Suwa to Gujo Hachiman
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Up bright and early for a blast around the Venus Line before starting the day proper. It had cleared up overnight and while many roads were still damp, it was mostly dry now. There was still quite a bit of cloud cover about, but we climbed up and out of it into glorious sunshine and fantastic views of snow-tipped mountains poking out of the clouds in the distance.
Our first stop was Narai Juku, an Edo-period town that formed an important waypoint between Kyoto and ???. These days the government helps to pay for the upkeep of the traditional houses. Apart from one or two more modern houses, the main street looks fantastic and having gotten there quite early it was not so crowded. The town was also preparing for a local oiwei (festival) for tomorrow and people were busy putting up bunting and lanterns. We tried some traditional fried dumplings while walking around. After climbing up into the forest above the town to view the ruins of some family house (all that was left were some earthworks and a plaque..) it was almost lunchtime – so we had a curry-rice cooked after a 100-year-old recipe.
As we were concerned about the level of traffic on the main roads we reworked our onwards route onto more minor and windy roads. It turned out that we had not quite synced up as we ended up on a road which was blocked – something which Ben’s Google Maps shows, but my navi doesn’t.. so a bit more recalculations later and we were headed down another not-so-major road past a massive dam to reach our final destination – Gujo Hachiman. Due to all the route rejigging we ended up skipping the remaining waypoints which were originally planned for today. We also got to Gujo Hachiman much later than I had originally planned for – so no visiting the castle.
After checking in to our minshuku – which was way better than I had expected – we headed out to look around town. But first off to book a table for dinner at a restaurant which got recommended to us – and Ben had already shortlisted anyway. Unfortunately the restaurant couldn’t make a booking for us as they were full up for tonight.. but they did have space right now if we wanted it. So sacrificing some of the remaining daylight we had an early dinner of 2 different kinds of cooked chicken – a specialty of town. The one I chose was the one recommended by the proprietor and had some crispy garlic in the sauce, very delicious.
Following on from dinner we headed to Ben’s primary objective – a small waterway filled with koi. Overall the town has a lot of water flowing through it, there’s 2 rivers which join up at one end of town and plenty of artificial small waterways and streams. It’s extremely picturesque! I wanted to take a look at the castle and, after a roundabout walk we reached the road leading up to it – at which point Ben decided that he wasn’t really up for that much of a hike. So we split ways and I started up the mountain – taking some stairs through a temple as a shortcut and ending up on some rather unorthodox little paths through the forest shortcutting the road winding its way up to the castle.
I made it to the top with a tiny vestige of daylight remaining and took some pictures of the castle. There were some amazing viewpoints over the town and valley from the top too! I made my way around the back of the castle, poked about a bit since nobody was around anymore, and finally headed back down to town, this time by more orthodox roadways and paths..
At the minshuku I had a quick bath and now it’s time for bed.. fantastic falling asleep listening to the sound of rushing water (and Ben’s snoring..)
