The Nakasendo Road
Please check my last couple entries-- I posted pics, plus big news of my newest upcoming project. Also, check telophase for further updates.
I don't think I've sufficiently explained how incredibly hot it has often been around here. When we went to the heavily forested Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, right in time for the Summer Festival, which is apparently celebrated by hundreds of people in large teams, all wearing their different vaguely traditional and incredibly colorful polyester outfits, then waving giant flags and dancing frenetically to pop songs onstage, it was so hot that I ate three shaved ices. The cicadas were so loud that it was like being at the front row of an electronica concert-- they almost drowned out the music.
So the other day we departed to Magome, an old rest stop along the Nakasendo Road, the old Tokaido Road between Tokyo and Kyoto. There is a crossroads sign with arrows pointing the way to Kyoto and the way to Edo. It was very hot. Very, very hot. I drank a lot of Pocari Sweat, the sports drink which is milky-colored, a bit salty, a bit chalky, a bit lemony, very slightly thicker than water, and whose label appetizingly explains that it is "the exact compostion of human body fluid."
That, plus Stephanie straining her ankle in Tokyo, is why we did not walk the old road from Magome to Tsumago, the next town over, but instead took a bus. I am certain it is very beautiful, and there is a waterfall that Miyamoto Musashi sat under or composed a poem near or about or something like that (but not bathed in, for he was notoriously averse to bathing)-- like George Washington, Miyamoto Musashi seems to have spent half his life rushing madly from location to location, if he really slept everyone that advertises his stay. But I think I would have gotten heatstroke. Maybe I:ll try again in autumn.
Magome is almost entirely composed of shops, inns, and houses on either side of an extremely steep cobblestone path winding up a hill. It is rather aggressively picturesque, with old-style wooden slats on every house, wooden water-wheels turning and water splashing, monstrously overfed koi gaping their jaws from tanks below orange poppies, evening-blue morning glories and hollow lantern-vines twining up trellises and fences of bamboo and black twine, and men baking fresh pastries stuffed with your choice of red bean paste, white bean paste with chopped boiled walnuts, pickled vegetables, curried meat, or eggplant.
It was a bitch to lug our suitcases, backpacks, and handbags up in that heat, let me tell you.
I don't think I've sufficiently explained how incredibly hot it has often been around here. When we went to the heavily forested Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, right in time for the Summer Festival, which is apparently celebrated by hundreds of people in large teams, all wearing their different vaguely traditional and incredibly colorful polyester outfits, then waving giant flags and dancing frenetically to pop songs onstage, it was so hot that I ate three shaved ices. The cicadas were so loud that it was like being at the front row of an electronica concert-- they almost drowned out the music.
So the other day we departed to Magome, an old rest stop along the Nakasendo Road, the old Tokaido Road between Tokyo and Kyoto. There is a crossroads sign with arrows pointing the way to Kyoto and the way to Edo. It was very hot. Very, very hot. I drank a lot of Pocari Sweat, the sports drink which is milky-colored, a bit salty, a bit chalky, a bit lemony, very slightly thicker than water, and whose label appetizingly explains that it is "the exact compostion of human body fluid."
That, plus Stephanie straining her ankle in Tokyo, is why we did not walk the old road from Magome to Tsumago, the next town over, but instead took a bus. I am certain it is very beautiful, and there is a waterfall that Miyamoto Musashi sat under or composed a poem near or about or something like that (but not bathed in, for he was notoriously averse to bathing)-- like George Washington, Miyamoto Musashi seems to have spent half his life rushing madly from location to location, if he really slept everyone that advertises his stay. But I think I would have gotten heatstroke. Maybe I:ll try again in autumn.
Magome is almost entirely composed of shops, inns, and houses on either side of an extremely steep cobblestone path winding up a hill. It is rather aggressively picturesque, with old-style wooden slats on every house, wooden water-wheels turning and water splashing, monstrously overfed koi gaping their jaws from tanks below orange poppies, evening-blue morning glories and hollow lantern-vines twining up trellises and fences of bamboo and black twine, and men baking fresh pastries stuffed with your choice of red bean paste, white bean paste with chopped boiled walnuts, pickled vegetables, curried meat, or eggplant.
It was a bitch to lug our suitcases, backpacks, and handbags up in that heat, let me tell you.