Many visitors to Nagoya would routinely try to find time for a day trip to the area’s post towns that lie along the famous Nakasendo trail, an ancient samurai trail that connected the old city of Edo (Tokyo today) to Kyoto during the 17th century. There are 69 post towns that lie along the 540 kilometer trail, and one of the most popular segments of the trail for visitors to try when in Nagoya is the 7.6km segment between the Magome and Tsumago post towns. The Magome post town was our third stop of in this day trip, and the next adjacent post town is Tsumago that we’d also be visiting later.
We spent about two hours in Magome, including tucking into a soba restaurant for lunch. The small town was pretty busy with numerous restaurants, cafes, souvenir and craft shops that line both sides of the cobblestone path. The path itself is also fairly steep and upslope and ends at the top of a small hill that offers a great view of the surrounding area. The path is still quite doable though and you’d likely be able to cover the stretch is less than 10 minutes.
Continued in the next post: Tsumago-juku, our last stop for this day tour.