Tokaido Walk (11) Mishima-Hara (off Tokyo): May 5, 2011

I have already walked more than 100 kilometers from Nihonbashi, Tokyo. I walked from Mishima, the 11th Shukuba station, through Numazu, the 12th station, to Hara, the 13th. It was about 12km walk in total.


Mishima is known as an eco-friendly city. It has many springs in the city. A beautiful creek named “Genbei gawa” flows in the central part of the city. Small fish swim and fireflies fly in and around the creek.


People were enjoying walks when I visited there in the morning. There are cement-made steps installed in the creek. I walked over the steps.

The creek was seriously polluted after the World War 2 by polluted water from homes and factories. Fireflies died out.

People started clean-up the creek in the 1990s. The city’s recovery of clean water is widely reported both inside and outside Japan.

I walked Old Tokaido westwards. Houses and shops continue along the street. The roads are flat (easy to walk).


I found a huge building with a large parking space along the street. It was a pachinko parlor. Pachinko is Japan’s popular board game. People enjoy gambling by it.

The building had about 1000 machines in it. More than half of the seats were full when I entered the parlor at around 10:30 am. It was noisy inside the parlor but no sounds were heard outside.

I saw a young lady arrived by a taxi. I also saw many people came here by their cars. I wondered how many people were spending their holidays at pachinko parlor in Japan.

I arrived at Numazu. The city is famous for its fishery port and himono (half-dried fish) products.

There are many shops of marine products and seafood restaurants in the port area. I found hundreds of himono (half-dried fish) on wire-mesh tables and hundreds of large cooked tune heads (on wood tables) sold.

I visited the seacoast. Thousands of pine trees are planted here. The coast is called Senbon-Matsubara (Thousands pine trees field). Families were relaxing in the coast and birds were flying against strong wind from the sea wind.

The pine woods - Mt. Fuji contrast is famous. The scene is repeatedly drawn by many artists. I unfortunately could not see Mt. Fuji because of cloudiness.

I walked from Numazu to Hara. The pine-tree woods continued throughout the area (about 6 kilometers).