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Walk Suwamachi Street in the Morning — Yatsuo's Stone-Paved Road

The stone pavement of Suwamachi Street, chosen as one of the top 100 roads of Japan.
The stone pavement of Suwamachi Street, chosen as one of the top 100 roads of Japan.

Starting from the Stone Pavement of an Empty Morning

In the early morning there is hardly a soul on Suwamachi Street. The paving stones, still holding the night's dew, glisten quietly, and the latticed houses run straight on up the gentle slope. No power lines cross your view, and the sky opens wide above the rooftops — that is the first thing you notice standing here. The street you thought you knew from photographs is quieter than you imagined, and its sky is bigger. The eaves of the latticed houses step upward in neat tiers, following the pitch of the slope.

Suwamachi Street was chosen as one of the top 100 roads of Japan. But it is not a road you come to in order to verify the plaque. What this road is worth depends on when, and at what pace, you walk it.

With Every Step Up the Slope, the View Recomposes Itself

The street seen from the inn's railing. The townscape viewed from second-floor height has a charm of its own.
The street seen from the inn's railing. The townscape viewed from second-floor height has a charm of its own.

The street follows a gentle slope. Every few steps up, the way the roofs overlap changes, the breadth of the sky changes, and when you turn around, the stone pavement and the houses you have climbed past gather into a single view. What never happens on a flat road happens here at every step. Stop and look up, and you notice that the second-floor lattices and the woodwork under the eaves differ from house to house. It is also a road where the faster you walk, the more you miss.

In the daytime, sightseers come and go, and on the nights of Owara Kaze no Bon the street becomes the festival's emblematic stage, lit by paper lanterns (bonbori). That, too, is certainly one of this road's faces. But its morning face is another thing. The sound of shutters sliding open, of a broom sweeping a storefront. The street's day as a road people live on begins before its day as a sight to see. While the dew has yet to dry, the stones are deeper in color, and the street looks like a different road from the one at midday.

Not a road you pass through on the way to somewhere else, but a road you come to Yatsuo to walk. Suwamachi Street in the morning teaches you that a road itself can be the destination.