Today we were going into the Tono Valley to learn about Japanese folklore. Tono itself is a small town set in a bowl of low mountains among flat rice fields and the wider Tono Valley has a living legacy of farming and folk traditions and legends. We'd heard that you can hire bikes and choose from a few cycle routes that take you to different sites from the legends, which was what we planned to do. I was really looking forward to this (however it never bodes well to be too excited!).
As expected it took an hour and a half or so to get there on a nice little rattly train and then we had a hunt for the tourist information office. When we found it and mentioned about cycle routes it took a while for this to register with them, which was a worry, but then they dug out a Japanese map with routes on which we could use to match up against our English route map. And they definitely had bikes for hire so at this point we were all on track.
However from here it went a bit down hill (but not literally unfortunately). First of all we took the wrong route out of town so then had to turn back on ourselves. Then when we headed off in the right direction it turned out to be really unappealing. The one road that we were due to follow for about 10km there and back was a major road out of the the town and it was busy and fast.
It was such a shame because all around you off in the distance you could see mountains and forests and we believed that down the road would be pretty sights. But the trouble was that we didn't really know this for sure and the route to them was not tempting and didn't really seem worth it. Also as we knew little about the legends we weren't sure how we would register significant locations from the stories.
So we decided to turn around do a little off route exploring and then return the bikes to walk around the town instead and learn the stories at one of the Tono's museums. After turning around there was a track off to the left so we headed off down that for a bit which was fun. We were cycling between the fields of crops and at once you got more of a feel for rural life.
Unfortunately quite quickly this route turned into people's houses and we were starting to get some funny looks so we reluctantly returned to the road. The trip back took us back over the big river at the edge of town and so we decided to stop off here to eat our picnic as the sun had come out and it was all looking scenic.
By the time we got back to the station to return the bikes we felt we'd salvaged the morning despite not getting the adventure I'd been looking forward to. We'd been out for two hours, done some exercise, seen some of rural Japan (definitely not something we'd seen previously) and had a nice picnic by the river. The only thing we'd really not managed was to learn about the legends of Tono.
We still had two and a half hours to do this with the assistance of the municipal museum and the folklore village. So we marched off in search of these. They were really easy to find which was great but then as we got up to the front door it all looked a bit dark inside and we saw that they were shut on Mondays!!! It seems this was really not going to happen. At this point we had to give up and return with our tail between our legs, buy chocolate and get an earlier train home. It seems that the legends of Tono will have to remain elusively mysterious to us.
Back at the ranch (Ryokan) we returned to our snuggly room to pack up our stuff and watch a film. If the truth be told we both have a bit of a cold and it's freezing outside so it didn't do any harm to cosy up with some green tea for a couple of hours. We then had dinner at the restaurant downstairs as it had opened again. We had another authentic dinner comprised of nine bowls of food! It included jellied leaves of some kind, cold tofu, fried fish in soy sauce, raw ginger tuna and a noodle dish with tofu, bacon and egg. Again the friendly waitress and pathetic but cute dog made the evening complete and it happily concluded our slightly funny day.
Maybe we'll get another chance to find out about some Japanese folklore, we'll be looking out for that as well as still hunting for a chance to attend a tea ceremony.
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