Nakasendo day 4/19: Kashiwabara to Akasaka in Gifu prefecture

Trip Overview

The Nakasendo stations we'll visit on day 4 are Kashiwabara, Imasu, Sekigahara, Tarui and Akasaka. We are crossing the prefectures from Shiga to Gifu!

9:10 am Leaving Meguruya in Kashiwabara

We had a quiet night and slept well. All the laundry was dry by morning, and we had the bread we'd bought at the supermarket the day before for breakfast. 

Since the distance we walk on day 4 is about 10km less than on days 2 and 3, we could stay in bed a little bit longer and have a more relaxed morning. 

We thanked the innkeeper and headed to explore Kashiwabara post town.

It was raining, but manageable.

Kashiwabara post town 柏原宿

Since we were already in the Kashiwabara post town, we started exploring straight away! Our impression of the post town is that there are quite a few well-kept old buildings.

Kashiwabara was once famous for producing “Mogusa” (Moxa). Mogusa, made from the herb mugwort, is used in moxibustion (traditional Chinese medicine). There has been a shop selling mogusa since 1661, but it wasn’t open, so we missed it. (We were looking at the big barrel of sake production instead!) Many more shops were selling this, but now there is only one in Kashiwabara.

9:50 am Crossing between two prefectures!

Here we are, the border between Shiga prefecture and Gifu prefecture on Nakasendo!

Ne-monogatari no sato (寝物語の里) 

• 寝(ne): Sleep 
• 物語(monogatari): Story
• 里(sato): Village

The name comes from a romantic legend about Shizuka Gozen, the mistress of the famous Heian-period samurai Minamoto no Yoshitsune.

After Yoshitsune lost his battle, he fled from Kyoto to Iwate prefecture.  So Shizuka followed him shortly after to find him. On her way, she stayed at an inn in the Chokyuji area, on the Shiga side of the border. Unbeknownst to her, Genzo, one of Yoshitsune’s retainers, was staying at an inn directly across the path on the Gifu side. Because the inns were so close together, she overheard him and asked for help reaching her love.

In the old days, travellers staying at these border inns could literally talk to each other across the prefecture line from their beds—hence the "bedtime stories". Standing there today, it’s easy to imagine voices drifting across that small gap in the rain.

This romantic story was popular among the guests staying in inns along the border. It used to be recounted like a “bedtime story”, it’s called “Ne-monogatari”.

9:58 am Arriving at Imasu post town 今須宿

10:50 Entering the site of the Great Battle, the Battle of Sekigahara

Kuruma gaeshi no saka 車返しの坂

• Kuruma (車): Car, carriage
• Gaeshi or Kaeshi (返し): Return or send back
• Saka (坂): Slope 

When I first saw the name of the slope, I assumed it was related to its steepness. It’s quite difficult for carriages to ascend, often causing travellers to turn back. However, there’s a more intriguing story behind it.

During the Nanboku-cho period (1337-1392), a nobleman and poet named Nijo Yoshimoto (1320-1388) learned that the Fuwa checkpoint had fallen into disrepair, but the moonlight filtering through the canopy was apparently charming. He decided to make the journey from Kyoto to see it for himself. To give you some context, the journey took us just over three days from Kyoto, but the roads back then were nothing like today, making travel much more arduous.

When the building's owner heard that Yoshimoto was coming, he hurried to make repairs so it would not appear broken down. While Yoshimoto was ascending the slope in his carriage, he learned of these repairs and became so disappointed that he immediately decided to turn back to Kyoto.

This story is why the slope is called “Kuruma gaeshi no saka” (車返しの坂), which translates to “carriage-turning slope.”

Imasu post town is on the western side of Sekigahara town. It is famous as the place where the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu stopped to rest after winning the Battle of Sekigahara. This area was also part of the battlefield. But since we’re arriving at Sekigahara, let’s explain this famous battle in the post-town section below.

Sekigahara post town 関ヶ原宿

As we approached Sekigahara, the atmosphere changed. Even if you aren't a massive history enthusiast (I’ve personally always found it a bit too brutal), it’s impossible not to feel the weight of what happened here in the year 1600.

The Battle of Sekigahara was fought between Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari, and Tokugawa emerged victorious. The Battle of Sekigahara is also known as the "decisive battle" (天下分け目の戦い) because it ended years of conflict and ushered in the Edo Shogunate in 1603.

We started seeing battle-related signs as early as Imasu post town, but once we hit the centre of Sekigahara, the village was filled with maps, drawings, and crests marking where the different samurai clans fought.

While the town is a paradise for history lovers with its many museums and historic sites, we had a different goal for the day: keeping our pace through the rain. We’ve promised ourselves we'll come back another day to properly wander through the museums and explore the deeper history of the fields we just walked across

11:24 am Lunch break at a local sushi restaurant

The restaurant is called “Omatsu-zushi (お松寿司)” in Sekigahara. The restaurant opens at 11:30, so we waited until then. Luckily, the rain eased while we waited under the cover of a building in front of the restaurant.

Oops, we have to take off our shoes to step onto the tatami. But no worries, we've prepared for this moment!

The lady who runs the restaurant offered us a tatami table, where we had to take off our shoes, but our shoes and socks were already wet. It was great that we kept our clean and dry socks somewhere easily accessible. It was a pretty cold day, and they saw us coming in, our jackets and backpacks dripping. The lady brought a heater closer to us. It was so sweet!

We wore these waterproof socks and had 2 pairs to get us through rainy days on this trip.

Beautiful and reasonably priced sushi

We ordered non-alcoholic beer, two sushi assortments, and Tekka don (鉄火丼), a bowl of tuna sashimi on sushi rice. The delicious sushi and their warm welcome made us refreshed.

12:50 pm We had to stop for the Ichigo Daifuku!

I didn’t know about the strawberries from Sekigahara. The sweets shop in Sekigahara is called “Matsunoya (松野屋)”. They had a sign outside reading “Ichigo daifuku made with the strawberry from Sekigahara,” so we went to find out what it was. There were many more tempting sweets in the shop, but we just went for the daifuku. I hope that one day we go back and have a good look. We had it in the hotel that night, and it was delicious!

1:40 pm Tarui post town 垂井宿

The secret of the signboard

When you are walking on Nakasendo, you will see those old (style) signboards that show the business the place used to run. Then, if you look more closely, you will notice that one side is written in Kanji and the other in Hiragana. So, when coming from Kyoto, you see the Kanji side, and when coming from Tokyo, you see the Hiragana side. We saw a few of them in Tarui post town. That was our first time seeing those signs after watching it on YouTube.

2:51 pm Taking a small break at a convenience store

Since it was raining and cold, we decided to stop at a convenience store called “Mini Stop”. We bought coffee and a small sweet to go with it. It was literally a “mini (short) stop”, but it helped a lot.

3:30 pm Hirui town (昼飯町)? What an interesting name!

The kanji of “Hirui” is also readable as “hirumeshi”, which means “lunch meal”. Isn’t it an interesting name? Of course, there is a story behind it.

A Buddha statue was recovered from the sea in Osaka Prefecture, and people decided to offer it to Zenkoji Temple in Nagano Prefecture. On the way to the temple, people stopped by the pond for lunch and enjoyed the beautiful May mountain view. Since then, people started calling this place “Hirumeshi (昼飯)”. However, people found that “Hirumeshi” sounded a little crude, so they changed to “Hiruii”, then “Hirui”.

3:41 pm Arriving at Akasaka post town 赤坂宿

3:48 pm We found a sweets shop in the middle of Akasaka post town

Before heading to our hotel, we found a local sweets shop on the Nakasendo, so we had to make a brief stop. The shop is called “Kinseido (金生堂)” in Akasaka post town, Gifu Prefecture. The inside of the shop has a vintage vibe, and the shop owner kindly showed us what they have. We bought three different sweets labelled “Akasaka.”

Taking a local train to go to the hotel

We decided to stay at Comfort Inn Ogaki. It’s not on the Nakasendo route, but we can take a short train from Mino Akasaka Station, just outside Akasaka, to Ogaki Station. The Mino Akasaka to Ogaki station route only takes 7 minutes and costs 190 yen. This way, it was still cheaper and more convenient for us.

The hotel is only 3 minutes away on foot, and there is a shopping mall in front of it, which was very helpful for grocery shopping or dinner at the restaurant.

At the end of the day

Once we arrived at the hotel room, we brewed some tea and enjoyed the sweets we'd bought on the way.

After we rested a little, we went grocery shopping and then to a family restaurant called Saizeriya, because I hadn’t been there in ages and my husband had never been. We had a very reasonable dinner and headed back to the hotel.

Day 5 starts in Akasaka and heads to Kano. Again, we'll return by train from Gifu Station to Ogaki, so we will carry whatever we need for the day and leave the rest in the hotel room. The distance is short as well (only about 22km).

Even if you can’t spend as much time as we did, there are train stations near each post town accessible from Kyoto by changing lines, and it’s not complicated. So, if you can go there to explore, we highly recommend it! You can use our offline track available to our subscribers, so you know exactly where to go.

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