Magome & Tsumago Without the Hike: Is It Still Worth Going?
Every summer, we make Kyoto our home for about a month.
But home doesn't necessarily mean staying there.
One of the reasons we love using Kyoto as a base is how easy it is to leave.
Trains radiate across the region, making it possible to spend a day somewhere completely different and still return somewhere that feels like home by evening.
And after hearing about Magome, Tsumago and the old Nakasendo route for years, one summer we finally decided to see them for ourselves.
There were two complications.
We were travelling with our then five-year-old son.
So hiking the famous trail between Magome and Tsumago wasn't really on the table.
And it was peak Japanese summer.
We had optimistically imagined the mountains might give us some relief from Kyoto's heat.
They did.
Just not very much.
First, A Word About Japanese Summers
We love spending summers in Kyoto.
We love the intense rainfall.
We love how green everything becomes.
We love the festivals and the long evenings.
But we would not pretend that the weather is comfortable.
Kyoto is surrounded by mountains on three sides, and in late June, July and August the city can feel like it is holding onto every bit of heat.
Then there is the humidity.
Japanese summer isn't quite the same as the dry, intense heat many Indians are accustomed to.
It can feel heavy and relentless, with surprisingly sharp sunshine when the clouds disappear.
For us, it is closer to the kind of humidity you experience in Singapore.
That is one reason Beyond Tokyo doesn't currently run our regular journeys during the peak of Japanese summer, and why we generally discourage first-time travellers from choosing this period unless there is something specific they want to experience.
Coming from India, we usually want a holiday to give us a change of season.
Hot and humid doesn't quite accomplish that.
Still, we were already there.
And the Kiso Valley was calling.
Thirty Minutes to Nagoya
The first part of the journey is almost absurdly easy.
Take the fastest Shinkansen from Kyoto and Nagoya is roughly half an hour away.
It barely feels like you've started travelling.
Nagoya is where the journey really begins.
Because from here, you leave the Shinkansen behind and move onto the slower railway lines heading towards the Kiso Valley.
We happened to be travelling on a weekend, so we used JR Central's Aozora Free Pass.
It allows unlimited use of eligible local JR trains across a large part of the Nagoya region for one calendar day on weekends and national holidays.
It doesn't include the Shinkansen, and limited express services require an additional limited express fare, but for the slower sections of a day like this it can make a lot of sense.
And slow is the important word.
The trains are very different from the Shinkansen we'd just left.
Local.
Simple.
Sometimes with bench-style seating.
And after a while, a little tiring.
But outside the window, the journey keeps getting better.
The city disappears.
The mountains move closer.
Rivers begin running alongside the railway.
And the landscape gradually starts explaining why people have travelled through this valley for centuries.
The Old Road Between Kyoto and Edo
The reason Magome and Tsumago exist as we know them today is the Nakasendo.
During the Edo period, the Nakasendo was one of the great routes connecting Kyoto with Edo — modern-day Tokyo — through Japan's mountainous interior.
Magome and Tsumago were post towns along that route, providing places for travellers to rest, eat and stay before continuing their journey.
Today you'll sometimes see this stretch marketed as the “Samurai Trail” by some Indian travel companies, largely to make their otherwise conventional Golden Route (Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka) journeys sound more adventurous.
We think that's completely unreasonable.
Samurai certainly travelled along the Nakasendo.
But it can give the wrong impression.
This wasn't a trail built exclusively for samurai.
For lack of a better modern comparison, it was a highway.
Officials, merchants, pilgrims, locals and other travellers used it to move through the country.
And that, to us, makes it more interesting rather than less.
You aren't walking some isolated warrior path.
You're following part of a route that once helped connect two of Japan's most important cities.
Getting to Magome
The railway doesn't deliver you directly into either historic town.
For Magome, we got off at Nakatsugawa and transferred to a local bus.
By the time you combine the journey from Kyoto, the transfer in Nagoya, the slower railway and the bus, you're looking at roughly a couple of hours or more depending on connections.
But unlike our later experience travelling from Kyoto to Tomonoura, the journey here felt like part of the day rather than time we were simply trying to get through.
The scenery helps.
A lot.
And eventually the bus leaves you at Magome.
Magome Feels Like the Japan You Imagined
Magome makes a very good first impression.
The old road climbs directly through the town.
Traditional wooden buildings line the route.
Water runs through little channels beside the street.
Large water wheels turn beside old houses.
Small lanes lead away from the main route.
And almost everywhere you look, there is something that resembles the Japan people imagine when they think about the Edo period.
The climb is noticeable.
But without attempting the full trail, we could take our time.
We wandered.
Stopped for photographs.
Looked inside shops.
Let Yash run around.
And when he eventually became tired, ice cream solved most of the problem.
Children can actually work surprisingly well in places like this.
There isn't always something they're forbidden to touch or a schedule they're expected to follow.
They can walk.
Explore.
Look at water wheels.
Find little paths.
And simply be children.
Magome is beautiful.
But it is also clearly prepared for visitors.
Tour buses arrive.
The streets can become busy.
The historic environment feels carefully maintained.
At times, perhaps even slightly manicured.
That doesn't make it bad.
It just means you're very aware that you've arrived somewhere people come specifically to experience “old Japan.”
Then We Reached Tsumago
Instead of hiking between the two towns, we took the bus.
Roughly half an hour later, we arrived in Tsumago.
And this was the place that stayed with us.
The difference is subtle.
Magome is perhaps more immediately photogenic.
Tsumago felt quieter.
The crowds thinned.
The tour-bus feeling largely disappeared.
And suddenly the old wooden buildings felt less like something arranged for us to see and more like a town simply continuing around us.
Perhaps that's unfair to Magome.
Perhaps we caught each town at exactly the right or wrong time.
But that was how they felt to us.
Some of the small shops that remained open were being run by elderly Japanese residents.
And there was something lovely about their reaction to seeing a young Indian family, particularly a child, wandering through this little post town in the mountains.
There weren't grand attractions demanding our attention.
The attraction was the town itself.
The timber.
The road.
The water.
The mountains behind the rooftops.
And the feeling that the modern world had been asked, politely, to stay somewhere outside.
And Yes, There Are Bears
We weren't hiking the trail.
But plenty of people around us were.
And one detail was difficult to miss.
Bear bells.
Hikers had small bells attached to their bags, designed to make noise as they walked through the forest.
That's a useful reminder that the Nakasendo isn't a theme park connecting two preserved towns.
Parts of the route pass through genuine mountain and forest environments.
If you're planning to hike it, conditions and current local safety advice are worth checking before setting out.
For us, travelling with a five-year-old in peak summer, the bus remained an extremely easy decision.
Do You Need to Hike Magome to Tsumago?
No.
And that's probably the most useful thing we learnt that day.
The hike is undoubtedly part of the appeal.
For the right traveller, walking between two preserved Edo-period post towns along part of the old Nakasendo sounds like a wonderful way to spend several hours.
But you don't need to hike it to justify coming here.
Magome and Tsumago are interesting destinations in their own right.
The buses allow you to experience both.
And for families, older travellers or anyone visiting during weather that makes a several-hour hike unattractive, you don't need to feel like you're somehow doing the Nakasendo incorrectly.
You are simply experiencing it differently.
Would We Come Just for the Hike?
Probably not.
That may be controversial.
But if what you're primarily looking for is a beautiful walk through Japanese mountain scenery, there are other hikes we personally find more rewarding.
Kamikochi is an obvious example.
But comparing the two purely as hikes also misses the point.
The Nakasendo is compelling because of the combination.
The history.
The road.
The forest.
The post towns.
And the knowledge that you're moving through a landscape people travelled across long before trains made journeys like ours possible.
If that history excites you, walking between Magome and Tsumago may become one of the highlights of your trip.
If you're simply looking for Japan's most spectacular hike, we'd look elsewhere.
The Clever Part: You Don't Need to Backtrack
One of the things that makes this work surprisingly well as a day trip is that you don't need to return all the way to Magome.
From Tsumago, you can continue towards Nagiso Station.
Nagiso connects back into the railway line towards Nagoya.
So the journey forms a natural loop rather than forcing you to retrace the entire day.
We wanted to make the return a little faster, so we paid the additional limited express fare for part of the journey back.
Eventually we reached Nagoya.
Had dinner.
And then took the Shinkansen back to Kyoto.
Home again.
Just with considerably more photographs.
Is Magome and Tsumago Worth a Day Trip From Kyoto?
We think it can be.
It isn't the most obvious day trip from Kyoto.
There are easier places to reach.
And if you only have three or four days in Kyoto, we probably wouldn't sacrifice one of them for this.
But if you're staying longer and want to see a completely different side of Japan without changing hotels, it works surprisingly well.
The Shinkansen makes Kyoto to Nagoya almost trivial.
The slower journey afterwards becomes part of the experience.
And by evening, you can still be back in Kyoto.
For us, that is a day well spent.
Magome or Tsumago?
If we had to choose?
Tsumago.
Magome is perhaps easier to photograph.
There is more happening.
And for a first impression, it delivers immediately.
But Tsumago was the place where we slowed down.
It felt quieter.
Less manicured.
And somehow closer to the version of old Japan we'd travelled there hoping to find.
That is entirely subjective.
Another traveller may feel exactly the opposite.
But we would return to Tsumago first.
And What About Narai-juku?
There is one final complication.
Earlier, during winter, i had visited another of the old Nakasendo post towns.
And of the three, Narai felt perhaps the most lived-in and authentic.
But it was a different season.
A different journey.
A different starting point.
And a completely different experience.
Comparing them properly deserves more than a paragraph at the end of this story.
So we'll leave Narai for another day.
Why It Matters to Beyond Tokyo
Magome and Tsumago reminded us of something we encounter repeatedly while travelling through Japan.
There is rarely only one correct way to experience a place.
The famous way to experience these towns is to hike between them.
We didn't.
We had a five-year-old.
It was hot.
And forcing the hike simply because it was supposedly the thing to do would have made the day worse rather than better.
So we took the buses.
We wandered through both towns at our own pace.
We stopped for ice cream.
We talked to people.
And we came home feeling like we'd spent a very good day in Japan.
That matters to how we think about journeys at Beyond Tokyo.
An experience shouldn't be included simply because it is famous.
It has to make sense for the people actually travelling.
Sometimes that means taking the trail.
Sometimes it means taking the bus.
Neither makes the experience less real.
They simply create different journeys.