For others who are looking for some up to date info on the Kiso valley walking stick/branding stations, hopefully this is some info that will help!
I had heard a lot about the Kiso 11 and getting brands on a walking stick, and we were both very excited for this part of the Nakasendo. But I was conscious that in the run up to our trip, information about the walking stick and branding was very sparse and generally quite old. So we were worried it might not be a thing anymore. But I can confirm that as of May 2026, this is still a thing! It’s a little tricky hunting down the brands but it can be done and it’s a lot of fun. We mostly went off https://japantravel.navitime.com/en/area/jp/guide/NTJarea0090-en/, but the information isn’t up to date. Also it lists a brand in some place called Ichikoku Tochi Tateba Chaya, which we missed but doesn’t seem to be a post town anyway. And it would make it 12 brands, so not sure what that one was about.
There are 11 in total, we collected 9. We set off from Nakatsugawa, so the stamps are ordered west to east. We walked a fair chunk of the way from Nakatsugawa to Niekawa, so if anyone wants any info on sections to avoid or anything I’m happy to help! I would recommend trying to find a copy of the Shinshu Kisoji Nakasendo Walking Map. We only found one in Yabuhara, but navigating with that is a lot more fun than google maps. Though it’s a very confusing map, so be prepared to get a little lost now and then!
Overall I’d absolutely recommend walking a lot of the Nakasendo, even if you will end up just going along pavements on a roadside for quite a while. You see a lot of beautiful scenery, amazing little neighbourhoods, and I’d say every post town is worth seeing, not just the usual Magome-Tsumago-Narai. The later sections from Nojiri onwards were maybe a little tedious with all of the walking on the roadside pavement though.
Branding
The brands are like little soldering irons, and most places will need to go and find them for you first. Once they’re plugged in, they need five minutes to heat up. When you’re ready, firmly press the brand into the staff, making sure it’s the right way up, and hold it there. You may need to rock it back and forth slightly to press all the characters in. If you leave it for too long, it’ll burn, like a lot of mine did. I never really got the timing down, but it’s not a big deal, I’m still happy with the outcome.
1. Magome
This was our first brand, and also where we had to buy our staff. There were two tourist information centres, neither of them knew about either the staff or the brands. However, there was a woodworking shop next to the tourist information centre (the one up the hill), where the staff were happy to help us.
You can buy an octagonal hinoki cypress staff for 1500yen. They are cut in various different thicknesses and lengths, and the guy in the shop was happy to cut ours down to 140cm. Apparently the guy’s dad makes them. I can’t vouch for that obviously but they’re not the most consistent octagons so I can believe it!
There were two brands they gave us in Magome. The first was for Magome (seen at the top of the staff), and the second was for hinoki cypress. For some reason these were the only brands that had a border and a different font.
2. Tsumago
This brand was at the tourist information centre, very easy to find.
3. Nagiso
This one we missed, despite looking all over. The Japan Travel website says it is at the Nagiso Station Tourist Info Center, but we asked there and the guy said they don’t do it in Nagiso. In hindsight, checking some prominent local museums might have been a good idea but never mind.
4. Nojiri
This brand can be found in the Okuwa Village Nojiri District Community Centre, near the station. The Japan Travel website says “Okuwa Village Nojiri Branch”, which wasn’t bringing up much on Google maps for us.
5. Suhara
The Japan Travel website says you can get a brand at Yamato-ya in Suhara. I don’t know if that’s true, because we were told by the woman who gave us the Nojiri brand to go to the folklore museum instead. We hoofed it over just in time, and I can highly recommend going to the museum. The grounds and building are beautiful and there is a lot of interesting sericulture machinery inside. Also, we arrived there a little after closing but the lady running it was waiting for us, gave us ice tea, kept the museum open for us to have a look around and also gave us some food for the carp.
6. Agematsu
We had to skip this because we didn’t have time to walk to every stop.
7. Fukushima
We tried Hirokoji plaza and the Daikan residence and neither of them knew about the brands. Thankfully, someone at the tourist information centre was happy to give us our brand. It’s directly across from the station.
8. Miyanokoshi
This brand was indeed in the Yoshinaka Yakata museum, and this is another cool museum for folklore and art, worth a visit! There are lots of cool gardens and shrines nearby.
9. Yabuhara
Japan Travel said this was in the Miyagawa Museum, but the man there directed us to “Yabu Harajuku Lively Square Arts Laughing House Waran Kan 藪原宿にぎわい広場 笑ん館(warankan)”, which is just down the road. They actually had the brand ready to go! Presumably someone else had just visited.
10. Narai
This was in the tourist information centre as expected. Also Narai is just so beautiful. Really nice walking into it over the pass from Yabuhara, you get a nice view over the town.
11. Niekawa
This is in the Niekawa Sekisho. There were actually two brands available here, one for Niekawa itself and one for the Sekisho. However, the man didn’t seem particularly familiar with the brands and we had a hard time getting one, let alone two.
Walking distances
For reference, we usually walk faster than the estimated time on hikes. However, for most of the Nakasendo we ended up taking longer than what Google maps predicted, probably because we also would take small detours to check a cool looking temple, shrine, or side street. So I’d definitely plan for the hikes to take longer than predicted, you don’t want to have to rush between stops. Overall we did just around 90km over 4 days, which was tiring but very doable. Distances are just taken from apple health walking distance, so they might not be 100% accurate.
The Nakatsugawa – Tsumago part took us probably 7h total including a 2h30min -ish stop in Magome just wandering around and looking for the walking stick. Overall, about 21km walked.
Tsumago – Kiso-Fukushima was the longest hike. It was a 31km day, setting off really early in the morning. We only walked to Suhara and then took the train between Suhara – Kiso Fukushima. That was almost 10 hours on the road and I think you would really struggle to be much faster while still having time to explore. It did mean we missed the Agematsu stamp. Not all parts of this were worth it, especially the bit between Nojiri and Suhara you will be walking right next to the main road. But we had to take the fastest route to get to the museum before it shut. Apparently there is a nicer walking route for this section.
Kiso-Fukushima – Narai we ended up walking to Miyanokoshi and then took a train to Yabuhara and walked the last section to Narai. We did 23km over about 7 hours. Note that things shut really early in Narai, we went ice cream hunting at just past 4pm and we found a single place still open.
Narai – Niekawa is mostly paved road and pretty boring, but we stumbled upon some sort of festival as we were walking into Niekawa which was really nice. It took us maybe 2h total including a stop for snacks.
For everything except the Narai – Niekawa bit (where we carried everything) we used the Nakasendo Luggage Transfer Service. They pick up your luggage at your hotel/ryukan in the morning deliver it to your next stop sometime in the early afternoon. That cost us about £104/22000 yen for two large backpacks of just under 11kg each.
by olexiw