We spent a morning walking around Nara's Deer Park and Todaiji, a temple consecrated in A.D. I wanted to avoid driving in the complex expressways and streets around the airport and Osaka, so we caught a bus from Kansai International Airport to Nara. The other route went north from Kyoto to the Tango Peninsula at the east end fo San-in Coast National Park and Amanohashidate, considered one of the three most scenic spots in Japan then east to Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake, and back to Kyoto.īetween the two driving tours, we stayed in Nara and Kyoto to visit the famous sites in and around those cities, where getting around on public transportation is more convenient than driving. After visiting the three shrines on the southeast side of the Kii Peninsula, we drove back to Nara through the central mountains. I chose two routes, one that went east from Nara to Ise, the shrine of the sun kami Amaterasu, then south to Kumano San Zan, the three Great Mountain Shrines of Kumano, a destination of pilgrimages since the tenth century. Friends warned me about the challenges of driving in Japan – e.g., you drive on the left, signs are often only in kanji characters, city streets are a maze, and city parking is diffcult to find but the Lonely Planet guidebook assured me that "Driving in Japan is quite feasible, even for the just mildly adventurous." The best way to get to these places, it seemed, was by car. ![]() I wanted to visit places off-the-beaten path, particularly sacred sites associated with Shinto, Japan's still-active native religion, and its nature and ancestral deities called kami. But beyond these cities, Kansai offers the visitor areas of scenic wonders and cultural sites. On the Road in Kansai Ancient Capitals, Ise Shrine, and Beyond / March 17-28, 2004 Updated: JĪt the center of Japan's main island of Honshu is the region of Kansai, known for its ancient capitals of Kyoto and Nara and the modern metropolises of Osaka and Kobe. The website contains photos from the 46 prefectures we were able to drive to. My mother, Matsuko Kawaharada (21925–2020), took us to visit the ancestral hometowns and my grandparents’ families in Mukaiharamachi, Gōnomura, and Tomomura in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1970.įleeting Scenes: Road Trips in Japanis a more recent website at with photos of road trips from this website and more recent trips. Their stories are told in “ Child of History” (in Roads of Oku: Journeyʻs in the Heartland) and in Makisō (1887–1953) and Harumi (1899–1999) Kawaharada. My Grandparents: My grandparents emigrated from Hiroshima Prefecture to Hawai'i in the early twentieth century. Other Historic Roads: We also went to photograph scenes along two other historic roads, the ancient Yamanobe-no-Michi in Nara Prefecture and the pilgrimage routes known as Kumano Kōdō (Old Roads of Kumano). Yui, depicts travelers descending toward Yui along a cliff called Satta Pass, with Suruga Bay and Mt. ![]() ![]() We drove along the Tōkaidō and Nakasendō in spring 2008, and in subsequent road trips. By 2020, we had visited and photographed almost all the stations on the two roads and posted the photos in Scenes Along theTōkaidō and Scenes Along the Kisokaidō (Nakasendō). We also started visiting and photographing the places depicted in Hiroshige’s Collection of Prints of Famous Places in the Sixty+ Provinces. The Woodblock Prints of Utagawa Hiroshige and Keisei Eisen: Another inspriration for our travels was the nineteenth-century woodblock prints in Utagawa Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and Hiroshige and Keisai Eisen’s Sixty-nine Station of the Kisokaidō (Nakasendō) depicting travel on the two main roads between Edo and Kyōto. That year, I finished and published a translation of the narrative entitled Summer Grasses, Autumn Wind (available in print at ) I also marked the route on a Google Map: Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi ("Narrow Roads of the Deep North).” (Below: Departure. “Friends lined the road to bid us farewell and stood there for as long as they could see the shadows of our backs.” From an illustrated scroll of Oku no Hosomichi. We first followed in his footsteps on our road trip in 2005, stopping to see some of the famous places he visited, then continued to explore his route in subsequent trips. By 2018, we had visited and photographed practically all the places he mentions. ![]() The Poetry of Matsuo Bashō: The poet Bashō with his companion Sora traveled to northern Honshū in 1689 and wrote his classic travel narrative Narrow Roads of the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi).
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