally tonight I’ll be sleeping on a real bed.