Inside Japan's Beautiful Post Town | Exploring Magomejuku

good morning from nakatsugawa japan with the mountains and clouds and mist in the background it is almost exactly 7am and we're starting with great excitement today because you see today i'm going to hike part of the naka sendo trail and this is something that i've wanted to do since 2005. so the trail that we are about to walk is through a city called magome and this is the magome juku trail now this area is known as one of the most beautiful places that you can walk in japan and i stayed here overnight so that we'd be able to start things off early on in the morning now pretty much the vast majority of this walk is going to be uphill just like this so excuse me if i end up getting a little tired on this one but this is a walk that i've wanted to do ever since i was planning my very first trip out to japan back in 2005 and i'm sure that you can already see why so last year on tokyo lens i had a chance and as we go along we're going to be looking back quite a bit because we're going to have beautiful views the entire way last year on tokyo lens i had the chance to visit two places that i've always wanted to visit and make a video for the tokyo lens channel about naraijuku and tsumagojuku now these are also two very very beautiful post towns along the nakasendo trail and it's i have it's really hard to put into words so i'm just gonna kind of let you see as we walk along now we've come out early so we can avoid people as much as possible for now but there are a little like this here's a coffee shop there's a restaurant over here and these here again are called post towns japanese post towns now the most common question that i got on those videos is what's a post tap and i'll give a bit of a simplified explanation but would recommend that if you want to know more that there are actually some really really good write-ups and articles online about what post-towns are and so i would say definitely do some follow-up but a japanese post town is basically just an old town along a postal road or route you see this trail here is known as the nakasendo trail and it is basically one of the main roads that was used for travelers to get through old japan now what we're going to do today is we're going to walk some of the old nakasendo trail and you'll have to excuse me as i take my time with all of this because just seeing this all in front of me is just so beautiful and so exciting i feel like a little kid in a candy store right now like if you look out this way look at the views there over the mountain the excitement is so incredibly real for me right now oh boy so these post towns are basically just the the main towns along the way that are used for postal delivery and again it's an oversimplification but it is what they are and they have been beautifully beautifully preserved over the decades and over the centuries and our little dolls in there and so my first ever trip to japan was back in 2005 and as i was planning that trip to japan i decided that i desperately wanted to come out to these areas one of these these japanese post towns and just get a look and a feel for them what they're like they're all they've got their own hidden little streets off to the side more often leading to behind some of the businesses and if you look here you can see it says the mago meijuku post town lower entrance that's where we came in from and there is so much to see along the way like just about 160 meters over there there's ashoji temple we've got the relics an old temple out there and as we go up this way about 400 meters we have the upper entrance and we've actually arrived early enough to catch this in a very beautiful season i came out here this morning fully fully prepared to do this entire thing in the rain because we were pitted for rain this morning and we got lucky enough that when i opened the curtains everything was dry now more often than not as you can see here there are waterways that run along the nakasando trail here that lead to having a lot of water mills along the sides of the shops but more than anything it's just genuinely feels like a dream to be able to walk these streets so getting back to what i was saying before is that very first trip to japan ever this was one of the places that was surprisingly high on my list but it's very much in the countryside it is not super super easy to access and to be honest as a first-time traveler i didn't really have the confidence to come all the way out here and do the exploring at the time it was it was a very different me than we have today and so i stuck to a lot more of the the major cities i stuck to the the tokyos the kyotos the osakas the kokas all of those and it's still made for an absolutely spectacular trip but it meant that i lost out a lot of the beauty of countryside japan flash forward what more more than 15 years later and i'm finally coming out to explore these places that i never got to explore back in the day now at some point we'll most certainly have to make our way back because if you're like me in any way as beautiful as this is quiet and secluded and without people in the morning you also want to see what it's like when it's lively when the shops are open when people are walking around grab some of the coffee so i may be swinging by again so over here about two kilometers away this mount in the in case you wanted to take a peek on google maps you can see the mountains and the low hanging fog one of the beautiful things about the morning in japan is this low hanging fog out here that if you get up to a high enough vantage point you can look right down over it's called unkai and if you've seen the camping video from tokyo lens you'll see that and right now we're along this here the nakasendo trail if you take a look it's literally middle mountain road and up this way is an observatory so we are completely and entirely doing this together for the first time i have never been through here and couldn't wait to come up and bring you guys with me i woke up some 10 minutes before hitting record on this video so i have swung by here on the beginning actually of our five plus day road trip across this section of japan for here on tokyo lens explorer and usually when i come out to an area like this i like to do a bit of an exploratory walk through if i can before doing a dedicated piece of content and we have a little cat friend over here good morning it looks super chill and sleepy how's it going got some dutchman machines here again these views and in case you're wondering yes people do live up here a lot of the people will live right out of their homes and then run it as a shop or live considerably close by i feel like later on when all said and done and have to swing by one of these coffee shops and have myself a nice morning coffee but for the next couple days we're going to be doing live streams and i'll be recording pre-recording a couple of these adventures for you guys and this is actually the very first one out of all of it being recorded so all timeline and whatnot aside i am on my way up to the area of ishikawa i'm gonna be heading there today to kick off the adventure and i figured this was kind of along the way and it was a nice area for me to stop and rest for the night so i pulled over here set up and that's how we ended up here in magomejuku now along the nakasendo trail there are quite a few of these post towns and aside from the post towns the nakasendo trail itself is actually quite beautiful and i've never had the opportunity to explore it because last year when i came by and did some of these videos i was in a little bit of a rush and had to just kind of keep going so there we go this here counts as the nakasendo trail upper entrance and you can kind of see it all right here the main stretch of houses is all right there for mago mejuku but the trail itself continues out here and this is where we're heading because when i first saw this place online again well over 15 years ago there were some forest trails that looked so beautiful that i was very excited to someday traverse that part of japan it just the ground the way that the stones are all laid out the mountains off in the background and this this is the moment that we finally get to do it like these moss covered tiles here with the moth flying around and so today we're gonna see how far we can get along the nakasendo trail here and do a little exploring i've actually long considered coming back and just doing a nakasendo trail exploration video because i feel like it's the kind of area i could probably spend two three four days now there's a lot of places i would recommend in japan coming by car just because it makes things more accessible for the most part i think this is the observatory let's check it out but these areas here are actually ones that if you can swing it i personally would recommend checking out by train and bus because whoo when you come out here by car you've got to go back to your car rather than just hiking on to the next post town and let's just take a second to appreciate these views look at that that is absolutely spectacular they're absolutely absolutely absolutely there we said lots of absolutely i love the way the clouds just roll through the mountains especially early in the morning i was never traditionally an actual morning person but coming out to japan and being able to experience so many things this beautifully so early in the morning just kind of turned me into a morning person so the here we go look at that okay so last year as i talked about i went to tsumagojuku and quite honestly i would absolutely love to do the hike from magomejoku to tsumagojuku obviously it's about an eight kilometer hike but i feel that there's just so much to see in there and this here this stone pathway is the next section to that so we're gonna walk for a bit and see where it takes us it is just pure exploration from here so while we're doing this as i do these premiers we have the luxury of the comments section and the live chat so you can use either or but the comment section allows me to see more afterwards like i can easily look back and it's all just right there in one place i would love to know where that was a spider web i would love to know where you are watching from and how how does this oh okay this turns here all right and as we do this my shoelaces come partially untied but i think we're still okay okay so there's a little sign here saying that samogojuku would be off this way so as i'm recording this right now you would look at all this and be like ah it must be june but we are actually in the first week of july right now it is almost 20 after seven at the moment and i just i can't get over how excited i am to be honest so what i was saying before is i would love to know where you are watching from and if there's a particular area in japan that like myself here you've always wanted to explore and not just visit like anybody can go and visit tokyo and kyoto and everything like that is there a place that you wanted to go and explore like really dive deep into the area and one of the reasons i'd say i'd love to have you leave this in the comments section is so that i can look back and see if there's any areas that either a i'm super familiar with and can give you a nice peek at or if there's anywhere that i could just go out and explore because either a you've been to japan and you missed the opportunity b you've never been to japan and you're looking forward to that first trip or c you may not be able to come to japan for whatever reasons life has thrown at you and things like this may be the only way that you have to explore these places so if there are particular spaces that you would like to see i would love it if you would leave them in the comment section i've got enough on my list to keep us going for a couple years yet but wherever i can i like to see where the interest lies and try to accommodate to that if we can so i am going to be proceeding cautiously as these stone stairs are somewhat wet and i have lost the wow okay lots of spider webs here all right as i go under each one of these we get covered in spider webs and water it rained all night so yeah also with my shoe now coming ever so untied you know i could probably just do this there we go okay excuse the shoe moment here i need to retire we'll just pause later on gentlemen working out here in his field how was i moss the most gentle smile i think i've ever seen and i think this here brings us into the forest trail now we've talked about how we're going to be doing a mixture of the live streams and the pre-recorded videos like this one where we just go out and we explore the pre-recorded videos like this one are more often than not shot on an action camera and it kind of makes me nervous for a few reasons number one a lot of action cameras because they're small and they can get quite hot run the risk of just failing part way through so i could what is this meijuku posttown dead end a detour where where's the detour coming from anyway so a lot of these action cams just sometimes just don't don't work if you've ever used an action cam you'll know that so when they work they're great and when they don't it's a weak day and so the other thing is when you get into darker areas with the action cam while they are nicely stabilized which means i can just carry a small camera and walk along like this without any worry because this is a very bumpy road right now like i'm slipping and trying not to fall really hoping i don't fall in full anticipation for it i took my laptop out of the backpack but as soon as we get into darker areas like this every now and then the quality of an action cam can also degrade significantly but considering the fact that where we are now and the fact that we're heading into the the forests means that we don't really have that much signal there wouldn't really be a way to do a spot like this on a live stream so as much as i've always wanted to do full walkthroughs and show these areas i've kind of previously been limited to just edited youtube videos until we started the tokyo lens explorer channel and there's literally a stream running across this section of the street here it's just it is just a stream it's most likely not always like this my guess is that it's like this because of the rain but this road here is the replacement for the old nakasendo trail if i'm not mistaken i'd love it if someone would jump on google maps and take a peek so right now there's roads that go through here and this trail kind of zigzags across and through the roads back and forth and is the the old nakasendo trail so if you're looking for on google maps and you're looking for where to hike and explore you want to find the old nakasendo trail or i think it's old nakasendo road and i i'm genuine this is so steep and wet and i am genuinely genuinely concerned about just slipping and falling so we're not going as fast as we normally would but it looks like it crosses over this road a couple times along the way and that was a slip gotta make sure not to get cocky just take it nice and slow and try not to fall oh look at that okay so this just feels like a good idea it says ring the bell hard against bears so i guess we ring the bell to avoid bears sorry mr spider dude we're gonna [Music] one second thought that was probably pretty loud so all right which way do we go now okay so it says this is the nakasendo here it's just taking us on to a main street for a little while it's probably going to dump us back on the old nakasando trail somewhere but simply the fact that they have a sign that says ring to avoid bell bear ring to avoid the bells simply the fact that they have something that says ring to uh avoid the bears says that there are bears in this area it's actually a very common question that comes up is what about what about bears something tells me that's not the path but that is still a very exciting little pat should we let's take a peek it's not like we're short on time today this is most certainly a huge massive spider whip oh my god okay we're going back that is by far the largest spider web i have ever walked into in my life and there's definitely one of those big giant green japanese spiders on me somewhere now all right so getting back to our point the bell means that there are bears in this area to watch out for and a lot of people it comes out in the chat and in live streams really often aren't you worried about bears and as we get closer to the summer and fall months especially as we get closer to the end of the summer near fall i try to be more cautious when it comes to bears but i also avoid just walking through areas silently like bears are not a huge fan of us either and so simply hearing human voices tends to help keep them away all right so we're gonna keep going down this way so simply hearing human voices helps keep them away so when i'm not recording videos like this and there aren't other people around i tend to listen to podcasts on full blast so we got zamagojuku and mago meijuku back that way and for the most part that helps avoid them now bears if you don't know this for generation after generation after generation bears will follow the same paths and same routes as their parents and their grandparents and then their children will follow the same route so the bear paths and routes that they use tend to be fairly predictable so if you can generally avoid those routes and you can see them because of an area if you look up an area and there are next to no reports ever of bears chances are the bears don't use that space however if you're getting lots of bear reports you need to be more cautious now in my research here there were not a ton of reports of bear sightings or attacks or anything especially considering humans have been traversing these roads for how many generations but if there's a bell like that it's still a wise thing to bring it and again if you didn't see it you have the mountains and clouds off there in the background and we are back on to the cobble-esque path got another bell here again if that was loud i'm sorry i'm sure it was loud look at the moss on this i know it's the smallest of things that's like that's a whole ecosystem right there beautiful two or three different types of moths as we get into here i don't know how well it's showing on the camera but it's actually foggy in here uh and another thing that i do for good measure and for safety on these trips and solo hikes is i keep this with me right here this is a garmin inreach mini and it's basically just a little i guess you call it a gps sos style device that connects to satellites maintains my position even when i lose sell signal i can send out little messages through it and should i have trouble and be in need of rescue and can't get out of an area on my own there's an sos button on the side that i can push it does require a monthly subscription so anytime i come out on one of these adventures i sign up for one of those subscriptions wow and we uh we head along our way so now i'm really wondering how far along this goes there's actually a very specific area of this trail that i'm searching for it's an area with tall i believe cedar trees in my memory in my mind i see cedar and along the way there's these big curves in the mountain road like hairpin curves and i've always wanted to see that space and so that is what i'm kind of hoping to come across as we do this walk but again is all all uphill and luckily today as i said i lightened up the backpack a bit so at most the backpack is only about 15 20 kilograms right now that's still quite a bit in the pound world if the uh moderation squad in the live chat wants to drop a quick conversion in there i'll be okay with that and it seems like the vast majority of this trail runs alongside a river so far again i do wonder how far that's gonna take us look at this little space here this was almost certainly plots of farmland you can see the way that it's built out so probably you can see a building back there let's see if we can head up that way and see a little bit more about it wow oh it's almost hard to believe these things are real sometimes like you might be looking at this and going wow that's really beautiful but i'm looking at this right now going i'm actually i'm actually standing right here i'm actually standing right here and looking at all of this it's just amazing i feel so lucky to be able to share this with you guys and for each one of you who takes the time to be a part of this who watches these videos and streams and who participates i can't tell you how much that means so yeah this is most certainly certainly a doable hike again we're only about a kilometer away from mangawejuku and tsumagojuku is about 6.8 let's explore this little space for a moment this is very slippery and every time i look down oh it's beautiful and foggy every time i look down you'll probably notice this gear cable and it's because for these longer walks the batteries on action cams don't really like to keep so i've gotta keep it plugged in just to ensure that we don't run out of battery like we did back in toyama look at that and amazingly right now despite the sunniness it is actually raining a small bit and again as we get into here so this tells me that from here and beyond we're definitely getting into bear territory because there are bear warnings posted literally right there ring bell against the bears all right and there we are heading into the mountains for our hike now what we're gonna do is we're gonna walk up this way a bit to see if i can't find a beautiful section of nakasendo forest trail that i've always wanted to see and to be honest we shot through magomayjuku so quickly that i actually want to go and explore a few of those side streets along the way i don't know how steep this looks here on your screen but it is this is a steep road whenever i do these walk around videos i try wherever possible to start at the highest point and make my way to the lowest point so that you don't have to deal with me being exasperated for the entirety of the walk but mago mejuku was just too good of a starting point to pass up so we started low and walked high today and literally every single step i take along this path my feet slip so we got to walk really carefully if you do come out here the obvious recommendation on my part would be either bring a exploration partner obviously or bring some nice loud podcasts to play some people like to carry a bell i'm usually talking and making the videos the entire time which somewhat negates the need for the bell the bell's there so that it's a unnatural sound that the bears aren't used to so they avoid it looks like we can cut into this little section of bamboo forests here let's take a peek look at this and again with giant spider webs but very very worthless walking through like actually through a bit of a bamboo forest is definitely one of those bucket list items in japan i don't know if you can see him floating here but there's a spider i've probably walked through five or six similar webs so we're gonna go ahead and walk our way out of here and hope that all the spiders just crawled themselves off of me and that you don't have to worry about getting a spider in the face partway through the live stream so if you do come out here make sure that you are keeping yourself safe it is as you can see a really beautiful hike and along the way you will find stops and houses and shops and everything like that so it's not like you're going to be completely alone for seven to ten kilometers but all things considered i kind of want to head back to magomeijuku and do a little side exploring to see what the area behind the main streets look like because i feel like even if we keep walking up this way i don't think i'm going to hit that forest trail that i want to hit as quickly as i'd hope so we'll save that for another time you're going to head back you know what it's a long walk so let's just do a cut directly back to magumejuku and explore some of the side streets and back streets there all right so it is just about 8 20 now and we've made it back here to mago mejuku and i i now really want to do the deeper side street exploring check out all the stuff that i skipped before who knows maybe along the way some of the shops and whatnot may even be open if you take a look there is a map here that shows that there's a lot more to this area than just this street itself so let's go take a quick peek and see what the area has to offer oh wow okay so all the houses are numbered as you can see down here yeah they all have names like bondin and shimuro what okay and the side streets do break off into like the temples yeah all this is so neat there's runes of a castle up here seems like there's actually a lot to see around here so just came through here now we're here i'm gonna head back down and explore some of the side streets and whatnot along the way it was like okay so again we're starting here at the upper entrance and there's restrooms and whatnot over there now on the walk back from where we were to here i decided to do a bit of a live stream for the patreon crew to give them a little preview of the adventure and to share some of what we're going to be up to over the next couple of days as we do this hopefully allow them to do a bit of schedule planning and all that and i just want to say a huge debt of appreciation to them for really inspiring this adventure um if this is your first time coming across any of this this was actually all chosen and planned out except for this spot except for this one spot this adventure has been chosen and planned out by the patreon crew and i guess even if i say except for this spot the nakasendo trail was along the list of places that they wanted me to hit up i gave them the opportunity to plan out an entire road trip adventure for tokyo lens explorer and that's exactly what they did here so let's take a peek out here because the mountains and whatnot the way the roads cut through there and these fields just look beautiful so a huge debt of gratitude to the patreon crew for really giving birth to and planning the adventure that would have incorporated the live streams you've seen from this trip so far uh hopefully some content over on tokyo lens as well as these pre-recorded premiere videos that we're gonna be releasing over the next couple days or weeks or because it's day one i literally don't have the first clue of how many i've recorded yet so i'm also somewhat excited about that [Applause] this also just kind of seems like the kind of area that it would be nice just to take a nice stroll enjoy the sound of the water definitely swing by one of these coffee shops and grab a coffee when they're open i might stick around here for a little while today to prep and process and just double check the files to make sure i haven't lost anything and hopefully by the time i'm done all of that some of these shops will be open now here's what i'm curious about because i just saw someone jogging up this hill and then they came down this way and wow this is steep i can see a road there but where where would they jog off to from here because when we went up there we didn't see them maybe they just jog back down okay so the road takes you down there again loving how the mountains look i don't do a lot of splicing in these videos but i'm very very tempted to splice in some drone footage from when i first got here this morning because the cloud cover was so low that from where i was standing i could almost look over the clouds across the town and it was honestly just quite the sight to see and all these little water mills everywhere [Applause] so this shop here is open it's got customers i would like looks like some of the shops are slowly starting to open that's not bad considering the fact that we're only at about 8 25 in the morning right now i will say that both due to the visual aspect and the fact that it's downhill i'm enjoying walking from the upper path or the upper entrance down to the lower entrance much more than the opposite and on the way up here i missed taking a look into this little mini koi pond [Applause] he's very red or orange whatever color you want to say [Applause] but just the view and the way the entire area swings and cuts down like this is beautiful and here is a bit of a free rest area let's take a peek it's got free wi-fi it's got a guest book in there that's always fun are there any people at the moment hello hello nobody somebody drew doramo there's lots of nice drawings date country is there space there we go all right so today as i am recording this it is 7-eleven july 11th into canada and i will just say honestly thank you for the beauty explore always tokyo lens there we go so if any of you ever come out here and this book happens to still be here seems like it's fairly recent actually it goes back to 2020. that's the book volume 21 page near the end there you go shoes off section won't be going out that way maps of the area some higher gear oh look at that [Applause] when there is no magume up here please you know what i don't need a mega man map i will leave it for those who do let's head back out and keep exploring all right so there's a tourist information center down here as well if you're interested in checking that out considering the distance we're probably not going to walk out there to mount enna just feels like it might be a bit excessive for the stream but we will continue our walk along here and expand our way into every little side street that we can find i'm really glad just side note that i started today by going to the washroom because all this running water really has the potential to get to you otherwise and i'm trying something a little bit new with this um that i don't usually do and we'll cover that in a second because this here is a museum about the tools and clothes that were used in this area during the edo period so if you are a museum goer that is a place for you place has it all it's got museums it's got cafes it's got restaurants got tourist visitor centers there's books you can sign there is the obvious and usual vending machine craze i need to start carrying more cash i haven't been carrying a lot lately everything's just been digital money suica on my phone and stuff like that so every time i want to drink i need to find a vending machine that actually has suica availability and you can get hiking sticks and whatnot here this seems to be the tourist information center really beautiful space too but look at that wow that is just quite the view loving loving this view and another cafe over here [Applause] if you're wondering why things have gone kind of quiet because i'm taking pictures is so beautiful that why wouldn't i stop in the middle of the stream to take some pictures it just feels like the kind of thing you gotta do that way i can hopefully share some high resolution stuff with you guys over on uh twitter or instagram or something there we go so i'm doing something a little bit different with the live stream this time which is i am trying to record the audio separately because traditionally the audio straight out of the action camera hasn't been entirely ideal so hopefully it sounds better than it usually does quite a beautiful space and this is the uh this is the actual post office right here so at the beginning we talked about the post towns and you can't talk about the post town without taking a peek at the post office very traditional japanese style post box right here and little peeps made out of rock so this is the magomay post office as i had mentioned earlier i came out here with the full expectation of doing this entire walk entirely in the rain when i checked the weather last night it seemed like this entire area was going to be rain and then when i parked here and double checked the weather again it said that by the time i started it it might be sunny i bought an umbrella and everything but this here is one of the things i was really curious about is the relics of the homioji temple so let's swing down this side street where we've got a cat on a roof and hop there you go and see if we can't find these relics also in case you're curious yes i re-tied my shoe and everything was wonderful and then on the way back because a lot of stuff was downhill i slipped a lot and almost fell and it was hilarious but that wasn't on this stream these guys are just chilling this is the cat space hey guys morning sorry to interrupt you even off some of the side streets here it's just beautiful i love just just love that after this many years in japan it still puts a huge huge smile on my face just to be able to see all this and be a part of this and walk through these spaces and explore and there's not really a road sign here to say which way we should be going uh but i think if you know me you know which way i'm gonna choose it seems pretty obvious but before i choose the exploration let's take a look at the rice fields out here because they are just looking spectacular today look at this look at these look at that so can you guess which road norma's gonna take we've got one that goes up here to the right and one that goes up here to the left there are two roads here i wonder if you'll be able to guess drop it in the comments or in the live chat and your reasoning it's a tough one it's so tough i'll be honest with you guys i'm defaulting to the right so if you guessed right because it is the narrowest and genuinely looks like the most difficult path you were correct however i saw something as i got closer up here on the left so we're gonna sneak up and take a quick peek before we go to the right because this staircase up here has me wondering i'm wondering if this is just some kind of templar shrine or if this is the ruins itself and i'm just going to accidentally blow by it by doing the norm thing and going down the narrowest street i can possibly find so let's see what we find up here and i kind of ran up that hill a little so i'll tell you i'm feeling it i'm definitely looking forward to breakfast this morning and this looks like we've just come into a temple quite a nice one and oh i was supposed to finish with in fact the blue tarps kind of take away from it but you gotta do what you had to do and again some gorgeous fields and mountains out here as i struggle to catch my breath we're in survival mode now so as we head back i do want to say that whether you're watching this live or whether you weren't able to catch it as it was premiering it's not really live whether you're watching this is a premiere or whether you're watching this after because you weren't able to catch it i love the interaction in the comments section so absolutely leave me something in there i like to kind of take a peek through especially for this one because i would like to know what's your dream spot in japan right we talked about it earlier what do you want to see where do you want to go and despite this being a premiere and not a live stream lately we've developed this really kind culture of people supporting each other in the chat and answering questions for each other and the mod squad posting links and whatnot and even people being kind enough to share super chats here in the premieres so for all of you who either a just chat and add some some value help out others answer questions that i might have missed anybody who tosses in super chat all that a huge thank you to all of you and that's not to exclude those of you who just sit back and enjoy watching maybe you don't have a keyboard in front of you or maybe you're just not the kind of person who chats and drops stuff in i just want you to know that i know you're there i appreciate you being there and i love you too and i i almost almost went down and that's the local this is very steep i don't know honestly how far we're gonna make it up this this i don't think that the video really shows it but this is incredibly steep we're looking at easily a 20 to 30 percent incline on this one we'll take it to see how far up we can go and what we can see but if it ends up being nothing well there was definitely something fun there come on shift grab onto this and pull myself up i just want to see around this corner what we've got here if anything other than spider webs because that was a huge spider web and honestly just brings us to another corner ah but i feel like the runes were going to be anywhere they're going to be up there but head back down because i'm still curious about mango meijuku you can see a bit of an abandoned house out there in the background and i just had a spider hanging off my hand and as we do this i'm gonna grab onto the railing here because i have been slipping down all of these inclines whoo i am hoping at some point in the next couple weeks or months probably coming closer to fall so that i don't die to do a six plus hour long live stream now i don't entirely trust the youtube mobile app to not totally crash the live stream and stop us from being uh being able to do it but if that happens we'll just restart and keep going from where we left off the goal is to basically do a half day or quarter day super long walk slash trek slash exploration adventure together right here on the tokyo lens explorer channel just a full day of live streaming something that you can tune into you can tune out of you can you know have it on in the background something that will just be a nice fun day it'll be open to requests like hey go back and check that out hey go see that hey grab a drink etc etc and we can do all of that stuff the initial route for this very similar to this trip will be chosen and planned out by the patreon team and this is a very beautiful cat oh don't gonna run away that's okay that is a very very gorgeous cat nice little and roads going to head back up into hamago meijuku now so that's something for us to look forward to i was originally planning on doing it in maybe august or september however in all fairness walking six plus hours in japan's sweltering summer heat just feels like asking for trouble that's unnecessary so we uh we'll probably delay that until fall when the cooler weather hits but that also gives us more time to do planning and if it turns out to be a worthwhile endeavor it might be something that we can do as like a once or twice a year special event where we all plan out and choose an area to just walk through for six seven no way this place is called mommy i kind of love the name of that i gotta kind of want to take a picture of it just because i love the name boom mommy so we came from up this way and now we're heading down this way and if you notice that the shadow and light balance heading in this direction is a lot better as well so no complaints there oh look at how beautiful this is i feel like every 30 seconds or so i'm just going ah look at how beautiful this is and it just you never tire of it like if you love it you really love it and it's that plain and simple and i really really love it this little street look at this space i'm gonna sneak up here just for the view that is gorgeous all right that's a bit harder than you think with a giant heavy backpack and there's a street that breaks off to the side here so naturally we have to kind of explore that but look at the mountains in the background look at those mountains ah so nice okay so this area seems like homes and parking for the shops and whatnot little k trip coming through here that's the area we were just at over there and that's the street that the cat was on so at the beginning i talked a little bit about how this was one of my my big dreams for coming to japan was to walk through this area and to be honest i have been trying all morning to manage my excitement because this is the space that i wanted to find this is the exact city last year when i visited sumagojoku and naraijuku they were beautiful absolutely gorgeous spaces but they weren't the ones that i was looking for i was happy to have found them but as soon as i walked through magomejoku today especially on this walk back where you could cut down across and you can see the mountains in the valley and the hills on the the houses on the hillside as soon as i found magomejuku i just i knew i found it and i've been so excited and to be honest with you this entire video my heart has just been racing and pounding out of my chest this entire time because i found it i had looked online at all the different things but after so many years had passed i had just lost track of what area it was which one was it there are so many little post towns along the nakasendo trail and you know before we split back in that direction i want to kind of head this way a little see what we've got but there are so many little post towns along the nakasendo trail that i wasn't sure which one it was i wasn't sure there's so many they're all so beautiful and especially when you look at them over and over and over and look at the cactuses growing out of here what and especially when you look at them over and over and over after so many years you kind of lose track of what it was you lose faith in the memory was it this one did it look like this was it that one which one was it and to be honest a small part of me i'm loving this stream by the way a small part of me thought that i may never find it we've got another koi pond here at the moment i only see one lonely toy this is him right here and when i stepped into mugglemejuku today i was pretty sure i'd found it i was pretty sure this is it and as we made our way back the excitement just took over and i'm just so incredibly happy because this is it we found it mago made juku was the place that i desperately wanted to visit and i found it i had lost it for so many years and so finding it just felt like excitement all in its own so really really genuinely happy to be here again before starting the tokyo lens explore channel this would have just been a solo walk it would have just been something that i went through i did some exploration of on my own and then maybe made a bit of a tokyo lens video that showed sections of it but you get to experience the entire area with me firsthand and to be honest above all else i get to actually have my first ever visit to magomejoku my reaction my feelings my memories my route everything is recorded and it's right here and i can always look back at it and that's one of the reasons why i last year went through this section where i tried to these guys are trying to get a picture let me jump out of the picture for a second let them get the street nice and clear without people there we go they got it now this is one of the reasons why last year one of my big things was trying to encourage everybody to get used to documenting things and by getting used to documenting things i don't mean you need to create an entire youtube channel or anything i mean just capture the moments that you're in as you're in them even if you don't upload them anywhere even if you don't put them anywhere just file them away with the date and the name of the location or the name of the memory whatever it is and just have them whether you do it in audio form as a podcast as you're walking through an area or whether you carry around a little camera and just capture your favorite spots and your commentary on it just document keep these things because when you do go out and travel and explore you're going to want to be somewhat used to doing that you're going to look back at the stuff that you make initially by the way the camper van is actually parked right around the corner over here this is the the main street here where we started and it's got all the different it's got the name of the passes that go through here and ghetto all that is cool right there the naka sendo trail to kyoto so should you be so inclined you could actually walk down from here down to kyoto along the nakasendo trail but these mountains and they're we're going to go down here in a second because i personally want to check it out and the rice fields out there are gorgeous but i want to take a look at these mountains because these mountains have had my attention all day the way the clouds are just whisping through the top of the mountains the valleys along the side with the houses and buildings and farms along them there's something very it gets to the point where you feel repetitive to be honest when you're like oh there's something very ghibly-esque about this but there always is because it's japan that's a very obvious thing yes but it's less about like this is like a ghibli movie and it's much more like ghibli does a really good job at capturing the beauty and the atmosphere of japan as it is like when i make youtube videos i try to use music that conveyed my feelings of that place at that time to create an atmosphere but in all honesty the area itself also has its its own atmosphere and every space has a different form of beauty and appeal whether it be a newer and more beautifully organized area like this or whether it just be a forest path whether it be an abandoned building they all have their own feel and the respective movies in the ghibli universe especially the miyazaki ones do a very good job at capturing the atmosphere that is actually there and purveying it in a way that the viewer feels like they're actually in that space despite it being animated and then when you come to certain areas it ends up feeling oddly familiar it feels comfortable it feels in some ways almost i don't want to say like a memory because to be honest it feels like a bit too much but one of the things that i notice a lot in the the comments section of youtube is people often say oh this looks like this anime and this looks like this anime um at first i was like oh that's a lot to anime fans but then you realize that since so much of anime is built off of real life locations and whatnot that it can be exciting to see something that you've only ever seen animated be displayed in in real life ish on a youtube video i guess and until everybody can travel and explore for themselves it's exactly what we're going to keep doing let's try to explore and share as much as possible and something tells me that this trail here if you just follow it the nakasendo and follow the paths that within an incredible amount of time probably days you will uh make yourself all the way to kyoto so with that being said that is the peek into magomay juku i really hope that you guys have enjoyed this little walk i'm glad that i could share it with you to everybody who participated a huge thank you to all of you for those who were able to catch it i guess live ish in the premiere i'm glad you're able to join for all of you who are watching it later or finishing it later or had to watch it in pieces just to get to the end this is a special thank you for you as well i really hope that the rest of your day is absolutely beautiful there are so many more adventures to come i am very excited i hope that you can join me in that excitement and you guys know i will talk to you again real soon and this little bird here it's just chilling hi you you're all right buddy he's just just hanging out hope he's okay don't want to touch him in case he's a baby see you guys again real soon oh just one more closing scene yeah the the bird was okay i flew away with his buddies i think he was stunned for a second but he is all right i did not want to leave it on that cliffhanger hi i need to find some coffee really looking forward to one of these shops opening oh all right ending it bye guys you

Channel: Tokyo Lens Explore

Views: 89,521

Rating: 4.9585166 out of 5

Keywords: Japan, Japanese, Livestream, Japan live, Tokyo Lens, Tokyo Lens Explore, Norm Tokyo Lens, japan hike, hiking, magome, magome juku, magome japan, japanese post town, post town, nakasendo, nakasendo japan, nakasendo trail, magomejuku, magome nakasendo, japan best hike, where to go in japan, what to do in japan

Id: 2zsvh4iATps

Length: 79min 41sec (4781 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021