Day 5 – A Wet Day on the Nakasendo

The rain has come! First, like clockwork, Henry woke us up at 4:45am. Our diets have been a bit odd at this hotel, since there are no stores around and we had to carry food from the previous day. So Henry’s dinner last night was an orange, 2 packets of peanut butter, a bread bun, and some instant ramen. This morning was half an apple, half a croissant, and some cream cheese danish.

We were out of our room by 7am, but had to wait for the 9am shuttle from the hotel back to Nagiso. So we took it in turns to go the onsen. I enjoyed alternating between the frigid plunge pool, the indoor onsen, and the outdoor onsen. It poured rain for these first few hours, and while it continued to rain on-and-off for the whole day, it wasn’t as bad as these first hours.

The hike today took us up and over Nenouetouge Pass, which separates Nagiso from Nojiri. At the end of the hike, we were to take a train from Nojiri to our hotel at Kiso Fukushima. We were hoping for the 2:50pm, but if we missed it, we’d have to wait until 5:50pm for the next train. So we made sure to keep a good pace and be efficient with our stops. The trail felt quite remote, going past rural houses and farms and on trail. We saw shrines. We saw bamboo forest. We saw a lizard. We leapfrogged some other Canadians a few times, who we eventually caught the same train with to Kiso Fukushima.

We arrived with an hour to spare, but thoroughly drenched, as the final half hour hiking included heavy rain. During the train ride we were all falling asleep (except Henry, who conveniently had his nap on Viki’s back and through our wait at the station).

45 minutes later we arrived in Kiso Fukushima and made our way to our hotel, Kiso Mikawaya. Our stay includes breakfast and dinner today, so we put in our dinner reservation for 6pm and each had a visit to the onsen before dinner. It wasn’t quite as nice today as yesterday, being a pool on the first floor, without natural light, but it’s still very nice to soak in after the long day hiking. Dinner was great. We had a bunch of little dishes and we didn’t know what any of them were except the main, which was a local favourite that translates to “deep fried chicken”. There was also some yam, some kind of mushroom and vegetables, a matcha custard type dessert, a fish-potato puree kind of thing, some picked vegetable, miso soup, and rice. Henry caused a right ruckus, throwing rice everywhere.

Now we’re back to our room and in bed by 8:30pm. We have a nice view over the river and will go to sleep listening to it flow.