Doing the Nakasendo trail from Magome?

So I decided to visit Kusatsu another time. I want to hike the Nakasendo trail and it is a lot closer to where I live as well. I checked online and found that the average hike from Magome to Tsumago is about 2.5/3 hours. We are planning to leave Shizuoka City early morning to Nagoya which will only take an hour and then it takes about an hour and a half from Nagoya to Magome via local train.

We want to see a lot of the trail, so we are thinking about hiking beyond Tsumago to stay at a 民宿 or a 宿泊施設 in a less popular/crowded town?

I know that a lot of these small towns stop serving dinner at 5pm and turn off all their lights early as well. To avoid hiking too late in the dark, we are trying to find other places that are good to stop at maybe around the 5 hour/6 hour hike mark?

I have read other posts on here about the Nakasendo trail, but most people on here do these 4 or 5 day hikes where they only hike 2 or 3 hours a day. We want to hike twice that long on the first day though. Is this possible or will we end up in the boonies with nowhere to stay overnight?

Hi there

Just over 20 km from Magome is the town of Nojiri. When I walked this route in 2007 I stayed at a minshuku called Koiji, which is just across the river from the town. Phone number is +81 264-55-2828. You can read a bit about it here:
http://thewalkingfool.blogspot.co.nz/2007/12/day-10-thursday-1-novembe...

If you want to go further, at around 28 km from Magome is the town of Suhara, which according to google maps has a minshuku called Itose.
http://www.kisoji.com/kisoji/spa/ookuwa/itose.html

The next "major" town is Kiso-Fukushima, which is a hot spring town with lots of accommodation options.

Just be warned that following the Nakasendo past Nagiso involves walking along a busy road for much of the way. It's not as nice as the stretch between Magome and Tsumago.

Also, the train from Nagoya doesn't pass through Magome. You have to change to a bus at Nakatsugawa. Just in case you didn't know that!