After Shiomi-toge, I walked the Nakahechi and Kogumotori-goe sections of the Kōdō, camping in the cold nights of mid-March. Sleep came poorly, compounded by bad food and no baths, so at the end I treated myself with a night at the Azumaya in Yunomine Onsen, an inn whose centuries-old history is dwarfed by the 1800 years of the hot springs themselves. I felt warm for the first time in days, in black pine baths that are among the most beautiful in Japan.
My friend Daniel and I would walk the little trafficked Hongudō, a section of the Iseji which ran for two days through the hills to connect the Kogumotori-goe with the sea. My feet found familiar footholds in the Kogumotori, which I'd just climbed one day before. Not long after leveling out it dropped sharply down the initial stages of the Hongudō route, before climbing again to Banze-toge, whose characters were of a familiar but unusual reading. Dropping once again down the far side, the path split into five directions, and it took a little bit of connoitering to get things right.
We should have appreciated that extra time in the forest, for there would be little more for the next two days. A road led us through the first of many farm villages, before dropping us onto the busy Route 168. We'd eventually leave it to cross a wide bridge over the Shingu-gawa, but the bitumen underfoot would be a near constant until late afternoon. It was a sunny and pleasant day, and we chatted as we went, the scenery of little but trees. There was the odd jizo statue, a group of equally chatty monkeys, and a brook that ran ever to our right.
We eventually arrived at a small hamlet, and in our discussion of what sort of people might live out here we missed our trail off to our left somewhere. But we continued on as we weren't far off, stopping for lunch at a strange single switchback that curled through a sole patch of clear-cut wood. The boulders and open view made for a good lunch spot.
Nearing the top of the rise we noted where our missed trail popped out, which allowed us to bisect the curling switchbacks of road along the more amenable surface of forest path. An old abandoned school at the pass had been converted into a small park, but the swimming pool remained to acquire a thick green sludge. The trails continued on and off, passing a handful of hidden hamlets and even a Bouldering course of a recent vintage. But we'd lose the paths again at the bottom of the hills, the forest it passed through being too dense and overgrown to decipher.
We joined a busy road again, this one also defined by the contours of the stream that it paralleled. The maps I carried were poor, and contradicted the equally poor signage along the way, so it was with an uneasy feeling we came to the end of the day's journey. The inn proved amenable in picking us up, and not long afterward we were enjoying a beer and a bag of kakipi on the sofa of the lobby, a ritual common to those who walk Japan.
It was a good night's sleep in an odd hotel, one that might have been built along the design of an old age home, and one certainly constructed with local government money. The dawn brought a steady rain, and our driver from the day before was kind in driving us partly up the hillside roads that gave definition to the ricefields of Maruyama Senmaida. I love this country for these types of places, grand and breathtaking and nearly unknown. Coming across such places is one of the true treasures of country walking in Japan.
The rain let up as we climbed to the pass, which allowed for fantastic views over the terraced fields. Another pass soon followed, and by the time we arrived in the village at the other side, the sun was high and confident. Sadly, our sense of orientation didn't follow suit. We'd follow a set of signs that seemed to cheat, to follow the spirit of the Kōdō, without being the actually contours of the path itself. We began to sense that the signage was orientated to walkers coming from Ise, as a number of times we'd see signs pointing back into the forest we just passed. A woman at a roadside shop seemed to confirm this when I asked for directions, repeatedly pointing us in the direction from which we came. I'd correct her each time yet she'd do it again, and I eventually gave up, resigned to my role in a sort of Monty Python skit.
In a sort of accident we stumbled across the trail over the Yokogaki Pass, after bushwhacking above the narrow logging road we'd ascended. At the top, the sea opened before us, even more so at a wide area of landslide that required an extensive detour. Time was running against Daniel by now, as he needed to take a 90 bus ride back to Yunomine to get his car, then drive on to Osaka. So we parted ways on the highway below, which he followed into town while I ascended once more.
The road didn't take me far from Daniel's course below, as I traced the contours of a hillside on a small paved road. I eventually found flat ground again near where some high schoolers practiced baseball moves, doing what the Japanese call "image training," scooping and fielding and throwing invisible balls. I took a long break in a shrine nearby, having almost three full hours to my train, then finished the Hongudō with the pop of broken blisters, after nearly 60km of hard surface over the two days.
I met the Iseji proper under the cliff face of Inaoiwa Shrine. The flat sand of the beaches flanking the Iseji beckoned, offering ease to the feet for the final few kilometers to Kumanoshi and the train station. After eating half the menu at MosBurger, I killed time visiting the tallest set of hananingyo dolls I've ever seen, towering at least 6 meters. Then there was little to do but lay in the grass outside the station, listening to a mysterious woman sing a traditional ballad, as the clack of her wooden clackers counted time until my train was ready to go.
On the turntable: Jimmy Smith, "Lonesome Road"
No comments:
Post a Comment