Nakatsugawa (中津川), Japan

DAY 6, 7: SITE: A cute restaurant, and Naegi Castle Ruins

Part of the Onsen Ski Trip 2024 series

2024-03-18

The towns feel like they get smaller, and smaller. Nakatsugawa is another town on the Nakasendo trail, similar to Magome, but this one is less occupied and more ghost-y. On the map, it looks relatively big, and indeed, the population is much larger than both Gujo Hachiman and Gero, but we see no one in this small section of it. We have an entire ryokan booked out to ourselves, reconstructed from an 1800's house. The bathroom is in a separate wing to the house, which makes going to the bathroom a real joy in the winter.

Again, like previous towns, it looks otherwise dead until you go into a restaurant. We head to a local restaurant in the neighbourhood just 30 meters down the street. It seems very local. There are businessmen sat at the counter, discussing something or other. In addition, there's another couple at the other end of the bar.

Most restaurants that we have been to with a bit of character seem to be staffed by two people -- the husband, the chef, and the wife, the server. The wife comes out to greet us, and uses a small translation style device to communicate with us. She's smiley and eager to chat. When we order, we try sharing a bowl of miso soup which violates some cultural norm of the Japanese, so we awkwardly step on eggshells around the server as she tries to explain with her translation device why this is not the norm in Japan. We feel a bit intimidated by the service and order three instead. Afterwards, the lady again comes out and enthusiastically asks about us: where we are from, why we ended up in Nakatsugawa, and how Jez twisted his knee skiing. She listens with deep intent. After hearing our story, she offers us a sip of the local sake made just down the street from their restaurant (just up the street from our ryokan). After every one of her many conversations with us, she shares the news to her husband and other patrons in the restaurant. Others start to take notice of us in a curious way.

At one point, one patron comes up to us and talks to us in English, suggesting a dish that we have to order. It's some kimchi bean sprout pancake that locals eat. In addition, he shows us some pictures on his phone of the places he's been (Singapore and Taiwan being one of them, since we have two people from there). His enthusiasm to talk with us seemed to intrigue him more than the convesration he was having with his supervisor, and we welcomed that enthusiasm. We order the kimchi pancake.

As we get more comfortable with the lady, we also ask her to give us some recommendations for food. She recommends a bean sprout dish, saying that sprouts here are popular because Nakatsugawa gets a lot of fresh water which helps the sprouts grow. After she tells us this, she points to another table of a guy sitting, and says that he is the head of the bean sprouts organisation in the area. We're not really sure what that means, but we give him a big thumbs up. And, the bean sprouts really are delicious. She also recommends something translated as "Jerusalem chips" (haha?) which are like fried garlic pieces that are crunchy. All of her recommendations are spot on.

Perhaps my favourite dish was a fried soba noodle. I'd seen soba in several formulations before, but never like this. It's almost like the Chinese fried noodles in a soupy base, but with soba and in a viscous soba sauce. Since I wasn't sure about the etiquette of dining, I didn't take a picture of anything except for the soba noodles.

As far as dining experiences go, this was probably the most memorable. With the misstep on the miso soup, the excited colleague, the bean sprout guy, and the waitress, it was kind of like a comedy sketch; how it all unfolded. She wished us a safe trip and safe journey.

It rains the next day. I just take a few pictures of the Nakasendo portion of our trip, and get on our merry way.

We take a short detour to a castle ruin called Naegi Castle. Apparently, it was built in the 1500's and was abandoned later in the 1800's, but it occuppies an interesting spot geographically. Once you climb to the top, you have a 360 view of the grounds below it. Although it was raining that day, I could imagine what it would've looked like back in the day.

We then proceed to an onsen since the weather is a downer. We end up tonight in Iwamura -- the final town, and the last stop of our onsen ski trip.