Charis: From Tokyo we caught a local train to Yugawara, a small town slightly south of Tokyo on the coast. We were headed for Goen No Mori, a vegan onsen nestled between the mountains and the sea. We arrived a smidge early, but were soon taken up to our room, ‘Asking to the Mountain’ to settle in before dinner.
The room had a classic tatami mat floor, rice paper doors and a lovely view towards the mountains to the north. We made up our futon beds, enjoyed a cup of tea and tried our hand at a couple of cranes with the origami paper provided before donning our yukata and heading down for dinner – a vegetable curry with an array of delicious sides, miso soup and rice. Derek also tried a glass of amakaze, a cultured drink a bit like kombucha but made with rice.
After dinner it was time for the onsen. We split up to head into the male and female baths and enjoyed the relaxing heat and burbling of the natural hot springs. I made it upstairs and just about got through a 10 minute meditation before crashing. Bliss.
Breakfast the next morning was smaller but similar to dinner with an array of little dishes. This time it included natto, a fermented whole-soybean food. I did manage to try a bean but the texture is, um, unique so unfortunately that dish was left fairly untouched. The flavour was somewhere around miso/nooch but with an edge a bit like the fermented coconut paste we tried in Bali, a bit too funky for my liking. There were some excellent pickled vegetables though.
Derek: Our next activity would be a day hike between two towns in the mountains, not something we wanted to have our full sized bags for. Japan has an excellent system for sending parcels and suitcases between cities and even hotels, often called Takkyubin or Tak-Q-Bin. We asked our hotel receptionist to help arrange the shipment and she went above and beyond, calling our next hotel in Kyoto as well as the shipping company, Yamoto, and filling in the paperwork for us. We had to take it to a nearby convenience store as the next hotel required deliveries to be pre-paid, but that was a simple job in the morning. Bye bags!
We had a little time before our train so walked to the Gosho Shrine. The first thing we saw entering the shrine is the 600 year old camphor tree and an 850 year old gingko. The shrine is dedicated to the Seven Lucky Gods which include Benzaiten, who we last saw in the Buddhist temple in Ueno park in Tokyo, and Bishamonten who brings wealth, the ability to act with courage, and good fortune. This meant that we’ve now visited Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto holy spaces dedicated to Benzaiten, also known as Saraswati! I obtained goshuin stamps of the Seven Gods and of the main shrine.
Our train trip the day before had been quite simple, using just the subway and a local train. The trip from Yugawara to Magome was a bit more fun. We started by accidentally boarding a Limited Express train rather than a local train (they left from the same platform within three minutes of each other…) and rode it a single stop north to Odwara where the local trainline and the new train line (shinkansen means “new main line”) join up. Then a high speed train brought us direct to Nagoya, a major city on the coast 150 miles to the south. We ran through the station and caught a limited express to Nakatsugawa in the mountains. Another 25 minutes on a bus brought us to the center of the post town of Magome Juku.
Magome Juku is the 43rd of 69 resting locations setup along the central mountain route (Nakasendō) between Tokyo and Kyoto around 1600 CE, though the town existed at least as early as 1200 CE. The town, and it’s adjacent post town Tsumago Juku were hit very hard when modern trains replaced the trade route. The villages had been preserved well mostly due to all the infrastructure needed to support travelers having been built hundreds of years ago and no other industry coming to require new construction. The residents realized around 1965 that this was an opportunity to become a tourism destination and established village preservation plans to protect the buildings and landscape and foster businesses to support tourism. This has proven highly successful and residents continue to live and work under the motto “Don’t sell, don’t rent, don’t destroy.” In 1976 Tsumago received the designation as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. Much more about their preservation efforts are available on their website.
We slept at Furusato Gakkou, a hostel which had been converted from a school building. The online photos and reviews honestly made me think it’d just be a few people in a small building, but actually there were beds for almost a hundred people and the building felt almost brand new. This was our first time staying in a bed similar to Japan’s capsule hotels and each of us had a fairly large fully enclosed bed in a grid of them along the wall.
We found dinner in town thanks to a recommendation from the front desk. Ontoya served sukiyaki, a hot pot noodle and vegetable dish, and gohei mochi as dessert. I particularly enjoyed these, possibly my favorite dessert in Japan! They’re rice partially mashed together around a stick then dipped in a sweet miso and walnut sauce and roasted. Really tasty, though a bit large for me.
We started out early the next morning and had the town entirely to ourselves for a while as we walked up the road and into the forest.
Turns out we weren’t actually alone, the mountains have black bears! We didn’t see any, but every few hundred meters along the trail were bells to ring and some people had bells attached to their backpacks.
After crossing the pass at the top of the hill there is a tea house staffed by volunteers from the towns. The Tateba Tea House was built as part of a checkpoint around 250 years ago and is all that remains. The entire inside of the ceiling and walls were soot blackened and it was a very welcome rest stop for us. Visitors were writing their home countries on a list at the front, we added Wales and had a great chat with another traveling couple.
Continuing down the hill we saw more shrines, streams, and a great views.
Charis: We made it to Tsumago Juku a little after noon and collapsed in a coffee shop to drink copious amounts of iced coffee. After a little bit of confusion with the bus timetable, we ended up getting a taxi down to the train station and headed onward to Kyoto, where we found our bags ready and waiting for us in our next hotel!
We chilled out for the rest of the day (literally, it was 33-37 degrees at peak heat during our time in Kyoto so the air-con in our hotel was essential!) but did head out later in the evening to check out Gion Soy Milk Ramen Uno Yokiko – a ramen restaurant with incredible vegan and gluten free ramen. I particularly liked their sansho (Japanese pepper) shaker and roasted sesame seed grinder!
We headed off to the edge of Kyoto to the north the following day to join Nariko for a nerikiri sweets workshop – making gorgeous delicate flower-shaped sweets from red bean paste, white bean paste and glutinous rice flour. She taught us a bit about how to make the various pastes as we folded and sculpted the doughs into chrysanthanums, peonies, and sakura (with the addition of a cute little bunny!). At the end of the class we got to sample our work with a cup of excellent matcha.
After the class we headed to Ramen Towzen, another delicious vegan ramen restaurant, which was also down the bottom of a very cute alleyway garden.
Derek: I had a few must-see places in Japan, Kaikado was one of them. This workshop has been hand crafting metal tea canisters since 1875 out of tin, copper, and brass. The metal is worked to a very fine tolerance making them virtually airtight and lining up perfectly. The polished metal ages over time, changing color and slightly developing a texture. On the top shelf you can see the tin going from shiny silver to a deep grey black which was truly beautiful in person. The brass ages to become a pink-brown and the copper a rich leathery chestnut. It can take 40, 30, and 10 years respectively for those to develop, and the final photo is of two of their original, 150 year old, tin containers. I bought one of the tin 120 gram size tea caddies and look forward to going to filling it with some fun chai in Cardiff. One day I hope to pick up the matching copper tin.
I wandered from there up to the main Nishiki shopping area, tried Nukazuke pickles made in a bed of rice bran, found a bunch of used clothing stores. Interestingly most of them had used American clothing, I think the vintage US workwear is a really “in” look.
Charis: We tried to get a head start on the heat and got up early the next day to have a look around Maruyama Park, though still managed to get hit pretty hard with the humidity! We wandered through some lovely streets with old fashioned fronts and took refuge in the Kiyomizu Sannenzaka Museum, a craft museum containing examples of a multitude of crafts from the Edo and Meiji eras. I think the most novel craft in here was cloisonné – a way of decorating items using thin metal wires to create shapes then filling those shapes with coloured enamel. Keen to try this in the future! We stopped for lunch at a little vegan spot – Silver Back Cafe – which featured a map showing where all of its visitors were from and a excellent parfait for dessert.
Down the hill was the the Kyoto Ceramic Center, showing an array of modern pottery, including two showcases upstairs where we got to talk to the creators! I particularly enjoyed the set of mugs with a mineral deposit base, which looked like something from Yellowstone!
Derek: A huge element of the entire trip, but particularly Japan, has been searching out the foods which we make and eat at home and seeing how they’re prepared by experts! Okonomiyaki has been an infrequent but repeating dish for us for a long time, but we’d never had it at a restaurant before. Gion Tanto was often recommended as the best place in Kyoto to get a vegan okonomiyaki and the venue did not disappoint. The first time we tried going there was a long line (always a good sign) and we decided to come back right at opening time. The Gion area is one of the historical districts with beautiful streets, buildings, and a stream flowing through it. Japan had around 80,000 Geisha, women who’s career is to be a talented hostess and entertainer, in the 1920s but now there are between one and two thousand, of which around 300 work in Kyoto in neighborhoods including Gion. We didn’t see any on their way to work and didn’t book a meeting, perhaps something for another trip.
Gion Tanto was great once we got in. There were a few tables, all traditional ones low to the ground with people sitting on pillows, and a bar area which we sat at. The tables and bar had hot plates and the prepared Okonomiayki was very tasty, though softer than expected and the sweet sauce on top was a little overpowering. One very cool trick – one of the pancakes included mochi, which had a stretchy, gooey consistency reminiscent of cheese. We’ve never tried using rice flour in vegan cheese, but we might have to try it out!
That’s enough photos and stories for now! We’re in Kyoto for a few more days, then on to Nara and Osaka. Catch you soon.