To the End

From Odawara to Nihonbashi along the Tokaido old road

The night was spent with the muffled sounds of domestic life from the backs of houses on one side — chinks of crockery, occasional voices, toilets flushed — and on the other, the constant roar and rubbery thumping sounds of traffic on the coastal expressway.

The memorial stone hid me from anyone passing. But what if a dog led their walker round the back of the stone? What if some local teenagers decided to have a beer drinking and smoking session here?

But eventually, I was too tired to care and I slept for a while.

When I woke, the traffic on Route One was noticeably busier. In the humidity, the inside of my bivvy bag seemed to have collected all the moisture from my breath, leaving me, and everything in the bag, damp and sticky.

I ate breakfast on a beach of two-tone grey, like the camouflage pattern of a fighter jet, and watched the waves churn the fine pebbles. People were already fishing at the end of a concrete jetty. I’d lost track of the days. Was it the weekend?

For a long time, the old Tokaido was Route One. The expressway was balanced right on the coast, the railway closer to the mountains, and Route One in the middle. The high mountains around Hakone dropped away to the south-west. Then the smaller mountains near the coast disappeared and the huge sprawl of Tokyo began.

Oiso on the coast as the Tokaido begins to turn inland across the Kanto plain

Three things happen as you get closer to Tokyo. The high school girls’ skirts get shorter, their make-up gets thicker, and the ekimae (in front of the station) culture gets stronger. In Kansai region, this ekimae culture of snack bars, eikaiwa (English conversation) schools and liquor stores catering to the needs of the traditional salaryman commuter seems to have partially died away. In the Tokyo area, this tradition lives on, it was like jumping back 15 years to when I first came to Japan.

The Tokaido seemed to be on Route One continuously now. The only thing of note I passed was the Toto factory. Toto makes the now-famous multi-functional toilets with arse-rinsing and drying among their many talents.

Just past this, I broke off to the station at Tsujido to find my AirBnB in Tachikawa. I hadn’t realised how far Tachikawa was from the Tokaido route. As long as it was somewhere in Tokyo, and it was cheap, I hadn’t minded when I made the booking. Tachikawa turned out to be right on the western edge of Tokyo, a long way north of where I wanted to be.

From Tachikawa station, it was another bus ride to get to the AirBnB. As I tried to figure out which bus to get, a group of young guys asked me if I needed help in good English.

“Yes, could you tell me which bus I need for Shibasaki?”

“Ah, sorry, I don’t.”

“OK”, I returned to using my phone to figure out the correct bus route.

“You don’t need our help anymore if we don’t know the bus for Shibasaki?”

“No, sorry, I don’t!” I’d just found the right bus number.

But they saw the funny side of it and laughed.

The AirBnB owner met me at the bus stop to guide me to the house and hand over the keys. Even here in the suburbs of Tokyo, there were akiya abandoned houses. Just two doors down from the AirBnB.

“The neighbours are old. Please be quiet when you stay here,” the AirBnB owner told me. I was so tired, quiet was exactly what I wanted.

“I’ll be walking every day I’m staying here, so I’ll be super quiet,” I said.

The dog turd outside the front door wasn’t promising. The inside of the house was covered with dog hair, which soon matted to my socks and stuck to the band aids that still covered parts of the soles of my feet.

But it was reasonably comfortable, and I slept well that night after watching a documentary on an endurance run in the back-country of Hyogo prefecture — my walking travails seemed tame in comparison.

After a long commute, I was back on the Tokaido the next day. Suburbs. The highlight of which was the Mercian factory. I know Mercian because it makes the low-to-mid-budget wines and ciders (English variety, not American, known by the French term cidre, シードル in Japanese) that dominate many a supermarket shelf. I’d always wondered how the company got its name, was it anything to do with the old English kingdom of Mercia? But why would anyone call a wine after that? Birmingham and the West Midlands of England aren’t exactly famous for their wine production after all.

The company began as Dai-Nihon Yamanashi Budoushu-Gaisha (Greater Japan Yamanashi Wine Company), in 1877. The Mercian label wasn’t launched until 1949. The company’s aim was to produce Japanese wine with Japanese grapes, although Japan’s humid climate made it difficult to grow grapes easily. Actually, there’s no connection with the old English kingdom, according to their website, it’s a combination of merci, French for thank you, and an, which apparently means person in… French? I haven’t studied French since I was 18, so I may have missed something, but I’m pretty sure the French for person is personne. Perhaps they mean un for one (male person) and the katakana rendered into romaji (roman letters) is “an”?

Suburbs again. Behind the Bridgestone Tyre factory, the Tokaido momentarily returned to looking older, but then it was back to modern suburbs. Another older-looking section of the Tokaido led through the middle of an enormous grid-plan housing estate. Then suburbs again, but incrementally, they were becoming denser, taller, more Tokyoite although I was still in Yokohama.

I took the train home from Yokohama station. Just one more day, and I could do this!

The next day though, I decided to take a break from the Tokaido and make a quick trip to Kawagoe, a town in neighbouring Saitama prefecture that captures the feel of Edo-era Tokyo, even though it’s not actually in Tokyo itself.

Kawagoe (Little Edo) on the outskirts of Tokyo, with a remarkably English-looking chapel and top notch shaved ice

The final day on the Tokaido arrived. This was actually it! I crossed the Tsurumi River, then the Tama River, and now I was in Tokyo proper. The buildings were getting even taller.

Travellers toiling up the hill into Kanagawa and being harassed by “pull-women” trying to “entice” them into the tea-houses. The sea is much farther away from the Tokaido now after centuries of land-reclaimation efforts.

The build up to the centre of Tokyo quickened my pulse — there was no sign of the old Tokaido, but it didn’t matter. I was interested in my surroundings again. There were so many things to photograph — glimpses of Tokyo Tower, new construction sites, canals squeezed under overpasses.

From Shinagawa heading towards Nihonbashi

A cut through a railway viaduct arch brought a sudden jolt back from the surrounding clean glass frontages — an old man, half-naked, bearded, like an Indian beggar, rolled around on tattered cardboard.

Ginza Area

Then the smart shops of Ginza. Fashion brands — Versace, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, people walking all over the street, east Asian tourists everywhere, small dogs in prams, then, finally I saw Nihonbashi.

Nihonbashi Bridge Today

The bridge that marks the start of the Tokaido is stacked beneath a much larger expressway bridge, fighting with its ornate stonework and lantern-posts against the pale blue-grey-green of the canal-covering dragon above it. Not only is this the start-point of the Tokaido, but it’s considered to be the start-point of the entire road network of Japan.

Nihonbashi in the Edo Era. A daimyo procession crosses the bridge led by the sakibakomochi (lead box carriers), then the shirokumayarimochi (white bear spear carriers), then the shirotoriyarimochi (white bird spear carriers) and finally, some juushi (yeomen) just appearing. Vegetable and fish sellers crowd the left side of the bridge entrance.

I took photos from one end, then the other. I felt elated — I thought I might feel disappointed by the end of this walk. But the suburbs and Fuji City had put paid to that! I was looking forward to new walks, when the weather would be cooler, and the scenery and route would be more my choice.