Leaving Misedani this morning
As with Hakone, city/town/region names continue to be confusing. I’m in Odai right now, but the station and lots of local things are called Misedani. Odai is… a strange shape 😂

Not a bad day all round, especially compared to yesterday’s shenanigans!
Started out a little chill/late, ate the cup noodle that’d been floating around in my bag and grabbed some more snacks from the supermarket next to the hotel. Pro tip, don’t grab barley tea when you mean to get water, ew. Ew. EWWWW.
Bridge was cute. So many bridges!
Walking to the pass was nice and gentle, cool breeze and green forest.
Bear warnings started, I picked up a bear bell and a walking stick.
Boy howdy was that some good climbing, if I didn’t have my walking sticks I’d never have made it either due to a lack of climbing support, or losing my balance and rolling an ankle or my entire body down a sheer drop.
Stopping at the top of the Misesake pass was a much needed break. Ate an onigiri, smashed a gooshy energy thing and cooled down for a bit.
Downhill was just as hard but different, again thank fuck for the poles.
Stopped at the Okuise Kitsutsuki-kan, roadside station for some more water and grabbed some tiny Bananas, thinking that surely I’ll find a bin somewhere to throw out the skins and leftovers… more foreboding.
Kept walking, aiming for Takihara, where I had planned to grab a train to Umegadani, but it wasn’t going to arrive for nearly two hours (yay local trains) so I aimed for Aso instead.
Walked to Aso, stopped at the FamilyMart and finally found a bin for the stupid Banana skins.
Aso station is delightfully tiny, jumped the train to Umegadani and back on the trail.
The Nisaka-toge started with warnings about bears AND snakes, then progressed to rock falls and near-vertical downhill paths. It feels just like home, nearly everything is trying to hurt me.
I went with this route instead of the longer and more scenic Tsuzurato-toge because it was a lot more climbing and the time didn’t line up with the remaining trains for the day. I’m leaving it for future walks 😆
There was some great climbing to be had again and on the way down there were two paths, either the Meiji route with twists and turns, or the Edo where you basically throw yourself vertically down the hill as far as I could see. I took the longer and less death-defying option.
Alas/thankfully I didn’t see bears or snakes, I’m OK with them at a distance but unless they were on the path ahead of me, I was either going to be surprising them from above or being surprised from above… neither of which I really wanted!
Bear map 三重県｜獣害対策：ツキノワグマの出没にご注意ください！
Coming out at the end of the pass brought me back to reality, pottering through the town to the station there’s a lovely lake.
Train to Owase and grabbed a King’s ransom in supermarket food before crashing out at Hotel Viora. Yay, a bath!
Tanuki count: 16