This post is about the last two days of our journey in Japan. On day 6, we spent the rest of the day in Magome and then travelled to the Japanese countryside. Today (day 7), we just relaxed a lot.

Day 6 - Magome

Yesterday, we started the day in Magome-Juku. The original plan was to catch a bus in the next larger city, Nakatsugawa and then go to the countryside from there. But as we realised, this bus also goes through Magome-Juku… So we rebooked the bus from Magome-Juku leaving at 3 PM. So we had to pass the day in Magome somehow. We had a great coffee at Hillbilly Coffe (an actual Hipster Coffee Place in a historic town… how great is that?) which served me one of the best cappucinos I ever had.

Check out an interactive Map of the places we visited here. I will update this map as we continue our Journey. This post is about Day 6 and 7.

Compared to the days before, there were a lot more people in the Magome-Juku. This is, because Golden Week started on the 3rd of May (I was wrongly writing that it started prior to that). With that many people, Magome-Juku was a lot less fun.
By the way, the blue thing you see in the picture above (left side of the picture) is some kind of Pokémon Go Stop. The whole town of Magome had signs for Pokémon Go which kind of ruined the quaint vibe a bit. So we decided to check out the parts of Magome-Juku that were not overrun by tourists. Just by leaving the main street and walking 200 Metres, you end up in places like this were you cannot see a tourist at all. Pretty nice! By the way: This is a bus stop in Magome-Juku! There were a lot of people with dogs in Magome-Juku and they were all wearing some kind of costume or hats… I don't know what that was about but it was quite fun.

We had a Kaiseki-Lunch at one of the best Japanese Restaurants I ever set foot in in Magome-Juku, Haginoya. We were seated in a private room and were served five courses. Everyting was sourced locally and tasted great (I'll spare you the details of each course). And at the end we paid around 5000 yen for two people which is equivalent to around 34 €. Amazing deal for the money!

We caught the bus, which took us to Sawando where we had booked the Airbnb for the night. After about 1.5 hours, we arrived in Sawando. The town of Sawando is nothing special. A bit of industry, some restaurants and a highway to the towns nearby. We walked 15 Minutes from the bus stop to our Airbnb which was a bit up the hill and away from the busyness of the road and the town. The image above captures the spirit of the way to the Airbnb.

We checked into the Airbnb and walked back to Sawando Center to grab Dinner.

Day 7 – Sawando

We relaxed a lot today.

The cottage that we stayed in was in a beautiful garden. There even was a tiny pond where some frogs live. We could hear the frogs croaking at night which was relaxing. The Airbnb was very small but big enough for two people two comfortably live/sleep in. It was so nice to wake up and see a surrounding like this. In the morning, I went to a 7-Eleven in Sawando to get breakfast – Pancakes with maple Syrup and Mini Croissants. Sawando does not offer great sights and so I took pictures of the everyday life of a small town in Japan. Here you can see the entrance of an industrial builduing close to the 7-Eleven that I walked to. The way up the mountain to the Airbnb looks like this and is just so lovely. The Airbnb we stayed at has a Shiba Inu Dog called Momo-Chan. At noon, we took Momo-Chan on a walk to a café nearby. She behaved amazingly well for being on a walk with us for the first time. I just love her friendly face! In the japanese countryside, you can find a lot of abandoned buildings and vehicles. They can make for some pretty interesting shots like the one above. The mountainscape of the Japanese Alps around Sawando is very nice to look at. We passed by a small shop on our way back from the walk and saw this small shop which sold snacks. The owner, an elderly woman tried to communicate somewhat successfully but couldn't get her point accros. She fetched her daughter who is an English teacher to translate. Daughter and Mother don't see many tourists. Sawando is not in any guide books and does not have any (!) hotels. Both daughter and mother were totally sweet. The daughter is also an artist and showed us her pastel paintings. We bought some postcards to send back to Germany. Some flowers in a window and a mirror in front of the shop described above.

And… that was pretty much the seventh day in Japan. Other than that we washed our clothes, organised stuff, called back home and enjoyed the sunlight and the warmth that the countryside has to offer.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day as we will travel about 6 hours in total with 5 differrent trains to reach the next destination which is also in a Japanese village but even more remote than Sawando.
The things you do to avoid the masses of tourists at Golden Week…