Nakatsugawa-shi, Guesthouse Tenman-ya

Sunday, 17 November 2025 - When I was a kid, and up to when I was a teenager, I used to travel with family to Japan all the time. Once every two years, almost. And then at some point we stopped. I don't really know why. Maybe with NS, and then with university, it got harder. Or maybe we just felt like we were a little too old and wanted to go off travelling on our own, or with friends. My siblings ended up travelling with my parents to Japan again in their late 20s and early 30s, but I didn't really join in again until finally I did, this one occasion. I don't know what prompted it. We decided to walk the Nakasendo, in Gifu prefecture.

While there we stayed two nights at this guesthouse I'd booked in Nakatsugawa called Tenman-ya. Honestly it looked like a pretty regular, modern guesthouse to me when I booked it, with capsule-style beds even. So I was pretty surprised when we arrived and found it was actually built into a traditional wooden building, with wooden floors you took your shoes off to walk on, and an outdoor inner courtyard you had to walk through to get from the living room to the bedroom. It was really nice, and I'm glad we had decided to spend two nights there, because it really gave us the opportunity to enjoy the space. One of the few places I genuinely felt sorry to leave.