Nakasendō Way (Magome–Tsumago)

The Nakasendō Way is the historic mountain road that linked Edo (modern Tokyo) and Kyoto during the Tokugawa shogunate, a 534 km journey through the central Honshu highlands maintained as a samurai-era highway between the early 1600s and the 1870s. Sixty-nine post towns dotted the original route; today, the 8 km section between Magome and Tsumago in the Kiso Valley is the most carefully preserved, and the most popular short walk on the Nakasendō.

Both villages are essentially open-air museums of Edo-period architecture: power lines buried, vending machines hidden, and the central streets paved in stone with traditional wooden honjin (high-status inn) buildings on either side. The walk between them follows the original stone-paved Nakasendō through cedar forests, past small shrines and old waterwheels, climbing 200 m to Magome Pass (801 m) before descending the back side to Tsumago. The conventional direction is south-to-north, Magome to Tsumago, because Magome is higher and the climb is short while Tsumago has the better evening atmosphere. Most walkers take 2–3 hours.

The walk is open year-round; spring (April–May) and autumn (October–November) are the most pleasant. Trains run to Nakatsugawa station (for Magome) and Nagiso station (for Tsumago) from Nagoya and Tokyo. There's a useful luggage-forwarding service at the tourist offices of both villages — ¥1,000 per bag, drop in the morning, pick up in the afternoon — so you can walk with a daypack and stay overnight in either village. Both towns have traditional ryokan with futon and onsen (some by booking only, especially in autumn). The trail is well marked with bilingual signs, free of charge, and easy underfoot — suitable for any fit walker and one of the gentlest "great walks" on this list.