The Tokaido Way, December 3 – 8, 2025.
For artists and writers. Daily workshops on the art of haiku, haibun and haiga.
A 6-day, 5-night tour starting in Hakone-Yumoto and finishing in Kurami Onsen, near Kakegawa.
Fly into Tokyo, continue onto Kyoto or other destinations at the end of our tour.
In collaboration with our partner Walk Japan.
GALLERY WRITING FROM PAST TRIPS REQUEST MORE INFO EXPRESS INTEREST
A gently-paced haiku walking tour along Japan’s greatest historic road (between Tokyo to Kyoto) aside the Pacific Ocean coast. Easy to moderate walking through urban and rural countryside in the glorious colours of autumn; traditional and modern inns, multi-course traditional cuisine. Suitable for anyone who can walk for more than four hours in comfort. Accommodation is in Japanese inns, some with onsen hot spring baths, and hotels.
Our Tokaido walk follows the central section of Japan’s greatest ancient highway, the Tokaido, in Kanagawa and Shizuoka Prefectures. This historic road reached its apogee in the Edo Period (1603–1868), when the samurai dominated Japan. Travellers included the high and mighty on their way east to pay tribute at the Shogun’s court in Edo, now known the capital Tokyo, and also the everyday folk who were given permission to leave their villages, perhaps only once in their lives, on pilgrimage to the grand imperial shrine at Ise. The Tokaido played such a pivotal role in the social, economic and cultural development of the nation that it still resonates deeply amongst all Japanese to this day.
Among those who once walked the old highway were the famed haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) whose poems from Records of a Well Worn Satchel were written while travelling this way and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), who in 1832 made his way along the Tokaido’s 490km (305 miles) length from Kyoto to Edo. His experience culminated in the exquisitely detailed and elegantly stylistic Fifty-Three Stages of the Tokaido series of woodblock prints, which illustrate the daily life upon and aside the road in an earlier age.
Inclusions: 5-nights’ accommodation, 5 breakfasts and 3 dinners. You are never far from food on this tour – balance your walking with our recommendations for delicious lunches and snacks en-route, and a choice of local restaurants on the two evenings when dinner is not included. Main baggage transfer between accommodation. One private vehicle transfer. In-country (Japan), 24-hour English-language emergency support.
Exclusions: Not included are flights, lunches and drinks with meals, two dinners and transfers other than those noted in the itinerary.
Prices: (Early bird) $3600 AUD pp twin share.
Single Supplement available on 3 nights. $440 AUD
Please send Expression of Interest to Jan here.
Or to reserve your place with your $1200AUD deposit here
ITINERARY
Your tour starts in the popular hot spring resort of Hakone-Yumoto, which is easily accessed by Japan’s peerless rail system. The aptly named Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train and Tokaido Main Line both follow, to a greater or lesser extent, the route of the old Tokaido highway from Tokyo Station. Alternatively, the intriguingly named Romancecar express train takes a very different route from Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station.
Travellers of old also enjoyed rapid and easy passage, albeit on foot, from Edo, the feudal name of modern-day Tokyo, across the flat and expansive Kanto Plain to Yumoto. However, they would arrive with a sense of pleasure tempered with trepidation. This small town boasts onsen hot springs, the first found along the Tokaido, and here all would enjoy a therapeutic bathe while steeling themselves for what lay ahead. For beyond Yumoto lay the Hakone hachi ri; 32 kilometres of strenuous mountainous terrain, including the towering Hakone Pass, to Mishima.
Your accommodation for the night provides onsen baths for you, like travellers over the ages, to throughly relax in. Your hosts also serve excellent local cuisine for dinner, sustenance for an ideal start to your tour.
Accommodation: Japanese inn with onsen thermal hot spring baths.
Meals: Dinner provided.
Total walking: N/A.
Total elevation gain: N/A.
The mountains of Hakone are the steepest in the world
…….
Very high mountains with a bottomless ravines…..
Depending on the distance you choose to walk today, these lyrical boasts may not feel like such an exaggeration. Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of a regular local bus, the route of which intersects from time to time with the Tokaido as you make the climb. Your journey to the top is on forest trails, roads and also passes through Hatajuku, a peaceful hamlet where the inhabitants have specialised in yosegi-zaiku marquetry since the Edo Period.
Just short of the pass is Amazake-Jaya, an isolated but richly atmospheric thatched teahouse. Relax here while enjoying the first of the Tokaido’s meibutsu sumptuous morsels of food; amazake sweetened fermented rice drink and chikara mochi pounded rice cake.
A little further on the path is paved with ishidatami uneven stones, an indication that the top of the pass is close by. The descent from the summit quickly leads to an avenue of namiki cedar trees. Planted in the earliest days of the Edo Period, these trees have been towering for centuries over all who passed through here and make an impressive entrance to the site of the old post-town at Hakone aside Ashi-no-ko, a scenic caldera lake. Weather permitting, here one of Japan’s classic natural panoramas opens up across the waters to Mt. Fuji.
During the Edo Period, Hakone was widely-known for its sekisho, a barrier checkpoint that straddled the Tokaido and regulated passage. Directly controlled by the Shogun, it was a place to be feared on pain of death by any lacking the appropriate documentation or concealing contraband. The sekisho has been reconstructed and, together with the excellent associated museum, is well-worth a visit for the fascinating glimpses into Edo Period history and life on the old highway it provides.
Having safely secured passage this far, the remainder of the journey to Mishima is made comfortably on a local bus. Hiroshige’s print of Mishima includes mist-shrouded torii gates, the sacred entrance to Mishima Taisha grand shrine. Constructed by the great warrior Minamoto Yoritomo in the 11th Century after his prayers for victory over the rival Heike clan were answered, it became a popular site of pilgrimage for samurai, especially in the Edo Period when it was patronised by the ruling Tokugawa shoguns.
Your accommodation for the evening is a nearby hotel in the centre of town. This evening provides the opportunity to explore the local nightlife for dinner. We provide our selected choice of local establishments, which includes restaurants specialising in unagi grilled eel, Mishima’s specialty meibutsu. Alternatively, you may prefer an izakaya, where the large and varied menu caters to everyone’s tastes.
Accommodation: Hotel.
Meals: Breakfast provided.
Total walking: 8km (5 miles).
Total elevation gain: 610m (2000ft).
Our recommendation for lunch is a delightful family-run restaurant that has been serving dishes featuring Yui’s vividly pink and tiny sakura-ebi shrimp meibutsu for over 100 years. The restaurant is close by the shore of Suruga Bay, the sole source of sakura-ebi in Japan and the largest one of only two in the world. Suruga Bay, which plunges to 2,500m, is also one of the deepest bodies of water anywhere on the planet and from these hidden depths rises Mt. Fuji, which towers 3,776m over the bay. Hiroshige superbly depicted this scene in another of his print series, the Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji.
The Tokaido continues on through an urban landscape, but one that still retains a feel of an older age, before reaching an easy climb through citrus groves to the Satta Pass. Here the views open once again to Mt. Fuji, this time over the open seas of Suruga Bay. Not surprisingly, Hiroshige made the most of the opportunity and depicts the spectacular scene in the Fifty-Three Stages of the Tokaido.
Beyond is Okitsu, a post-town brought to the fore by Oliver Statler in his book A Japanese Inn. As Minaguchiya, the inn celebrated by Statler, has long been closed, your accommodation tonight is another but no less interesting multi-generational inn, which warmly welcomes you with a traditional multi-course feast of local delicacies sourced from the surrounding sea and mountains.
Accommodation: Japanese Inn.
Meals: Breakfast and dinner provided.
Total walking: 12km (7.4 miles).
Total elevation gain: 227m (744ft).
After a hearty Japanese breakfast, you board another local train on the Tokaido Main Line that whisks you to Abekawa. Here a pleasant walk aside a river brings you to Mariko, once one of the smallest post-towns on the Tokaido. Mariko still retains a charming atmosphere that is epitomised by Choji-ya, the historic thatched restaurant that Hiroshige featured in a print.
Choji-ya has been run by fourteen generations of the same family since 1596. Although famed for its tororo-jiru grated yam soup, Choji-ya’s menu also provides other delectable dishes for a satisfying lunch in a historic setting. The restaurant also has its own large collection of Hiroshige woodblock prints, and a selection of these are always on display to be enjoyed before food is served.
Following lunch, a short journey by bus covers the ground to Utsunoya, another charming hamlet, and the start of a circular walk over and around the Utsunoya Pass. Here the original trail has been continually evolving since the Edo Period as new roads were built, each superseding the other to create an intriguing network of braided routes. The outward journey follows the original Tokaido to the top of the pass, and en route a short diversion leads you to the first ever toll tunnel in Japan. Long closed to road traffic, the now abandoned tunnel provides silently evocative surroundings, quite unlike anything else on this tour, to stroll through. Further on, you circuit back to Utsunoya along a narrow river valley and through mixed forests following the Tsuta-no-hoso-michi, a path of much greater antiquity than the Tokaido.
Another local bus for onward journey to Fujieda and your evening’s hotel accommodation. Dinner is not included this evening, but once again we provide our select choice of local establishments for you to make the most of your evening.
Accommodation: Hotel.
Meals: Breakfast provided.
Total walking: 8 km (5 miles).
Total elevation gain: 319m (1050ft).
This morning another train transfers you to nearby Shimada, for a walk across the Oi-gawa, one of a number of very wide rivers that the Tokaido traverses. A Edo Period song intones that:
With horses anyone can cross the Hakone hachi ri, (The 32 kilometres of mountain trails you explored in part on Day 2) but crossing the Oi River in any circumstance is no simple matter.
During the Edo Period, the Shogun used the Oi-gawa as a natural line of defence, prohibiting the construction of bridges and the use of boats. Instead, travellers were physically carried across on the backs of porters, who waded from one shore to the other. However, as the porters were subject to penalties for poor service, which included execution for dropping and losing a customer to the currents, they would only attempt the crossing in favourable conditions. Consequently, any extended bouts of rain would leave travellers stranded on the banks until the river flow had subsided sufficiently.
Today, regardless of weather conditions, crossing the Oi-gawa is easily accomplished over a bridge, beyond which you rejoin the old highway and walk as far as the post-town of Nissaka. En route you pass through pristinely maintained tea plantations and over another section of original ishidatami stone paving. At Nissaka, a private-vehicle transfer awaits to ferry you to nearby Kurami Onsen and your accommodation, an atmospheric traditional inn, for the night. The building dates from 1894, and is notable for the craftsmanship of its construction. The evening is completed after a rewarding dip in the onsen baths by a sumptuous feast, the final dinner of your tour.
Accommodation: Japanese inn with onsen thermal hot spring baths.
Meals: Breakfast and dinner provided.
Total walking: 11km (6.8 miles).
Total elevation gain: 309m (1014ft).
Your tour ends after breakfast in Kurami Onsen. Before departing, however, you may like to enjoy a stroll in the surrounding environs. A local bus connects Kurami Onsen with nearby Kakegawa, a regional city with a sensitively-restored castle and pleasant ambience. Shinkansen bullet train depart from Kakegawa for super fast onward travel to elsewhere in Japan.
Accommodation: N/A.
Meals: Breakfast provided.
Total walking: N/A
Total elevation gain: N/A.
This itinerary is subject to change.
From this day forth
I shall be called a wanderer,
Leaving on a journey
Thus among the early showers.
You will again sleep night after night
Nestled among the flowers sasanqua.
Matsuo Basho from Records of a Travel Worn Satchel
