After Fukuoka, we went to the main event of our trip, our walk. It was a self guided walk operated by a company called Walk Japan, who were great - they gave us a route booklet, and organised accomodation as well as moving our big backpacks between accomodations so we only had to carry day packs. The walk that we’d chosen was their 6 day Kunasaki Wayfarer, around the Kunasaki Peninsular, since it was the only one they were running in December, but they also offer guided ones further north as well in other seasons. Our walk was amazing, with everything organised well - would highly reccomend.

walkjapan.com

Our walk stated in Usa, a town to the east of Fukuoka, so we caught the Shinkansen for about twenty minutes up to Kokura, before taking the Sonic limited express to Usa. Since it was a limited express, we’d expected the town to be decently large, and I believe it is — but the train station was quite far out of the main area of town, and it really did feel like the middle of nowhere. Apart from the station, in this area there was pretty much nothing — a few closed shops near the train line, a currently Onepiece themed chain restaraunt called Joyfull that we went to, and apart from that - just farms, as far as we could see.

We’d been organised to be picked up at the train station in Usa at about 15:00, but had arrived earlier so that we could have a walk around the place after lunch. It felt like the kind of place that a weird arthouse SBS film might be set — something called “People like us”, or “We live here”. Around the station, the land was taken up by small rice farms, beautifully terraced into sections and tended with tiny tractors. Each house may have 5 or so of these terraced fields to farm, which would probably add up to no more than a hectare or two.

We walked along a bank next to a little river, between the fields and slightly out of town.

Eventually, after walking for a bit, we went back to the station and met the other people on our tour — a French and British couple, and a mum and two college age kids from San Francisco. A van picked us up to take us to our first accomodation, which we would be staying at for two nights - a small traditional ryokan owned and operated by the monks of the neighboring temple. It was on the edge of a bamboo forest, with a beautiful small spring-fed onsen and quiet courtyards. The food at this place, in particular, was beautiful. The first night, they served an eight course meal that consisted of:

1. Large assortment of small pickles, preserves, etc
2. Little serving of mushroom soup
3. Egg and mushroom custard
4. Crunchy round pastry? (I really couldn’t tell any more than that)
5. Big Daikon radish cke
6. Small seared portion of beef, with ginger rice and yuzu sweets
7. Soba noodles
8. Some form of frosty ice cream with tea

The next day, we properly started walking. The people at the accomodation dropped us off at the Kumano Magaibutsu, a temple with two huge buddha relief carvings. However, the temple was shut that day, so we just walked without stopping there. The weather was amazing (in fact, it was along the whole walk, with only one lightly raining day). The temperature would have been maybe 10-15°C - warm enough to not need any serious warm clothes, but cool enough to keep you awake. We walked past streams, and visited various temples and Shinto shrines along the way. Occasionally, we would pass through a little town, where a lot of the houses would be abandoned. It seems like this is a very depopulated area, with a lot of younger people leaving for bigger cities.

The cat came to our door and just wouldn’t stop asking to be let in. It seemed to take a liking to me, and was rather hard to get off my lap when I wanted to stop reading

It’s hard to recall exactly which things we saw on which days. It’s part of what I loved about the walk, that it was just a few days of seeing beautiful things. However, I’ve split up my photos, as well as various things that I noticed or found particularly interesting on each day

Day 3 (10th december)

The third night, our accomodation was a strange spa hotel called Spaland Matama. It had a weird feeling to it, but was endearing in a way. They played tinkly christmas tunes through the whole place, and felt oddly quiet, especially on the upper floors that we were. It also, as well as the private onsen for people staying there, had a public onsen that anyone could go to, and was in fact quite busy. After last night, where there was at most one other person in the bath and normally noone there, being in a public bath with maybe thirty other, mostly elderly, Japanese men was quite an experience.

Day 4 (11th december)

The fourth day was the longest one, and probably my favourite. After we left Spaland, we walked through a beautful cedar tree lined path, and then to a garden with perhaps the most idyllic setting for a small cottage I have ever seen (I believe this was a little rangers shed, or storage place for tools.)

The walk proceeded up the mountain, eventually reaching a cleared peak with an arrangement of stones that had been there for hundreds of years. It was her where we saw the island that the walk would finish on for the first time.

An egg sandwich that they packed for us in our bento that day. We laughed way more than we should have at this - i think the indent on the top of the bread is the thing that really did it. A tiny set of red Senbon Torii gates that someone had set up on a rock

Day 5 (12th december, last day on mainland)

Day five was the hardest day, with a lot of elevation and climbing - at points, it became scrambly, with ropes to help pull oneself up. This outcrop was a place that Ascetic Buddhist monks in training came to, and still do, to blow their conch shells and signal their arrival to the valley. The rock jutts out off the mountain, and it’s an amazing view over the valley

This temple had a massive nest of Japanese hornets on the top fof the cave that it was set back into, that you could hear from quite a long way away

A cave that we went up to and ate lunch in, along with the other people on the walk.

That evening, we took the ferry to Himeshima, an island off the coast of the Kunasaki peninsular

A note on locations: I have not scrubbed EXIF metadata from any of the JPEG files on this page (the same may not be true for the more optimised WEBP images). This means that you can download the image and get precise latitude and longitude for any image that you want to know more precisely where it is