4th May - Around Hagi

We both woke up this morning feeling a little off and with headaches. Not a bad day for this to happen as we only had plans to look around Hagi Town. It is a slightly sad town. No real centre, rather run-down in places, and almost a little abandoned. What is surprising is the role it played in Japan's past. 

When the USA sent Commander Perry and his four powerful "black ships" across to Japan in the 1850s to force it to open up, Japan began to realise how far behind the rest of the world it had fallen during the previous several centuries of tightly-closed borders. A group of five young Hagi men between them became instrumental in setting up Japan's industrialisation, railways, economy, engineering skills, banking, political framework and more, in effect making Hagi the birthplace of the Meiji Restoration which dominated Japan from then on. Hagi has been the perfect place for learning more about the transformation of Japan once it decided its self-imposed isolationist policy was no longer viable.

After a breakfast of pot noodles we started with a visit to Meirin Gakusha. This was a massive wooden school complex, then the largest in all Japan, built on the site of previous schools and recently transformed into a tourist centre and museum explaining the role of the Hagi men in Japan's transformation. It being the end of Japan's Golden Week, it was pretty busy. At the entry there was the normal hassle of changing from outdoor footwear to supplied slippers. We should have worn slip-on shoes today as each visit required one or more swaps from shoes to socks or slippers.

Meirin Gakusha

One of the early classrooms

From Meirin Gakusha we headed to the Hagi Castle Town area, where the samurai and the wealthy merchants had their villas just outside the castle walls. This small district looks very much as it did back then, as Hagi became a bit of a backwater. We visited a number of former residences. The standout was the Kikuya Residence, the main building of which dated back from 1652-1657. They all had lovely private gardens, often more than one. 

Samurai and wealthy merchants quarter

We do love the style of traditional architecture. It is largely open-plan, achieved through the use of sliding screens which can reduce large spaces into smaller rooms, or open interior spaces completely to the outside. Several of the villas had a cunning system where outside screens could all be slid along to one end and neatly stacked. Finishes were all natural, and it gives them a serene feel.

This modern style dates back to the 1650s!

The store rooms were fascinating. These were rooms deliberately separated from the main house for fire reasons. They were very heavily built, and covered in fireproof plaster. Even the doors were perhaps 20cm thick with their plaster coating. In the centre there was often a pit lined with stone with a stone lid on top, set on rollers. The pit was where the family's valuables were stored, and in the main room there would be spare rice and other goods.

A store room, pit in the centre.

We were both feeling tired and slightly off-colour after our morning expedition so we opted to head back to our accommodation for a quiet afternoon rather than tackle any more historic sites. A good rest perked us up and we later felt fine for going around the corner to a local izakaya eatery where we enjoyed a very nice simple meal. 

Japanese streetscapes are not always like the brochures. The generic architecture is pretty ordinary.

3rd May - Walk to Hagi

This was the day for the biggest walk of the trip - from Sasanami in the hills above Yoda Onsen, down to the northern coast at Hagi. It was part of  the Hagi Okan, a trail between the north and south coasts that was used by the daimyos and their retinues on their way to Edo, Tokyo. The section we chose to do is said to be the best part of it.

Breakfast was delicious, again. We had little to pack up, having sent our main bags onwards the previous day. After breakfast it was off down the driveway to the bus which would take us into the hills. It was a pleasant 51-minute ride through varied terrain. The trees are quite tropical, and at this time of year very green.

Heading inland to start our hike

At our stop, Asahi Roadside Station, we intended to stop at a very old cafe but it wasn't open this morning, so we started our climb into the hills. It was a day for wildlife, and deadlife. We started with some cranes nesting in trees, then saw a tiny dead mole on the track. Not long after a snake slithered off the trail, and there was a rather nice lizard a bit further on. Later, we smelt something nasty, and a huge wild boar was lying beside the road, legs in the air. Not something you'd want to come across alive.

The trail was beside a lovely rushing river most of the way, sometimes on a stone-paved track, sometimes more like a 4WD route. There were not as many historic spots along the way as we had on either the Nakasendo or the Kunisaki Peninsula walks, but still plenty to see.

The start of our trail

It was well marked with these blue signs

At one point we came upon a family sowing their rice paddies with the aid of a dinky little machine. Trays of rice seedlings are stacked on the back of it, and somehow it separates them one at a time into 4 rows which it plants neatly into the mud.

The rice planting machine and extra trays of seedlings

Heading down toward Hagi, we came across a village festival. We didn't find what it was about, but the street had lots of stalls, and there were children doing dances at a public building. Being latish lunchtime, we picked up some food from the stalls - some tempura sweet potato slices, and a couple of waffle-like fish-shaped treats (taiyaki) with some sweet filling inside.

Performance at the festival

Making the taiyaki

Finally down at the outskirts of Hagi, we found our way to the train station to transfer to Higashi-Hagi, another train station much nearer our accommodation. 

The lovely old Meiji-era (1868-1912) Hagi Station

From there it was a short walk to the 7-Eleven where our bags were hopefully waiting for us. The woman at the counter seemed a bit lost, but a young man headed out the back, and after a slightly worrying delay, he wheeled our bags out.

Our accommodation was a complete apartment, distinguished by the lights all being controlled by remotes and therefore very tricky to manage. Dinner was "sets" (a main dish, rice, soup, and side dishes served together on a single tray), one eggy and one noodly, from a nice little place with a big window displaying the eating options.

2nd May - Akiyoshido Cave and Karst

We both slept very well again. In fact I bordered on 10 hours sleep! Heavy rain during the night had cleared to a sunny day, with a predicted high of 22 degrees. We've had great weather so far, coolish in the morning warming to pleasant later on.

Kicking off with a delicious multi-course breakfast, we had a bit of spare time before catching a 10:17 bus up into the hills to a cave and karst country. This was to be the first of the various walks we had planned on our trip. 

I've discovered I can source a perfectly satisfactory hot latte coffee from a coffee machine in a 7-Eleven or Lawson store for under $3!

The bus rolled up right on time and the cheerful bus driver confirmed we were on the right one when we asked. It is such a pleasure that everyone is so helpful and pleasant if we're unsure of what we're doing. Today, when we left our accommodation, four staff were on standby to pass us our outdoor shoes, inquire about our plans and then bow as we left. Bowing happens all the time, even by people driving by in their car.

It was lovely to head out into the hills past rice paddies, rural homes and forested hillslopes. The 50min ride took us to Akiyoshido. From here we intended to explore a large cave and then walk up into karst country. 

This far south the hills are quite tropical

The cave alone made the trip worthwhile. It's the largest in Japan. A raging torrent signalled the entrance to the limestone cavern. Right from the start we were captivated by the impressive cavern, carved by water over the eons. The torrent ran all through the cave.

Having a soft-freeze when you visit the caves is clearly compulsory

"Rice paddies" in the cave

Exiting the cave we walked up into the karst country, finding out that it's the largest karst tableland in Japan. Essentially it was very like Takaka Hill but perhaps a bit more overgrown with grass because no grazing animals are there. 

We think this is the first open grassland we have seen in our three visits to Japan. Typically all hillsides are in native trees, planted cypress (sugi), bamboo or the like. It extends right down to the valleys where intensive rice fields, buckwheat or other plants are cropped. Being so like New Zealand, this karst area wasn't all that special to us.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch amongst the outcrops and had plenty of time to walk back down to the bus. We'd done enough walking and didn't feel the need to do an extra 5km or so for little reason. Yesterday was a non-walk day and we still did 15km!

A surprise bonus on this trip has been the wonderful display of azaleas in bloom. I thought they might have finished flowering but many bushes are still in flower. The blooms are typically much larger than those we have at home, and they are a sensory delight. It's the deciduous azaleas that are out now - the small-leaved evergreen ones have finished blooming.

A couple of incidents today that are very revealing of the Japanese mindset. As we were waiting to cross a road early today, a man at the bus stop noticed that we'd been there a while, and he ran a good 70m each way to press the button on the crossing for us, presumably thinking we hadn't. So nice.

Then waiting for the bus back to Yuda Onsen, a pair of glasses was left on a seat when people lined up for the bus. I knew it had to be one of the first two people in the queue, so went over and pointed them out. They belonged to the first man in the queue. The funny thing was that the person second in the queue clearly knew they were his, but didn't say anything. Also another person had sat beside them and equally said nothing. Why? Perhaps they thought the owner would lose face, or maybe they were too embarrassed to say anything.

A third example is when we were checking out the next day. The maid asked "Have you left anything in the fridge?", when she clearly knew we had, but presumably didn't want to embarrass us if we'd forgotten.

2nd May - A Day in a Ryokan

On both our previous two trips we did a 5- or 6-day self-guided walk from Walk Japan, staying in rather nice ryokans (old-style Japanese guesthouses) or hotels. The meals were kaiseki-style with many small plates of delicious food. 

This visit we couldn't find a Walk Japan trip that suited us, so we planned our own. We wanted to experience ryokans again, so we are staying two nights in a ryokan at each end of the trip. A ryokan stay normally includes both breakfast and dinner. The cost of the ones we have chosen is less than one third of what you'd pay daily on the managed trips. Considering we get to stay in genuine historic buildings, get superb breakfasts, unbelievable dinners, have large rooms, comfy futons, and onsen baths for under $250 per person per night, we feel it is great value.

I'm going to try and describe what a day in a ryokan entails. For the foodies, I'm going to detail our meals too.

The buildings are timber-built, with lots of cedar woodwork, shoji screens, woven cane or grass, tatami mats and wooden floorboards. They may be one or more stories, and there are often a series of linked buildings of different ages and slightly different styles. Spaces are relatively small, and often tricky to find your way through!

Our room this time is actually a number of linked spaces separated by shoji screens. First is a small lobby with an area of timber floor, then a couple of tatami mats and some cupboards for clothes and the futons. Slippers are left at the timber lobby. Then comes the main room.

Our main room

Our yukata (robe), haori (overcoat), belts, toe socks and onsen bag.
The pink belt indicates the female outfit

The main room here is 7 tatami mats in size (rooms here are measured in tatami mats not m²) always with a little alcove off to one side with a flower arrangement and a painting, both of which change with the season. In the middle of the room is a low table with legless chairs. Beyond the main room is a little porch with a timber floor, and doors to a wee courtyard. Off the porch are the toilet and basin. It's not modern flash - everything is well-worn and showing its age a bit. We don't have a shower, as the complex has two onsens, one public, and one private for ryokan guests only. 

This morning we were up around 7, knowing the staff were coming to put away our futons at 7:30. We got dressed in our walking clothes, including socks, as bare feet on tatami mats is a terrible faux pas. 

Dead on the agreed 7:30 there was a knock at the door and two young staff soon had the room transformed from sleep mode to living mode. The futons live in a cupboard during the day and are brought out and put away daily. In the daytime we have the low table in the centre of our 7-tatami-mat main room. This table is where breakfast and dinner are served in this ryokan.

There was another knock on the door a bit before 8am. The two breakfast trays were brought in and the breakfast was laid out on the table for us. 

Setting up breakfast

None of the staff have much English, many have none, so communication is done via a little handheld translator they all carry. The main items in the meal were explained to us.

Breakfast, with an egg dish not shown.

From top left going clockwise we had fresh fruit, rice, pickled vegetables, roast eggplant, silky tofu (dipped in soy and eaten with dried seaweed, ginger, spring onions and more seaweed as a garnish), a slice of grilled smoked fish with fresh kombu seaweed and some unknown white food, more pickled vegetables at bottom left, and finally a delicious miso soup with tiny clams. Not shown is a soft poached egg in a smoky soup. The latter was particularly delicious and perfectly cooked. The meal was finished with hot green tea. 

All this is eaten with chopsticks, but for soups you lift the bowl and drink it directly. Picking up bowls to bring them closer to your mouth is fine. You always finish with the rice, flavouring it with some of the pickles if you like. Rice is considered very special and you shouldn't leave any. There's more rice in a big bowl in case you'd like extra. We dial 9 on the phone and the meal is cleared away shortly after.

We had a bus to catch for our walk today, so into the house slippers once we were off the tatami mats, and out to the entrance, where the staff had already retrieved our outdoor shoes for us to change into at the threshold. Outdoor shoes are never worn inside, nor are inside slippers worn on the tatami mats in the rooms. We are forever changing in and out of slippers; even the toilets have their own extra set of slippers.

As we headed off, there were four staff lined up at the door to wish us a good day with little bows. There's no hint of obsequiousness about this, just courtesy. We used to feel the bowing was a bit demeaning, but have come to realise that it is just courtesy and politeness. It is always done with good humour; the Japanese we meet are invariably good-humoured.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle as we headed down the driveway. We'd taken the key with us for the day and it seems they only have one key per room and they needed it to service the room!

Back in the afternoon at about 3:30 we were greeted by several staff and our shoes were hidden away until morning. In our room was a complete set of new robes, socks, etc despite us having hung yesterday's in the wardrobe. Cleanliness is most important here!

Having packed our packs for onwards sending to our next stay, since we are walking to the next location, we took them out to the lobby. A staff member had filled in the forms and arranged the transport takkyubin service for us without fuss, so the final signature and payment was soon done. 

This ryokan has a very lovely set of gardens, so we headed outdoors (change to outdoor slippers) and enjoyed the walk around. As we came back in, the transport company arrived to collect our bags. They picked them up about 4:30 pm, and they will be in Hagi tomorrow between 2 and 4pm. It's a great service that makes doing multi-day walks easier. The cost is around $25 per bag.

Back inside (change slippers again) and to our room to change into the fresh yukata robe, haori jacket and toe socks.

Into slippers again and off to the in-house onsen upstairs. Strip down, clothes into a basket or locker, and into the bathing room naked. You sit on a tiny plastic stool and use a bowl to sluice water over yourself before doing a full wash and rinse before you go near the hot pools themselves. The Japanese take this so seriously. They may take as long as 10 minutes scrubbing themselves all over with the little hand towel provided before they soak in the hot pools, then some do it all over again afterwards.

Back to our room in time for dinner at 6pm. This arrived on time with several trays to start with, and then a succession of visits with a new dish or dishes. She explained what the food was, using her electronic translator, all very cheerfully.

From top left: beef with fish eggs and chopped chives, fish eggs with broad beans and avocado, 3 types of sashimi with wasabi and trimmings

Clear soup with a quail egg, grilled fish with ginger shoot and lotus root

Tempura minced lotus root

Steamed fish with shiitake mushrooms and pickles

Karaage fish and green pepper with a lemon slice

Green melon, rice, pickles, green tea and miso soup with clams

Again at the end of the meal a quick call to 9 triggered the cleanup, followed by a couple of young men who packed away the table and chair backs (we sit at floor level but with some low backrests) and set up the futons for the night.

For us the ryokan stay is very special, exotic and a total treat.

1st May - Miyajima Island and Sansuien Ryokan, Yuda Onsen

A great day's travelling. We found ourselves awake close to our normal NZ time, so rather early in local time. The guest room had been very comfortable, and we'd slept well on the futons, as we normally do. We chose to get up and about so we could catch an early ferry to Miyajima Island, giving ourselves plenty of extra time there.

Last night we'd found that the JR ferry had crossings much earlier than the website had indicated, so we were able to get across using our JR Pass. We were on the island by 7:15, a ridiculously early hour for us. First sight to see was the huge torii gate in the sea off Itsukushima Shrine. This is one of the iconic  sights of Japan, and we had only added it to our itinerary when we realised that our train to Yamaguchi went past it. We were already looking for a stop between Narita and Yamaguchi. The torii really does look fabulous 200m out in the water, 16m tall, with pillars of 10m circumference, and impressively strong.

Next site was the Itsukushima Shrine itself. It was built in the 12th century, so one of the earlier shrines in Japan. It is a series of linked pavilions on small stilts above the high tide. It is clearly still in active use with many monks about. We saw one monk chanting a scripture on behalf of someone else - quite special. There are big stages for bugaku court dances. The complex had the feel of being built not for show, but for real purpose.

Itsukushima Shrine

Next up was the Daisho-in Temple. The big tourist draw cards on the island are first the gate, second the shrine, and third the temple, but we loved Daisho-in most. We were several hours ahead of the crowds, so we had the temple pretty much to ourselves. There were so many interesting things to see - hundreds of little woolly-hatted statues, a great pair of carved gate guardians, a cave of lights and statues, and many fascinating temples. The whole complex was set in beautiful gardens.

Daisho-in Temple grounds

Henjo Cave

Starting this visit to Japan, we felt we might have seen enough temples and shrines, but both the sites today were fascinating and as good as anywhere else we've seen.

We were getting peckish by now so had a delicious breakfast of egg, greens and pork that we'd picked up at a 7-Eleven convenience store for $4.50. each We hadn't really got into convenience-store food last trip, but we'd watched a video reviewing the Japanese author's 20 favourite 7-Eleven items, and realised that they really do have excellent choices at what is by NZ standards absurdly reasonable prices. The 3 dishes we've tried so far have been very good.

Breakfast

From Miyajima Island, it was back across in the ferry, a pickup of our bags from the lockers at the train station, then a trip on a local train to Hiroshima Station where we picked up a bento box each before boarding the shinkansen to Yamaguchi, and finally a one-stop trip from there to Yuda Onsen on another shinkansen.

The bento box was everything we'd been looking forward to - 9 compartments showcasing the best food of Hiroshima, including beef, fish, octopus, an oyster, conger eel, clams, chicken and more. Just a delight and, of course, beautifully presented. All that for under $NZ15.

We arrived a little early at our ryokan, Sansuien, so dropped our bags and set off by bus to a local temple, Rurikoji. The temple itself was nothing special, but its associated 5-level pagoda is considered one of Japan's top 3 pagodas along with 2 others we've seen in Kyoto and Nara. It really was very impressive and worth the trip to the temple complex to see it.

Arriving at Sansuien

Rurikoji Pagoda

Near the pagoda was the cemetery of the Mori clan. This clan has been very important throughout the last few thousand years as one of the very powerful daimyo clans. It was interesting to see something new like this. Each past daimyo had his own burial mound and it felt a special place.

Mori burial mounds on the right

Back by bus to the ryokan where we were formally greeted and offered tea and a local sweet. Sansuien is an historic ryokan isituated on the grounds of a former feudal lord's secondary dwelling. It has a large garden and natural hot spring baths. It's known for its old-style atmosphere, service, and delicious Tosa cuisine. We settled into our room before heading to one of the onsens attached to the ryokan.

Wearing Japanese evening wear - yukata and haori

For bathing this time we chose the connected (public) onsen a little above the ryokan, set in the hills. Rather good, with multiple pools to choose from and natural thermal spring water. We'll use the in-house onsen tomorrow. Onsen baths are normally separated between the sexes.

The onsen was fun. Of course we had to take our glasses off before we went there. Not that it made any difference, because the line-up of bottles with wash products in each little cubicle was obviously always going to be in Japanese. There was no way of knowing which was the body wash, shampoo, conditioner, perhaps moisturiser. I did manage to identify the exfoliant wash before I put it on my hair. In the end I put everything on and came out feeling exceedingly squeaky clean and very fresh! 

Then another highlight to finish the day - a kaiseki meal served in our room with 13 delightful dishes and tea. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. We'd been looking forward to this meal for months, knowing it would be superb, and indeed it was.

Conger eel, salad, sashimi (bream and squid), little delights, and a soup not shown

Vegetables, pork belly, fish and ginger root

Dessert, rice, miso soup, tempura, pickles, and green tea to finish

A fantastic day. We did wonder if the third trip to Japan might be too much, but absolutely not. We've seen some fascinating sights today and eaten some delightful food. All three meals today have been top notch. 

To bed after arranging a pickup for our main bags tomorrow so they arrive down in Hagi the same day we do, as we will be walking down from the hills with just daypacks.