It had been way too long. We last did a multi-day hike in the summer of 2023, but after that, all hell broke loose with family happenings and some personal life beatdowns. Those are not worth sharing, and most took a welcome uptick by the fall of this year. So the minute we saw a chance, I booked a trip to Japan! J and I had been thinking about Japan for quite a while, but a long, expensive journey like that is easy to push down the list, and that’s what we did for many years. But sometimes things just come together to give a final nudge, and suddenly we were mere months away from this big trip.

Once again, I found that only planning a short time ahead was very freeing and exhilarating – no fussing over every detail, no time for buyers’ remorse, no far-in-the-future schedule worries, and every motivation to throw myself into the research and make decisions fast.

I created an itinerary shockingly quickly, assembling airline miles, hotel points, and old notes in order to cobble together three big city visits with a 6-day hike across the Kii Peninsula. It all worked out perfectly, and the hike was definitely the highlight of the trip.

J and I have done all sorts of hiking – solo trips with all planning and research done by me, group outings where all we did was show up and hike with a daypack, treks with tent-and-sleeping-bag stays, others with cushier lodges, and most everything in between. This time we decided to try a different hybrid: self-guided walking every day and carrying days’ worth of our own gear, but with an outfitter booking our lodging each night and providing some scheduling help with the optimal daily mileages. By the end, we were thrilled we had not gone with a group (it was the most peaceful hike we’d ever taken), and we also realized we could have done the other part ourselves quite easily (maybe better) despite being warned that traveling without help in rural Japan was difficult.

Getting to the start of the hike might have been the hardest task we faced! After three days in Tokyo and three in Kyoto, we ditched our main luggage, traveled early in the morning to Kyoto Station with our backpacks and poles, boarded a JR Express train to Shin-Osaka Station, located the Kuroshio train to Kii-Tanabe, and finally dashed for a bus to Takijiri.

After all that, we still had one of the steepest days of the entire hike ahead of us, but luckily it was only a couple of hours until we reached our tiny ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, where we were the only guests. We settled into our tatami-matted room, showered, changed into yukata (basically loose-fitting cotton kimonos), and joined our husband-and-wife hosts for a home-cooked dinner. All of the anxiety I’d felt about getting to the hike melted away, and we knew the following days would be much more stress-free, if not a little bit more physically daunting.

Throughout the days, we passed through occasional villages on the Nakahechi Route – Takahara, Chikatsuyu, Nonaka, Hongu, Yunomine Onsen, Kawayu Onsen, and Nachi, among them – but many of our days featured nothing but deep and silent woods for hours on end. It was the definition of “zen” in the generic sense of the word, a sustained period of time for thought, absorption, and meditation.

J and I have hiked together for long enough that we fall into familiar patterns: he sets the uphill pace (think death march) and I lead the downs (skipping like a kid), and we walk together on most flats or mild undulations. Oftentimes we fall into our own reveries, focusing on nature and esoteric musings (me) and life’s problems and solutions (him).

The path itself, subtly but well-marked, alternates from thousand-year-old stone paved paths and steps to root-filled passages, both cutting through old growth trees. In more than a few places, the trail drops off precipitously into deep ravines on the left or right, and we were grateful for both our sure feet and the lack of rain on the mossy rocks and roots. We crossed several passes; although the highest ones were only a little over 3000 feet (1000 m), we gained and lost many more thousands of feet of elevation each day as the trail climbed and dipped all day long.

Some days were short (8-9 miles) and some longer, including a killer 17-mile day with serious ups and downs. On the days with more mileage and/or heavy elevation gains, we had to be cognizant of daylight hours and hustle a bit, but we never felt unsafe despite long stretches of solitude, and we would have probably been just fine even as dusk arrived. Despite being one of the two main walking pilgrimages in the world (the other is the Camino de Santiago in Spain), the Kumano Kodo trail was surprisingly quiet and unpopulated, even in high season. There were a few days when we saw no more than 10-15 people the entire time.

We passed many small Shinto shrines (oji), as well as three of the five major (“grand”) shrines in the area. There was a smattering of viewpoints along the trail, but really, the hike is almost all covered and close, with mile after mile under canopy. I’ve been known to fuss after too many hours in the “green tunnel” of the Appalachians, but this heavy woods smelled so fresh and piney, and the ancient stones and moss added so much moodiness, that I didn’t miss the sky as much as usual.

Our lodging ranged from family-owned ryokans and minshukus, where we had the place to ourselves or stayed with a family host, to larger local onsen (hot springs) hotels in “spa towns.” Although we did give the onsens a try, and they were very relaxing after a rigorous day of hiking, we were not big fans of either the accommodations or the towns; both were a little worse for wear, and we had become spoiled by our tiny, traditional digs earlier in the trek. Still, those bigger places DID pack us some pretty amazing lunches to stuff into our packs! This has to be the best trail lunch I’ve ever had.

True to form, we did not take the rest day built into the mileage schedule we were given, adding an extra day of hiking so that we could complete the entire Nakahechi route across the Kii Peninsula, a piece of southern Japan that lies between the East China Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east.

We ended at one of the most picturesque shrines of all, Nachi Taisha, and its backdrop, Nachi-taki waterfall, the nation’s highest.

(Alas, the shrine itself was wrapped up amid a massive restoration, so the left photo below was taken of a travel agency poster!)

After a long hike, it’s typical to feel a sense of satisfaction, and we did, but in many ways, I just wanted to keep on walking. The Kumano Kodo was easily one of the most peaceful, calming treks I’ve ever done, and I’d love to find a similar experience somewhere else in the world. Meanwhile, it was absolutely pouring rain at the end of the trail (and had been for hours, so we were soaked to the bone), and we had to figure out logistics for that night and then get back to Osaka, putting a rather abrupt end to all that dreaminess!

More on our three city stays another time.