Tsumago is, indisputably, a charming place. Low mountains swing the former post-town's main street around in a curve of weathered wooden houses, backdropping the scene with the dark green of the firs that cloak the hills.

Along this section of the old Nakasendo road that, during the Edo Period (1603-1867), linked Kyoto and Edo (present-day Tokyo), are slatted shop-fronts under tiled roofs, each doorway with a dark-indigo-and-white noren curtain hanging above it like a sign advertising the business within.

Just outside the town, feathery bamboo overhangs the road, and, on the way to the mountain pass between here in Nagano Prefecture to Magome in Gifu Prefecture, the river spills white over the rounded boulders between its wooded banks.