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Tenkawa-mura – the river under heaven – is a village deep in the mountains of Nara prefecture. It’s south of Yoshino, and also is a staging post on the arduous Mount Omine pilgrimage.
Dorogawa hot spring
On a recent trip to Yoshino, a town in the south of Nara prefecture famous for its cherry blossoms, we managed to get to meet one of Japan’s ‘National Living Treasures’. Designated so because of their outstanding accomplishments in traditional arts and crafts, many are the from families that have carried on their profession down the generations.
We met Masayuki Fukunishi, who together with his father Hiroyuki Fukunishi (the National Living Treasure) run the Fukunishi Washi (Japanese paper) studio.
Fukunishi-san explained the process of making washi. From the growing of the plant, washing it, spreading out the pulp, and drying it using the old Yoshino method, on wooden boards.
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The Hongu-do trail is part of the network of trails known as the Kumano Kodo (Kumano Ancient Trail). It links the Grand Shrine of Kumano at Hongu with the sacred Ise shrine to the north.
Over three days I walked from Kumano city on the coast, through the remote mountains of Kumano to Hongu, and then finished off with a hike along the Nakahechi-do trail.
On the first day I passed an old couple preparing their paddy field for the planting. In some parts of Japan there are two plantings per year, and in some just one. As you might expect, there is a lot of manual labour involved in owning a rice field. First of all, there is the red tape. You can’t just grow rice, you need to have the correct paperwork. After that, there is a lot of maintenance throughout the year to keep it free of weeds, etc. Most people own rice paddies that are near to those of their neighbours, so if they don’t maintain them properly, it affects their neighbours too!
This trail is less walked and less well-known than the Nakahechi-do, so many locals asked where we were headed. They were always extremely polite and friendly.
From the coast we entered the mountainous Kumano forests. Small wayside shrines known as Oji are placed at regular spots.
The attention to detail is one thing I have always loved about Japan. Even the wood is neatly-stacked, almost like it will be entered into a design competition!
The terraced rice paddies at Maruyama are something special, and now a mini tourist spot in their own right. They were created over several hundred years.
The warm climate of Wakayama and Mie make it one of the best places in Japan to grow oranges or tangerines. Here they are being sold in a ‘mujin-hanbai’ stall (honesty box stall).
In February I visited the Nakahechi route again, as we do every year to check the condition of the trail and do our aisatsu (formal greetings) with the owners of the inns along the route.
It was my first time to stay at the newly-built Organic Hotel Kiri-no-sato Takahara. Constructed by Wakayama Prefecture, it is run by Jian Shino. He is from a local family and his father was involved with the development of nearby Shirahama Hot Spring on the coast (often referred to as Japan’s Little Hawaii).
The new inn has been beautifully built out of wood with huge beams arching over the central hall. Each guest room has a spectacular view of the valley and mountains beyond, and they have both Japanese and western style beds. The food, as the name suggests, is organic and locally-sourced.
Jian’s father was also a francophile, and when Jian was born in January, he took the French word for January – janvier – to make his name. Jian speaks English, Spanish and Chinese as well as his native Japanese.
Organic Hotel Kiri-no-sato Takahara
Jian Shino, the owner of Organic Hotel Kiri-no-sato Takahara
Corridor the guest rooms
Organic locally-grown ingredients are used in the beautifully-prepared meals
Following on from my research trip to Hagi and the Hagi-oukan trail I did a wonderful three-day walk along the coast of Wakayama and Mie prefectures last week.
View towards the coast from the Ohechi-do
Walking the old historic trails of Japan is our passion, and we often escape the confines of our office to explore ‘new’ trails.
The Hagi-oukan (萩往還) is a 3-day trail that links the town of Hagi on the Japan Sea coast with Yamaguchi city and Hofu to its south. Hagi is somewhat off-the-beaten-track, on the coast but surrounded by mountains and off the main trade routes in Japan. The trail was used up until the Meiji period to link hagi with the city of Yamaguchi and the coast of the Seto Inland Sea where the main east-west trade route was located.
Suisen-an is a ryokan in a remote valley north of Kyoto. Run by a couple who left Osaka some ten years ago, it was at first a project to restore an old ‘kominka’ farm house before it became a ryokan.
The ryokan is now run exclusively as a ‘one group per night’ ryokan. In effect it is a private ryokan, catering to one group of people from one to eight per night. The price rises the fewer people, and there are 2 rooms used for guest accommodations. However you have the complete accommodation to yourself in the evening, once the owners have finished clearing away your evening meal and retired to their separate house.
The beautifully-restored building has a sweeping view over the valley below; rice fields and a few farm buildings stand against the forested mountains beyond, which catch the evening sun.
The Kiso Valley lies about half-way between Tokyo and Kyoto, in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture. The Kiso Valley, oftened referred to in Japan as kiso-ji, or Kiso Way, was part of the Nakasendo, a medievel trail that lead between Tokyo and Kyoto. It was one (the other is the Tokaido Trail leading along the Pacific coast) of the trails used by merchants, nobles, and itinerant traders to travel through Japan up until the 19th century. Originally, there were 69 towns along the trail, referred to as ‘juku’, or ‘post towns’ in English. Each town had stables for horses, inns for the travellers, as well as a more elaborate accommodation for feudal lords known as daimyo who had to make the regular journey between their fiefdoms and Edo, as Tokyo was then called. It was part of the Shoguns’ system of rules and duties designed to keep the daimyos in their place. They had to spend six months in Edo each year, leaving their families in Edo as hostages when they returned. This system of ‘sankin kotai’ as well as other measures were very effective at stopping any revolts.
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