I step out of the taxi and enter my hotel. Their webpage said they serve dinner until 9 pm, but upon check-in I'm told it's actually at 8:30, forty-five minutes from now. I rush to my room, gather a few things and head down to the baths. I enter the dining room just after 8 and attack the buffet, trying not to think about surface-based contagions. I order my usually on-the-road dinner drinks, a draft beer and a bottle of local sake, and have them brought at the same time. A few minutes later one of the cooking crew brings me a glass of the local beer, also on draft. I'm grateful, for I'd wanted to check out their brewery which is a few minutes up the street, but of course there wasn't time. So I tear into the four plates before me, piled with one of each item from the expansive buffet. Within half an hour, I've finished, plus the three drinks. I drift with bloated belly up to my room, where sleep doesn't come too easily.
The morning too is a similar dash. I get to the outdoor baths just before they open at six, but at this hotel they actually lock the doors. A guy comes a few minutes later with the key, and I have a soak, overlooking the surf crashing into the cliffs just below me. I pay my bill on the way to breakfast (amazed that the young guy at the front shrugs off the fact that they'd forgotten to charge for any of my drinks last night, a rarity in Japan), gulp down a few plates from the buffet, then am out the door within fifteen minutes.
I have a taxi pickup arranged for me in 90 minutes at Minakata Kumagusu Museum and I predict I'll need every minute to cover the 5 km to get there. It's a quiet morning, no one about. I find a small temple hall and small pilgrimage course above Sandanbeki cliff, a series of tall rock spires that fall away into the sea. The top of these cliffs are composed of overlapping plates that suggest a former seabed. A trail follows them, with occasional openings that allows one to get closer to the edge. Near one entrance a local church has erected a sign pleading with possible suicides to reconsider. One section of trail is closed until 9 am, but I skirt through a small traditional rock garden to continue on my way. I do eventually leave the shore-hugging trail to move onto the narrow streets above, most lined with hotels, some closed, others abandoned. I love beach towns out of season. For me, this pathos is the most profound expression on mono no aware.
An array of washing machines stands covered near the entrance to the wonderfully named Grampus Inn. (And I continued to think of it as just a name, until it popped up again in the book Nan'yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945, revealing the true meaning.) I'm stuck on the main road for a while, detouring briefly to Senjojiki cliffs that lie closer to the sea, offering fisherman a perfect perch. I climb a small rise to examine a historical marker, and see the crescent of Shirahama beach arcing away before me, which I arrive at not long after. A long couple plays a game of rambunctious tag near the shore, away from a bulldozer that pushes the snow-like sand into some kind of unseen order.
Beyond the beach I cut through Kumano-sansho Jinja, a shrine not old but spread across a set of lovely shaded grounds. A pair of temples further on aren't quite as charming. I'm really picking up my pace now as I tread the last kilometer under high rocky cliffs, and past fisherman casting lines from concrete embankments. I can see my driver in the distance, staring off to sea, channeling the occupation of his ancestors.
The train ride takes only an hour, but I wash my hands twice. The mess of construction at Yuasa Station makes it tough to get my bearings at first, but before long I cross beneath the train line into a quiet rural landscape. I'd passed through in 2009, but today the town is better known to me as one of the first cluster outbreaks of the virus. I find myself backtracking on my footsteps of a decade ago, moving along for about ten minutes before arriving at Shoraku-ji temple dwarfed by a pair of ancient trees at whose base stands a huddle of Jizo statues. Then I turn and retrace my steps once again into town proper.
This walk seems themed around a mid-19th century tsunami. In 1854, a local man named Hamaguchi Goryo had lit fires to guide people to high ground and thus safety from the wave. In its aftermath, he called for the erection of a high berm that proved effective against another tsunami in 1946. The town holds an annual festival in his honor on the anniversary of that later date, as a way to give thanks.
I walk along the wall, beneath the array of tall pine trees that stand shoulder to shoulder. Where roads break the berm stand massive steel gates intended to close in times of disaster. Beyond these I cross a tall bridge, looking eastward to the hillsides shorn for their mikan and yuzu orchards. A few of these have been encroached upon by the shiny black plantations of solar panels.
Going up the town's main street, I pass an ancient woman easily 100 years old, old enough to remember both the 1946 wave and tales from those who'd ran toward Goryo's signal fires nearly a century before. I turn down a lane not long afterward, where a handful of soy sauce factories still stand, an array of lovely Meiji period wooden structures. Yuasa claims that it was here that Japan's first soy sauce was produced, 750 years before. It is a pleasant stroll through time, where I pop my head in to a museum packed with artifacts of traditional production. A young boy accompanies me for part of it as he goes to mail a letter, surprising me in his use of English to answer my questions in Japanese.
My map takes me along a zigzag course along some temples, and back to the town's older high street. This is part of the Kumano Kodo, so again I've met myself of a decade ago. I've allowed myself an easy stroll as my train isn't until much later in the day. But around this point I realize that I can catch an earlier one, so pick up my pace. The walk is nearly finished anyway and I like the idea of getting home by mid-afternoon. I walk briskly out of town again, up to the shadow of a castle that multitasks as an onsen. As I'm not planning to bathe here today, so turn and move back toward town, intending to return here for a soak in the summer, having already decided to take my daughter down to Shirahama for a beach holiday.
I pass through some fields and reservoirs, and arrive back at the train station. The old structure is a nice presentation of historic wood, in the process of being replaced by a concrete beast. Contrarily a very attractive junior high school is being put up next door. Upon entering, I beeline immediately to wash my hands. No soap. A station employee has the misfortune to be standing just outside, and though I preface things with an understanding that it isn't necessarily his fault, I berate his superiors for not stocking soap this late in the health crisis, when the national government seems days away from calling a state of emergency, especially here in the town that had the first outbreak. He doesn't reply, doesn't look at me. Oh well, I guess sticking your head in the sand is more effective than face masks anyway.
My train pulls in, and I move off to self-isolate awhile.
On the turntable: Blood, Sweat & Tears, "Child is Father to the Man"
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