It was wonderful sleeping on a raised platform for once, no
condensation! I woke up and everything in the tent was bone dry. I didn’t want
to be caught sleeping in a shrine so I was up at 5am, by half past I had drank
two cups of coffee and a bowl of miso, and eaten the four pastries I bought at
the shop the day before. I was ready to hit the road by half six, I think my
fastest time yet.
The morning was mostly windy mountain roads:
I found myself
stepping aside for cars on a regular basis, not because Japanese drivers don’t
try and give you as wide a berth as they can, but rather because the roads are
so narrow sometimes that there is only enough room for one car, with no sidewalk to speak of. At one point I walked around a corner and
there was an old man sitting in a vegetable field with his legs sprawled out in
front of him digging a hole between them (I kid you not). I shouted "good morning" to him and I
guess he hadn’t noticed me because I almost gave him a heart attack, then when he
realised I was a foreigner it was a double shock! Poor fellow!
It turns out they had found relics in the area dating back
to the Jomon period (12,000BC to 300BC). It's funny, I now find myself assessing spots for their camping/sleeping potential. I have an imaginary scale in my head that rates any location based on a number of factors, such as convenience, secludedness, shelter from wind/rain, and most importantly the gut feeling I get about the place. If I get a strange feeling from a place, even if it ticks all the other boxes, I just won't sleep there. With this said, this prehistoric hut would have been perfect for sleeping in, no tent
needed, just put my sleeping mat down and I’d be set. I always seem to find
good spots to sleep in the middle of the day rather than the end of it. It’s a
shame; I really would have liked to sleep in a prehistoric dwelling for a night.
I moved further down the mountain road and came to the town
of Kunma, and saw this guy munching on a tree outside a house:
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| He bolted right after I took the photo |
A few hundred metres down the road there was a “michi no eki”, literally translated into “road
station.” I got a good meal with all you could drink Shizuoka green tea:
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| It was great to have a proper meal after a few days |
After finishing up I walked a few kilometres up the road and found a quiet part of the river a few to have a wash in. I noticed my right toenail is looking unhealthier and getting closer and closer to coming off:
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| Eww |
I climbed a bit more and at some point I crossed over into
the prefecture of Aichii, and as soon as I got into the first village I noticed
something different, instead of tea they were growing rice:
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| Wet rice cultivation method |
The trail took me through the town of Suyama, then a forrest, and then finally arriving at a very popular waterfall:
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| I have no idea what it is called, but it is just outside the town of Suyama in Aichii |
There was a perfect place to sleep next to this waterfall, a
fully enclosed room with nothing in it. I was sitting on the benches outside getting ready to
write this blog entry when four guys came around the corner with some sort of board game
and all went into the hut, sat down and started playing… It looked like they were going to be there for a while, so I decided to keep walking and find another spot.
And so I kept walking, breaking my distance record and doing
over 36kms according to my GPS. Go me. Thus, I arrived in the town of Ono a day early than I had planned, I found some
internet at the convenience store, and booked a hotel in the nearby town of
Toyohashi for tomorrow. I can't find any places to sleep around here so I think I will catch the train into the city, set up my tent in a park and try for an early check-in in the morning.
Distance: 34.6km (according to google)
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