TIFFANY!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

AND CONGRATULATIONS ON BECOMING A CA (Now you can focus on becoming a lawyer. Honestly, you're so smart it makes me sick!)

Magome to Tsumago: "It's like being in bed with your friends!"

When: December 2 & 3, 2007
Who: Me, Elspeth and Fil
Where: hiking from Magome to Tsumago
Notes: This is the hike I did with my parents in the summer. At that time it was sweltering and I decided then that I'd come back in the fall/winter and hike it again. Luckily, the weather was perfect on our hike day and the 8km went by pretty quickly.


MAGOME

Magome is a small traditional looking town. The main street is lined with small restaurants and omiyage shops. Tour buses usually drop off groups of older Japanese, who do some shopping, have lunch and then hop back in their buses and drive to Tsumago where they repeat the process. We were going to be strong and hike the distance to Tsumago, where we'd treat ourselves to a meal and night at a nice ryokan.


Of course we had to fuel up before setting out on our hike. The local specialty - soba noodles. My soba with mushrooms and grated daikon (below) was super delicious!

A tanuki chillin' with his sake bottle in front of a shop. I'm sorry if this picture scares you, Mom.

Even though we had just finished lunch, we managed to find room for steamed chestnut buns. Yummy.

Fil, enjoying his chestnut bun.

I have no idea what you make with dried daikon but I just loved how they looked hanging from the rafters of the Magome Post Office.

Fil and The Sick One at the beginning of the hiking trail.

All along the hiking route, houses were decorated with hanging persimmons (kaki). I must have taken about 100 pictures of them but they looked so pretty and autumn-ish that I couldn't resist.

Fil trying to shake evil mukade out of the bamboo and into my hair. Thanks Fil.

Most of the leaves had already fallen but the mountains were beautiful. We walked along chatting about everything and anything and stopped to take pictures or catch our breath (the first half of the hike is all uphill).

A not so successful self-portrait at a rest stop.

More drying stuff - beans (above) and more kaki (below)

We had the trail pretty much to ourselves. I think we only passed a few people. I'm starting to think that only crazy foreigners hike this trail...

Whenever we find an 'Elspeth broom' we MUST take a picture. Look how happy she looks! It's the little things in life...

We stopped at the 'brother and sister' waterfalls and took some 'Aaron' shots. I'm getting good at these (I even got the waterfall in!).

I'm pouting because Elspeth made fun of me for almost falling down those stairs. She soon found out that it was because the bottom step was broken, creating quite a drop. Thanks Elspeth.

Closer to the end of the trail we met a cute little puppy who ran WAY ahead of his owners. He joined us all the way to Tsumago, where we left him chasing cars (I am not kidding, I tried to get him to cross the road to prevent him from getting hit but he took off after a car instead. I pray that the happy little dog is still alive!)

WE MADE IT!! YEAH!!

TSUMAGO



We had the town to ourselves. A few older women wandered around, shopping but they soon disappeared. We walked down the traditional streets, looked in shops and bought some souvenirs. As the sun started to set we found out ryokan and headed indoors.


By the time the sun had gone down, it was FREEZING in Tsumago. Our ryokan was over 100 years old and did not have modern heating. Our room was outfitted with several heaters and the most wonderful winter invention, a kotatsu (a low table with a heater underneath, which is then covered with a thick blanket)! We sat for a while under the heated table and enjoyed being the only guests in the ryokan that night.


Dinner was yummy and composed of warm and homey winter foods. The specialty of the ryokan was carp - fresh from the pond in the garden which was located in the middle of the building. It was surprisingly delicious.

Of course, hot sake (both strong and sweet kinds) was required to help keep us warm and make us silly.

And because we were in the mountains, the evil zenmai made an appearance. Darn that fiddlehead/fern/cattail combination that is so popular.

When I came to Tsumago with my parents, we saw people walking at night with small electric lanterns. Luckily, our ryokan had them this time so we bundled up and headed out into the quiet streets.

We wandered the streets until we were frozen and then returned to our ryokan and the kotatsu in our room. The ryokan had a nice cedar bath and soon we were snuggled into our futons, which were heated with electric foot warmers (so heavenly).

The most wonderful piece of Japanese furniture - the kotatsu. I WILL DEFINITELY have one of these in my future house. It's heaven people. And according to Elspeth, its like, 'being in bed with your friends.'

Curious makes a reappearance! The little guy enjoyed warming his feet under the kotatsu and eating green tea covered coffee beans.

We ended up going to bed pretty early as it was warmer under the futons. Somehow we got on the topic of camp songs and we were off, singing as many as we could remember ('make new friends'). Later, Fil and Elspeth had a Disney song face-off (I failed miserably in this category).

During the night it poured and we woke up to find it cold and rainy. Check out the cool walkway connecting the main building to the bedrooms. The carp pond extended under the walkway.





We walked around Tsumago but soon the chilling rain started to get to us and we headed to the bus station. There, we were kicked out of the heated waiting room (yeah, rude!) and decided to take a taxi instead of waiting for the bus. That was a very good decision.

We hopped on the local train, where Fil got to witness the extreme shortness of Japanese school girls' skirts.

We then caught the high speed train back to Nagoya station, where we tried to get warm and checked out the Christmas displays in Tokyu Hands.

Want a longer neck? Just slip this baby over your head, pump it up and presto!

Aaahhh...and when I think of Christmas, I definitely think of dinosaurs and helicopters!

We took a quick look at the Nagoya Station illuminations (ahhh, the Japanese love their illuminations!) and then met Becky for dinner and dessert. All in all, it was a hilarious weekend!