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whether on foot, on horseback, or on wheels, is disagreeable, difficult and slow.
Utsunomiya is a very large and important town, built on moderately high ground. It was the seat of a daimio of 70,000 Koku whose castle has been turned into barracks. There is an old temple standing on the edge of an almost perpendicular bluff which commands a fine view to the north-east. The city seems an important centre of trade, there are numerous tôbutsuya well supplied with Bass’s beer, or at least beer with Bass’s labels, common claret and champagne, Kerosene lamps, slop clothing, slates and stationery.
At Utsunomiya the tourists to Nikkô leave the Ôshiu kaidô, and turning to the north-west reach their destination by a good road of 9 ri along superb avenues of Cryptomeria. From Imaichi, 2 ri before one reaches Nikkô, there is a most exquisitely picturesque but difficult route up the course of the Kinu gawa due north to Wakamatsu and so to Yonezawa, which seems almost as unknown to Japanese as to foreigners.
Following the Ôshiu kaidô, 3 ri beyond Utsunomiya is the small town of Shirasawa, where one crosses the the Kinu gawa. The river divides 3 ri above the town, and reunites its branches 1 ri below it, thus inclosing a long narrow sandy island thickly covered with small trees and brushwood. On the left or farther bank of the northern branch is the town of Akutsu 1 ri from Shirasawa.
Akutsu is not a regular station town, and the traveller from the south passes through it without stopping; but it is an important forwarding place for travellers and goods coming to Tôkiô from the north, as there is communication by flat bottomed boats down the Kinu gawa, 13 ri to a small village called Kubota; whence 7 ri of level ground lead to Sakai a town on the Tone gawa, by which boats drop down the stream to Tôkiô in about sixteen hours. All the goods traffic and nearly all the passengers go by this route. There is an Ura-kaidô from the Aidzu
