Over Hakone

From Mishima to Odawara along the Tokaido Old Road

I woke up with a start in the half-light when the roar of something revving its engine on the highway loop passed overhead. I looked instinctively towards the bamboo grove, but nothing stirred there and it was safely penned in behind a chainlink fence. I stretched, packed and started to look for a vending machine cafe au lait.

I passed through a tunnel of trees, away from the intersection. Two vending machines, two choices of cafe au lait, two very similar prices. I went for the cheaper one, downed the sweet milky substance, posted it through one of the circular holes into its correct plastic bin. Now, I needed breakfast.

A ramen restaurant, but closed at this time in the morning. The Tokaido branched off the road and up a dirt path. There were proper signposts now and information boards. When people say they’ve done the Tokaido, this is what they mean, they’ve walked this bit over Hakone—overhanging trees, flagstones, careful signposting. Of course, they haven’t really done the Tokaido—they haven’t slogged through endless suburbs, slept in dubious locations and shuffled through the industrial backwater of Fuji City (yeah, I’m never going to forgive that place).

A long flight of stairs, the high chainlink of the back of an elementary school, the striped squares of tea fields on the other side of the valley, up and up and up, but no breakfast. I pass a couple going the other way, with the classic arm swing of Japanese walkers. Sections are now crazy-paved with ancient stone, endlessly up, and still no breakfast. Past some skywalk thing that looks like a suspension bridge. There’s a big car park, surely there’s a chance of breakfast here? No, it’s too early.

The earth of the bare fields between the dark green of the tea plantations is a deep orange-brown. I pass Yamanaka castle ruins, but there’s no time to stop, because, yes, I really want breakfast. The Tokaido meanders through tall cedar trees, meeting the road, leaving the road, then meeting it again. The road, I belatedly realise, is actually Route One.

Heading up the Tokaido path to Hakone—proper Tokaido

At the top of Hakone Pass, there’s a truck stop. Toilets, somewhere to sit a while, but amazingly, no restaurant, except a yakiniku place that doesn’t open for another two hours. It’s not taken me anywhere near as long as I thought to get here. I thought I would be in Hakone itself by evening, I was worrying where I could stealth camp there. Now, I realised I would be there by lunchtime.

Something that had been a restaurant, but was now overgrown, with bushes growing across its windows mocked me as I left. The old Tokaido road dropped down towards Lake Ashi. And now I began to see them—European tourists, in ones and twos and small family groups. So blonde, so blue-eyed, so different, I felt like I was back in Europe for the summer.

Hiroshige’s impression of a daimyo procession climbing the steep slopes beyond Hakone and Lake Ashi, Mount Fuji is visible on the left.

The Hakone Ekiden is a kind of marathon relay that dominates Japanese TV for two days after the New Year. It’s a welcome reprieve from Japan’s New Year’s night TV which is a choice between an interminable singing competition between a red and white team, or watching a bunch of comedians whack each other’s arse. The course of the Hakone Ekiden runs from Tokyo to Hakone, roughly along the Tokaido route. Please read the story below at Tokyo Calling (@GIANNISIMONE) for more information about the Hakone Ekiden!

Run for glory

Here in Hakone, there’s a museum dedicated to the Hakone Ekiden, but I couldn’t see how a whole museum dedicated to a running race could be that interesting, so I went to the Hakone Checkpoint instead. On the way, I finally found a fittingly German-style restaurant. The number of foreign tourists in Hakone meant that my aura of “I’ve-been-in-Japan-a-long-time” didn’t transmit, and I was back to being spoken to like a retarded five-year-old. I took my time eating a brunch of sweet curry as the restaurant was suddenly swarmed by a crowd of Chinese tourists. Normally, I would have been irritated, but I was too hungry to care.

The checkpoint was slightly disappointing. Touristy, slightly on the tacky side, I didn’t bother paying to see the side rooms and instead walked through the middle avoiding the calls of the ticket salesmen.

The Hakone Checkpoint

The park beyond was well-manicured and I wandered around, bought an ice-cream, and discovered that my teeth had become less sensitive with age, and I no longer needed to eat it with a strange bite-between-tongue-and-teeth-covering-upper-lip as I have since childhood. The benefits of aging!

Hakone

I left Hakone behind, back up into cedar forest and European tourists. The afternoon sunlight dappled through the trees. I crossed rivers, passed through small villages, buying an obligatory ginger ale from a vending machine, and thought about what greeting was appropriate for the European tourists passing the other way back to Hakone. Now, it was all downhill. I was happy, my feet felt great, and they loved the variety of surface textures after endless road walking.

Thatched roof of an old tea house on the Tokaido from Hakone to Odawara

But here was my old friend Route One again winding his (he’s definitely masculine) way down into the onsen resort of Hakone-Yumoto. I stopped in a small park outside a temple, while the bell tolled and ate a couple of onigiri I had bought in Hakone.

The route down from Hakone to Odawara

The light was fading as I made it down into Odawara. Now, I had to worry about finding somewhere to sleep for the last time on the Tokaido. From tomorrow night, I would be able to sleep in an AirBnB I had found in Tokyo. But now, I realised my usual strategy of sleeping on riversides wasn’t going to cut it at the Haya river. It was too narrow, with no riverside park. Highway intersection no-man’s land wasn’t feasible either, although Route One met the coastal highway here, it did so with a tightness that left no room for grassy spaces.

The beach? How high would the tide rise? I had no idea—too risky. But tucked just underneath Route One as it ran alongside the sea was a kind of long, narrow park. I hid myself behind a large stone monument and waited for morning.