Nature
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58. to 63. Sekigahara to Toriimoto
This day crossed two minor mountain passes, the Imasu pass and the Surihara pass. Both were pretty tame compared to the backbreaking hikes across for instance the Usui or the Wada passes, but at least the Imasu pass was a… …more
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39. to 41. Suhara to Midono
I rained *a lot* during the night when I stayed in the minshuku in Suhara-juku. My weather app even sent me flood warnings for the area… But a lot of rain brings another interesting change except for making everything wet.… …more
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37. to 39. Fukushima to Suhara
This day was a sometimes fantastic hike, and at other times rather hard on the psyche. I started off in Kiso-Fukushima, hiked via Agematsu-juku and ended up in Suhara-juku at the end of the day. On the positive side of… …more
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Moar wildlife
The hike today followed the Early Nakasendō instead of the “normal old Nakasendō”. There will be a post about that as well as usual, also explaining what the Early Nakasendō actually is. But these wild stretches of mountain roads I… …more
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29. The Wada pass
The big one. The length of this leg is about 22 kilometres, but the pass itself is a gruelling hike uphill from Wada-shuku for almost 800 metres, and then down a bit more than 800 metres, reaching the post town… …more
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17. and 18. Across the Usui pass
There isn’t just one highlight to this day’s hiking, but rather a lot! The most obvious one is the part that crosses the Usui pass, but there were a lot of other really cool things to see along the rest… …more
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More birbs
Today I hiked from Takasaki, which I’ll talk about in a later post, but part of the path followed the Usui river, and boy did it present a lot of birds! I didn’t manage to catch even a tenth of… …more
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Wildlife so far
For all the talk of bears and monkeys in an earlier post, I have seen nothing of them so far. NOTHING! On the other hand, I’ve only been hiking through one of the largest cities on Earth, with only hints… …more
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Wildlife along the Nakasendō
Japan is among other things known for the northern-most living monkey in the world, the Japanese macaque, but there are a lot of other animals that you can hope to encounter, or in some cases that you want to avoid… …more
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Geography of the path
Along the way, The Nakasendō meanders across a varied landscape. It passes through deep forests, modern cityscapes, over steep mountain passes, and across countless rivers. All these various parts come with their own set of challenges. In order to summarise… …more