Day 62: Oiso to Hakone
Hours walked: 9:00-5:00
Distance walked: 26 km
Cumulative: 1,333 km
Our day was pretty cloudy! Hallelujah! It was 30 degrees by the time we started, but much easier to handle.
We got our first flat tire of the hike today: a razor-sharp thumbtack sitting on the road. It was bound to happen eventually, though, and wasn’t too hard to patch.
We decided to buy a spare inner tube in Odawara, in case our patch leaked. An apologetic bike mechanic didn’t have our size, but rang round and found someone who did. As we left, he said “We have a saying here, ‘yakoto-she’… you have to have some bad things happen to you for your trip to be great.” Jakob loved this idea, but when he googled it the closest thing he found was yakudoshi, a superstition that certain years are very inauspicious. The very unluckiest year turns out to be 42 for men - well well well…
Later we passed a fancy food hall and got two designer mochi: one thickly covered in so much sesame it looked like sand, and the other “inside out”, with the red bean paste on the outside and millet inside. Two minutes later we passed a bakery so Tamar scurried across the street and got a sweet potato loaf and a chocolate rye bun.
We started climbing into the hills of Hakone as dusk fell. Our campsite made us feel a bit awkward - it was almost deserted, full of mosquitoes, and the amenities seemed to be one port-a-potty and a sort of hellhole kitchen under a closed hair salon all alone on a mountain. But the owners came by at dark and we sorted it out. We put up our tents on plastic-covered rectangles, then managed dinner in under an hour tent-to-tent, which is rare.
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| Hiking up to abalone |
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| If only we could read all the ancient stones… |
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| Mountain leaves! |
Day 63: Hakone to Mishima
Hours walked: 7:00-5:00
Distance walked: 32 km (though Google Maps disagrees slightly)
Cumulative: 1,365 km
This was a very big day! It started with a long series of extremely steep uphills. Aurora struggled to catch her breath, Sophia flushed almost purple. Near the top of our climb we discovered that the other wheel had punctured - really!? Two flats in two days, after two months with zero? We lost half an hour patching it (Tova found the hole through some sort of sixth sense). After over three hours we’d only gone about 8 kilometers, maybe our slowest ever.
But our moods shot up when we reached the Amasake Tea House: this place is incredible! The same family, now into its 14th generation, has served the same recipes for over 400 years. We sat near a crackling fire in an ancient wooden room, enjoying delicious mochi, excellent hibiscus tea, refreshing green tea, shaved ice with fruit, and also spectacularly weird balls of yam starch that were as chewy as pink erasers. We felt like we’d traveled back in time, and left with cooler cheeks and warmer hearts.
We split up a few times, some enjoying the trails while others pushed the stroller up the twisting road. Jakob, Aurora ahd Tova encountered a giant snake with red and yellow stripes, at least a hundred feet long we’d say, right after a large creature crashed through the bushes nearby. We occasionally caught glimpses of the coast far below - we’d climbed a long way.
Once we reached Hakone town everything got easier. The Lawson convenience store had a brown sign, which freaked out Tova and Sophia to no end. A guy told us not to take the cuter, smaller road because a tree had fallen; we reluctantly took the highway out of politeness. We blazed downhill, and before we knew it Mishima was spread out beneath us, a sprawling grey city.
We made it to our hotel tired but happy, had delicious bread with cheese and eggs (and sashimi), did some laundry and that’s all she wrote for today.
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| 14th-generation mochi, yum! |
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| The remnants of the original Tokaido |
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| This whole area was one of the prettiest |
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| Amasake from outside |
Day 64: Mishima to Yoshiwara
Hours walked: 8:00-3:30
Distance walked: 22 km
Cumulative: 1,387 km
Tova’s summary of our day: “It was reallllly hot!” We walked along unlovely roads, plus one sunny trail, all day. Water ran low in an industrial area, it was surprisingly hard to find a tap amongst all the grungy warehouses. We all got ice cream cones (the fancy chocolate ones in blue wrappers) as a treat halfway through the hike.
Mount Fuji is just a day’s walk to our north, and dominates the horizon. It has a very distinctive volcano shape and we never get tired of looking at it - though the usual snowcap has melted in this heat wave.
Tamar strained her knee during yesterday’s hillfest, now it’s swollen and stiff. She iced it, and we got a brace and ibuprofen from the pharmacy…good thing we only have a couple of days left to walk before our midpoint break.
Tonight we stayed at the Toyoko Inn back in Mishima. We all enjoy camping, but there are no campsites in these coastal lowlands. Plus it’s boiling, as I maybe forgot to mention; so we have been lightening our moods and our wallets by staying in hotels more often than not lately.
We had Indian takeout for dinner - eating dal in a Japanese hotel room with five kids is squishy and delicate, but the beds stayed white and the food was pretty tasty.
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| Not the ideal place to be looking for water in 33 degree heat |
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| Levi making the most of our ice cream break |
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| Tova tucked herself away for some quiet reading once we reached the hotel |
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