[Newsletter] Mysterious path leads to hidden Japanese masterpiece (Patreon)

▶︎ Watch the new video → https://youtu.be/30GgRNBwx8w

Deep in the forest, in the foothills around the World Heritage Site of Mt. Kōya, there's a secret path that follows an old abandoned train line. Walk the path and you'll be rewarded for your efforts with a magnificent orange train trestle – a very unusual one for Japan.

It's called Nakakosawa Bridge, and the only way to see it is by hiking there yourself. No regular roads go there. Sounded good to me; it began with a 2-hour train ride down from Ōsaka to Wakayama Prefecture.

I got off the train, on the Nankai Kōya Line, at a station called Shimokosawa (which basically means "lower Kosawa", Kosawa being a local place name). From there I walked along some confusing but fascinating paths towards the next station.

Eventually, signs for the path began appearing, though they can be confusing too. But they did finally lead me to the bridge, whose name is "middle Kosawa".

It was built in 1927 – out of steel. Steel, at that time, was a very unusual thing to be used in Japan, particularly for a remote train trestle like this. To this day, there are only about ten such bridges in all of Japan.

They were usually wood, and/or concrete. The path I was walking had been a "forest railroad", a narrow-gauge train for a private logging company. It was that train that carried the steel into the forest to build the trestle for the passenger train that took religious pilgrims to Kōya.

The fun thing to do there is to wait for trains to go by overhead. As you'll see in the video, it can get addicting.

I then had to walk the rest of the way to the next station, Kamikosawa ("upper Kosawa"). This walk was where things got even weirder (who knew there were random banana trees in Japan?).

Not what I planned

This was all rather last-minute. I'd been planning on hiking to another bridge on another part of this line. I had it all worked out, and it was only the day before leaving that research uncovered this little-known, mysterious, but more historical bridge.

It seemed like the obvious destination to see first. So I changed my plans.

Great fun on this one. Next week will be a look at another unique engineering oddity in that area – the Dragon's Aqueduct. Can't wait!

▶ TRAVEL LOVERS, PARTNERS, AND MASTERS: Watch the extended 29-minute ad-free version, including lunch in Kamikosawa Station, an in-depth exploration of the area, the chance to watch trains go by and learn about the 2017 landslide, a ride to the end of the Kōya Line, and a cable car up to the mountain top → https://patreon.com/posts/134392757

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Everywhere is worth exploring!

–Jeremy