Day 9 - Kiso Fukushima to Narai

Today we walked the last leg of our Nakasendo Way journey, with a train to Yabuhara and then a hike from there to Narai (where we are staying tonight and so dumped our bags at the train station) and onwards to Kiso Hiraswa.

Gabby made me live life on the edge this morning by not letting us get the 8am shuttle bus for the 10-15 min drive back to town and only getting the one at 8.30am. Our train was at 8.55am, so you can imagine my distress at only being 10 mins early for something and not at least 40 mins early! Apparently, it is allowing me to grow as a person, or some such rubbish. I just think she is trying to drive me into an early grave from heart palpitations over potentially, maybe, having an ever so slight chance of, being late and missing the train!!!! The things I do for my friend! Spoiler, we didn't miss the train...

Anyways, breakfast was yet another Japanese feast that was just way to much food for anyone, but we soldiered on regardless.

The walk from Yabuhara took us over the Torii Pass (apparently, the most difficult pass for travellers to traverse back in the day, but not so bad these days). It was only about 3.5 kms up to the pass and then basically 3 kms to Narai and another 2.5 km to Hirasawa.

It was quite nippy going over the pass and we had some frost/snow/ice in patches on the road. No bears were encountered. Must have been our diligent ringing of the bear bells and the melodic tinkle of the one I wore on my pack, keeping them at bay.

We left Yabuhara about 9.30, got to Narai by about 12-ish, and stopped for coffee and cake and booked our accommodation for tomorrow night (the only day we didn't already have planned). We then took another 45mins to walk to Hirasawa and back, just along normal roads.

Narai has about a kilometre of traditional post-town style shops and houses running down the main street to the train station. We ended up walking its length 4 times over the afternoon, first on way to Hirasawa via the luggage lockers and then wandering up and down waiting for check in time at La Terra, our accommodation, which was not until 3.30 pm.

This place appears to be a small house converted to be a bespoke guest house that is on the expensive end of the places we have booked this trip. As a result it is very well appointed with lots of little luxuries including padded winter yukatas and fluffy winter pyjamas. Very swish. Unfortunately, we are struggling getting the Wizz bang electronic toilet to flush, so not so happy news on that front.

Dinner tonight was Italian influenced and a fantastic change from the Japanese style food we have been having. The chef has just finished training and did an excellent job of both the venison (for Gabby) and frittata (for me), along with leek potage, pumpkin risotto and walnut chocolate brownie for dessert. Yummy!!Weiterlesen