Spectacular walks and a lesson in ryokan etiquette
Credit to Author: Dave Pottinger| Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2019 00:57:28 +0000
I don’t know who was more startled, me or the room attendant. As soon as she saw me, she anxiously pointed at my feet, making shocked exclamations in Japanese. I was walking on the woven tatami mats in my hiking shoes.
I leapt off the cherished mats like they were hot coals.
Afterward, it was all smiles and bows as welcome tea was poured – staying in a traditional Japanese inn, called a ryokan, comes with graceful service, peaceful traditions – and rules.
A couple enjoy the beauty of Shuzenji, a historic resort onsen on the Izu Peninsula in Japan.
A guest of Walk Japan, I was there for a guided walking tour of the spectacular Izu Peninsula region, carved out by 20 million years of volcanic activity. Just an hour away from Tokyo by train, many parts of the coastal region are part of the Izu Peninsula UNESCO Geopark, which sits south of Mount Fuji.
My first night was spent at Atagawa Onsen, the Japanese word for hot spring, prevalent in a country forged by volcanos. It also provided my first lesson in ryokan etiquette (no shoes on the tatami mats!).
At most traditional inns, shoes are confiscating at the front door, and guests are provided with slippers to wear during their stay. I was offered a yukata, a cotton kimono, with an obi (belt) and an optional haori (jacket) to wear to dinner and elsewhere during my stay.
An older Japanese innkeeper saw the terrible job that I’d done at tying my obi so she and her daughter-in-law went to work, getting the tuck just right and tying an elaborate bow at the back of my yukata, presenting me to the world like a beautifully wrapped Christmas package.
Meals at traditional Japanese inns, known as ryokans, are a feast in all ways, from the way the dishes are presented to the sheer number of courses.
Meals at the ryokans are eaten at long-low communal in yukata. Traditionally-dressed servers lit candles under hotpots and brought out the first course, starting with bamboo shoots with miso, yuba (a form of soybean) with wasabi, prawn paste cake, a sashimi course of tuna, great amberjack and squid, simmered moth fish and vegetables with sweet soya sauce and soba noodles. All served in a dizzying array of tiny, beautifully-decorated porcelain bowls or uniquely-shaped serving dishes in a kaleidoscope of colors.
And the dishes kept coming, including Japanese beef and vegetables grilled individually on a Mt. Fuji lava plate, rice with octopus and wild vegetables, Japanese pickles and kashiwa mochi (made with sweet red bean paste). It was a six-course meal before they served dessert.
Our first walking tour was down steep, narrow streets in a residential area dotted with orange trees and two-story houses facing the sea to reach the Jagosaki Nature Trail. We huffed and puffed up the very first steep inclines on the rugged coastal trail, which our guide Emiko assuring us were the hardest we’d encounter all week. With respect; that was a delightful lie.
Walking the Izu Peninsula in Japan offers up some stunning coastal views with its volcanic formations set against the Pacific.
But the payoff was our first sight of the Pacific, accentuated by a beautiful jagged coastline of bays and towering columnar-jointed rocks created by lava flows of some 4,000 years ago.
While much of our walking was coastal, we also headed into the interior of the peninsula, which has a spiny mountain region running through the middle.
Our second day was spent in the Amagi Highlands, bathed in forests of beech trees, roughly following the path of an ancient highway. Due to the rougher and sometimes steeper aspects to this section of the walk, a local guide was recruited to ensure we made it through safely. We picnicked at a lunch stop at Hatcho Pond, in an area called the Eye of Amagi.
Walking the Izu Peninsula in Japan.
This area with it’s climbs and steep descents along narrow cliff-side trails will host the mountain biking portion of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
This part of the tour also connected us one of the more famous aspects of the Izu Peninsula as it was inspiration for The Izu Dancer, a revered love story by Nobel prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata that has had six film adaptations.
The Amagi Tunnel, constructed from local stone in 1904, is a feature of the story, along with the famed Kawazu Seven Waterfalls, with a statue of the fictional lovers found at the final falls.The region is so reverential to the author that you travel by train from Tokyo to Izu on the Odoriko (Dancing Girl) line.
While some of our lunches were purchased before hitting the trail at one of the ubiquitous 7 Elevens in Japan, with perhaps the most amazingly fresh – and oft-Instagrammed – convenience store food on the planet, one day we stopped at a lovely café known for its handmade soba noodles served with wasabi grown just-over-yonder that we grated ourselves.
After leaving the beauty of the mountains, we returned to the coast, taking in sea caves, lighthouses and stunning white sand beaches, including Shirahama with its 1,200-year-old Shinto shrine and seaside torii gate protecting all from the crashing waves of the Pacific.
Our weeklong journey concluded at Shuzenji, a 160-year-old onsen resort considered an “important cultural property” by the Japanese government.
The writer was a guest of Walk Japan. No one from Walk Japan read or approved of this article before publication.