A year in reads: 2022

  

On the turntable: Tomaso Albinoni, "Adagio in G minor"

 

The Top of the Top of the Lake

 

 

It had been a pretty uneventful morning.  I tried to hitch, but only three cars passed, none of them going all the way anyway.  My reward was a long beautiful walk, pointed toward the rising sun.  I was freezing when I got off the train, but my temperature was rising in the sunshine, though dropping quickly under the odd patches of shade. A few fisherman were standing up in those mini one-man boats I noted on my last walk up here.  

Having hitched along this section on my walk the month before, I felt guilty that I hadn't taken in this section on foot, as lovely as it was.  And the weather was far better today.  After returning to Tsukide village, the plan was to backtrack, then follow the Umi no Be across the top of the lake and up to Shizu-ga-take to meet the section that I'd walked (though not written about) last year.  Online info was sparse and not terribly accurate, so I'd be relying mainly on signposts.  I recognized the futility of this, being in inconsistent Shiga after all, but signage for the route had been pretty good elsewhere in the prefecture.  Fingers crossed.  

I fell in behind another walker who was about 50 meters ahead of me.  He stayed along the water's edge, I cut through the center of Tsukide proper, but we eventually met at the base of the steps of Hiyoshi shrine.  I thought that he was looking for the trailhead that I too had sought out last time, relying on the same incorrect maps as I had.  It turned out he was on a different mission altogether, walking the countryside to connect the area's shrines.  In cases where the distances between were too great he would drive, ditch the car somewhere, then loop around on foot, as he was doing today.  

As we were both returning the way we came, we fell in step to chat.  He too was a seasoned walker, having successfully summited the Hyakumeizan, albeit stretched over 25 years of weekends. (A pace not unlike my own, though I've not been actively seeking out the goal.). Since retirement, he went on to climb the 300 peaks of the Sanbyakumeizan, and now was aiming even higher to pay house calls on the gods.       

His car was parked along some rice fields, so I bid him farewell, heading across and through Shiotsu, a small post town along the Shiotsu Kaidō, a spur route off the Hōkkoku Kaidō.  Jizo that had once lined this route had been unceremoniously clustered together at the edge of the concrete walls meant to prevent erosion.  But what protects against the erosion of tradition?  

Good new signage contradicted the older weathered signage. The newer was aimed at the bicyclists attempting a loop of the entire lake.  One sign at the far end of town made little sense, the arrow pointed in the wrong direction, and the accompanying text completely bleached away by the sun.  So I continued to follow my online map.  I decided to pop in and pay my respects at a large shrine, and climbed the leaf-strewn steps behind up to some smaller shrines higher up.  From there I noted a small clearing with a sacred tree and a stone marker, the latter perhaps indicating trail, had that odd arrow earlier been correct.  But the path between had been rubbed away by the crash of a pair of tall trees felled by storm.  I tried to make my way there anyway, moving up steep slopes slick with mud, into which I dug my fingertips, seeking a better grip. Finally at the stone marker, it revealed nothing. 

The sign posts continued to fail, any lettering long ago faded.  I followed the map along a course that looked right, which crossed a river and a highway, then a bit of wasteland.  I knew I had to enter the forest at the far end, between the two buildings of a concrete factory. I hurried through, not wanting to get told off by the workmen zooming around on heavy machinery.  Then I found my signage again, having been more or less on course all along.  

The entrance to the forest lay in the shadow of two slag heaps.  And for the first few minutes, the hike reeked of old oil.  Not many did this route any more, to judge from the fallen bridge, and the trail overlaid with debris of stick and stone.  I reached a junction, my map splitting into two routes.  The followed the one to the left, until it became less trail and more stream bed.  In some sections it felt more like I was canyoning than hiking. I was grateful for the cold temperatures, which ensured the absence of leech and viper. Felled trees proved an obnoxious obstacle, making for a lot of up and over, or ducking beneath on weary legs.     

Midway up, I again checked my map, and realized that the trail I'd forsaken below had actually been correct.  The junction wasn't that far back, but I didn't fancy navigating all those downed trees again.  I knew the trail was above and to the right, and the hillside didn't look that steep.  It turned out that my scrambling at the shrine was a dress rehearsal for what was to come next.  I stretched and lurched upward, a few steps at a time, testing and grasping at roots, or throwing an arm around medium sized trunks.  To miss would have meant a slide rather than a fall, but the risk of injury was always there.  And yet again, I found myself wondering when I was going stop doing such stupid stunts. 

Safe at the top, I found my trail, which eventually joined a junction with a better marked trail, and the rest of the day was an easy stroll along the ridge line.  One col had been sheared away to construct massive electrical towers, which opened up the view of Oku-biwa and the north end of the lake.  I lunched here with the view, then met the ridge line which ringed Lake Yogo on the other side.  I plunged down to another saddle before making the final and ascent to the familiar clearing of Shizu-ga-take. 

I'd originally intended to do this entire hike in reverse, until train delays and the threat of missed connections made me come up with a better Plan B.  My initial route had me cheating with the chairlift up to this very spot, so imagine my delight in seeing that the lift wasn't running at all. Closed for the winter, a fact neglected by their website.  So, with brand-new trekking poles in hand, I raced down the switchbacks like a skier, into the village below.

It was a 30 minute walk from here to the station.  I considered hitching, as I always do in these situations, but the day was still bright and warm.  So I walked happily, feeling the sun on my face, a sensation that is at a premium in this month when the days continue to grow shorter, and cold. 

 

On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "1983-04-17, Meadowlands Arena"

 

Western Front Redux

 

 

 

When I set out to walk the Umi no Be no Michi in August 2009, I hadn't realized that it extended along the Katsuraka-go-ozaki peninsula.  My mistake became clear last year while driving the high Oku-biwako Parkway which parallels the trail, with signage for the latter popping up now and again along the way.   So it was that I returned on an overcast morning at the beginning of November.  

It was a less than auspicious start. I made the rookie maneuver of not checking my return train times until on the outbound ride, and was horrified at how early this line shut down.  I'd have to race all day to catch the last one at just before 5 o'clock, leaving me just under six hours to do an eight to nine hour walk.  Hitching would be crucial, and it was in my favor that it was a national holiday, meaning more people on the road, many devoid of any solid plan.  Picking up a foreign hitchhiker made for a pleasant diversion.

Unfortunately the road itself conspired against me.  The long stretch running south from Ōmi-Shiotsu station was lined with a guardrail, offering no place to pull over, thus no chance of a pickup. For the first half and hour, my thoughts were as dark as the fog that enshrouded me, made even worse in noting that there were no busses along here after about 8 a.m.  But I kept the faith, spinning frequently with thumb out.  And in doing so summoned up a miracle ride somehow, the driver stopping just in front of the village police box, prompting me to jokingly ask if this was legal.  A woman who I'd been keeping pace with during the last ten minutes was standing nearby, and laughed. 

The ride was a short one, along a quiet road that traced the shoreline before terminating at the tiny fishing village of Tsukide.  I dutifully followed a directional sign pointing up toward the hills,  pleased with both my good luck and with a gorgeous thatched roof house whose surroundings were decorated with items of a long ago age.  Within a minute the smile left my face, as the trail halted below a massive dam.  I scanned for any trace of trail, but all was overgrown.  I was further puzzled that my online map showed the route to be on the complete opposite side of the village.  I retreated back to to the sign I'd seen earlier.  

Besides being a national holiday, it also appeared to be a day when the entire hamlet was out for their village cleaning.  A man and woman were busy pulling debris out of the rocks at the water's edge.  I asked them if they knew about the Umi no Be, and in broken English, the man beckoned me to follow. 

I followed him into the house that I'd be admiring minutes before.  Both he and I were unmasked (mine in my pocket), but he seemed little concerned as he sat just beside me, and spread a paper map across our laps.  Local knowledge once again trumped technology, but he talked incredibly slowly, in what seemed to my deadline-obsessed mind to be like one syllable every three seconds.  Finally armed with the right directions, I moved quickly up some steep switchbacks, finding myself out of breath on the ridge a mere hour after leaving the train.  There was a decrepit little park there, so I stopped to de-layer before moving on.  

This was the time that I most feared the risk of bears, and I was walking a trail pockmarked with spiky horse chestnuts, most of them already cracked open.  The trail led over a little rickety bridge, offering me a Sorcerer moment in every step.  The opposite side had recently been torn apart by wild boar, probably the night before.  From here the path was carpeted with magnolia leaves, under any of which could be a viper a-coil. I wanted to believe that they were already in hibernation, as the cool fog chilled the sweat of my earlier climb.  

The paved parkway road below twisted and turned with the contours of the ridge.  But I followed a roller coaster that rose and fell, in keeping with the actual ridge line. I was still hoping for the fog to burn off, not only for the views that weren't too far in front of me, but also so I wouldn't surprise any bears that might also be.  I probably had nothing to fear from animals, giving fair warning with my huffing and puffing, this being my first real hike in almost three months.  And the moment I thought this, from the forest below me I heard a strange kind of yelp which wasn't a deer or any other bird I'd ever heard before.  It repeated a few times, followed then by a low roar. Shit!, a mother and her cub.  Their cries repeated a couple of times:  the yelp, the roar.  The squeal. The roar. It took the mind a second to parse out the motorcyclist on the road just below, firing up his bike with a squeaky kickstarter.

My route wasn't on either of my trusty go-to hiking apps, so I was flying blind, putting my trust in the signage.  It had been pretty good so far, but of the worn, 1990s vintage. Inevitably three decades of storms coming off the lake will have brought rot to the base of the post of one, and an arrow that I might eventually need to rely on will be lying in the overgrowth of weeds a half step off-trail.  Fingers crossed, I came over the peak that served as the ridge's high point, and continued my undulations south.  

And the fog lingered on, past the lunch hour.  Every time I came to a view point, I could do nothing but smile.  When I solo hike I'm generally pretty good with the weather, and I could have easily chosen the following day, though the forecast for the current day had looked better.  I could write an entire post on how poor the meteorological system has become in Japan over the last decade.  Not surprising, right on the heels of their investing massive amounts of money in new technology.  

I stopped for a moment to confirm my course from my digital map, which did at least include the southern half of my course.  And as I did, a venomous yamakagashi drifted across the trail two meters in front of me.  Some steps led down to the road proper, and then lo and behold I saw through the trees the lake opening up below me.  With the lifting of the fog, thus did my spirits.  

The trail began to drop steadily toward the fishing village of Sugaura.  I played peek a boo with views, the structures getting bigger each time.  The final descent to a lower section of trail was hazardous even with trekking poles, but it was through a gentle pitch of cedar forest that I returned to the water's edge.  I had flown over my hike today, and found that I had ample time to make my train.  It would be a two hour road walk to the station, but the course was flat, the skies now blue, and the lake's surface shimmered in the warm sunshine.

There were no signs here to speak of, but I knew that I was supposed to hug the lake's edge.  I detoured to follw a now closed trail that led directly along a long beach, before returning to the road again.  A quick glimpse of the map brought me to a halt, as it was possible that the trail might have returned to the hills above.  I backtracked on the road proper, looking for signs or any indications that it actually did, arriving yet again back where I'd popped out of the forest.  I scanned what little online info I could get on the trail, and finally came to the conclusion that I'd been correct all along.  

I thought I'd hitch to make up for my backtracking.  There were only a couple of features between here and the next town, so I walked to the first, a small cluster of Buddhist statues, before throwing out my thumb.  There very very few cars, but the second one did stop, driven by a middle aged woman on her way to work.  We were only together for five minutes or so before I hopped out again at a campsite, to walk the rest of the way to the station.  The town began to slowly build up not far along from here, past sorghum fields, run-down shacks, and the odd fishing business whose small stature betrayed a fleet of high powered boats. One beautiful and stately home looked recently abandoned, now overrun by a troupe of playful monkeys.  

Nagahara had the look of a feudal town, its narrow main street lined with houses mainly of wood.  I detoured to a shrine or two, then arrived early at the train station, to sit and read and sip from an iced coffee.  I watched some schoolkids play in a park just down the hill from my platform perch, and thought how we had all gotten the day right, had capitalized on the holiday and the weather, and the spirit of play that should be a mainstay of all of us, yet is too regularly obscured by the grey gloom of fog that rolls in from time to time, often of our own making.    

On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "Community War Memorial Auditorium, 09-02-1980"

 

Sunday Papers: Tim Parks

 

"The wheel may have given us mobility and freedom, but it cuts us off from the world."

On the turntable:  Phish, "Live Bait, Vol. 12"

Nakasendo Waypoints #104

 

 

                                         Northern winds

                                  Blow away the faint cries

                              Of the last insects of summer

 

On the turntable: Bob Dylan, "Dancing in the Dark"

Knowing Tranquility XXV (Momoshima)

 

 

The sea reflected silver under herringbone skies.  The ferry drifted along the colorful wooden houses that lined the shore and past the stone Ozu lantern, before picking up speed once beyond the Onomichi Bridge towering above.  We were essentially traveling in the wake of yesterday's high speed trip, but I was solo this time, my two companions have left on a morning train.  I stood alone on the bow, face into a wind so high that I removed my sunglasses for fear of them being torn from my face.  

Seen from above, the figures standing on the dock at Momoshima were spaced in a way that made them look like they were posing for an album cover.  I had nearly three hours until my scheduled rendezvous with the people from the island's Art Base, so decided to buy my return ticket.  I caught up with elderly the ticket taker as she made her way back to the village proper, and as she counted out my change I noted that her eyes were a deep blue.  My daughter's mother, also an island girl, had mentioned that her own grandfather had eyes of a similar shade.  I pondered ancient seafaring foreigners who may have spent time sheltering from storms on these islands, adding in a night of passion their own personal stamp on the genetic makeup of the inhabitants.  

I headed inland to explore, aiming for a dotted line on a map that might have indicated a trailhead up to the site of the old castle that had once overlooked the harbor.  Momoshima had an interesting geography in having a central inland indentation ringed by hills, that undoubtedly offered ample protection from typhoons.  It helped explain why there were so few houses near the harbor itself.  There was no rice cultivation here, but plenty of vegetable plots.  

I wandered up through the quiet grounds of a small shrine tucked against a grove of bamboo.  Below me was the long abandoned school that was the now home to the Art Base.  I wound down and around the foot of the mountain but couldn't find a feeder route anywhere.  The most likely road dead-ended suddenly, home now to a pair of decades old vehicles rusting themselves out of existence beneath the bamboo.  I probably could have bushwhacked, but these thickets belied the existence of vipers who thrive in their shadowy corners.  

I instead returned to the bowl-like valley, not a soul in sight.  The homes were old but definitely lived in, the post office that served them shaped like the straw hats of the festival dancers of Shikoku just across the water.  The Art Base had a small mushroom farm beside the water, but there was no one here either.  So I wandered back to the harbor to read awhile.  

This too was void of activity but for a young man preparing to open a coffee shop.  The adjacent lot had a small trailer/kiosk Beer Bar that did drinks and food, plus a few chairs scattered across the lawn.  As the young man was telling me that he wouldn't be set up for a while, I noted a poster for a glamping site at the island's extreme west end.  The walk there and back provided the perfect diversion.

A family of bicyclists passed me as I moved past fields of weeds topped with little yellow christmas trees.  One plot looked post apocalyptic as it engulfed a long beached boat and a towering crane whose rust combined with the weeds below provided a sort of foretaste of the hues the maples would do in a couple month's time.  I traced the shoreline to a small peninsula upon which new guest houses were sprouting up like mushrooms.  Though varying in look, their uniform theme hinted at a common owner, who had a created pretty remarkable chill-out space indeed, with long wide-decks, cozy chairs, and every-ready BBQ grills, all reflected in large windows facing the sea.  

I backtracked to the glamping grounds.  Beside the yurts and tent sites was a small cafe, and I called out an order of iced coffee to the young couple running the place.  They joined me out on the deck out front, where I alternated between chatting with them and dipping into Alex Kerr's book on the Heart Sutra when they were pulled away by one duty or another.  All the while, the sea quietly lapped the sand of a small stretch of beach not far beyond my toes.  

 

 

The noon ferry rolled into the harbor, but there was no one there to meet it.  As I waited around, I thought about how these guided visits were only on the Japanese page of the Art Base website. Non-Japanese speakers would have no idea they even existed. A policy far different from the usual open nature to the organizers on other islands.  Granted they were independent and not affiliated with Benessee, but this soft racism left me with mixed feelings.  I suppose it was one way to protect themselves from the onslaught experienced at other sites during this decade of overtourism.    

Having been given no real instructions in any language, I backtracked to the Art Base, met the organizers, and settled into lunch.  We were allowed 90 minutes to eat and to explore the art works within the old school, before we'd regroup and be led around to a pair of remote sites.  I ate alone at a picnic table out on the deck, finishing in about ten minutes.  The exhibits by Yukinori Yanagi within similarly took little time.  "Wandering Mickey" had the iconic mouse sitting in a race car inside what was essentially a hamster wheel, in a room whose walls were lined with oil drums.  I found what could have possible been their contents up on the third floor, its still, dark surface reflecting the sky and the trees outside. Thinking it to be a plastic surface, I placed my hand on what I expected to be solid, only to come away with a hand caked with black.  Thank god I hadn't sat down.  After visiting a couple of other exhibits (each leaving me with a feeling of, "Oh that's pretty cool," but with little desire to do any deep examination), I washed my hand in the rest room, which I found to be the most interesting of all, with ample greenery growing from the porcelain.           

I had originally planned to take a late-afternoon ferry back to Onomichi, but I noticed that I could probably catch the earlier one that left in 45 minutes.  There was still over an hour to go before we were meant to regroup for the tour of the remote sites. I explained my situation to the office and asked whether I could visit those on my own.  Thus given permission, I raced away.  

I moved quickly through the village to the first site, which was within an old cinema, a surprise find on a island of this small size.  The projectors were still visible in the back room, and in the seat of the main hall itself, all the seats but three had been torn out to open more space to in order to provide more visual impact for the upper half of a Japanese hinomaru flag made of steel and reflected in a pool of slag to bring it into its usual full form.   After a long absence, films were still screened here, usually on the fiftieth anniversary of the original screening dates in this now 60 year old theater.

The other site was around the hill and back down toward the harbor.  It was a lovely old house, named for the giant Goemon cauldron bath outside.  These baths were once a feature in older Japanese rural homes, and named for a bandit who had been boiled alive in one.  The house had been gutted but for the wooden beams and frames, and in what had once been the living room was mounted a massive machine gun, the floor beneath piled high with shells.  The political implication of this, and all the exhibits, were obvious and strong, and I could better see the Art Base's independence from its bigger corporate brother across the water.   

And it was in that direction I went.  I rode the slower ferry this time, an older hulk that disappointed in having very few chairs out on deck, and what few were there were directly in the line of fire from the exhaust pipes.  It took a pair of beers to wash the taste from my mouth, enjoyed while sitting out on the boardwalk beside hotel U2.  I had booked a room at the main location this time, a funky-functional cube of modest size but very cozy and private.  And even here on the mainland island time continued, in the passage of the feet of strolling couples, or the whirl of bicycle wheels, or the boats large and small, which lumbered by in a race with the setting sun. 

The last of these, the Guntu, cast a large shadow from its hefty mass, like a Twain-era steamboat camouflaged in battleship grey.  The cruise ship's equally hefty price tag runs almost contrary in spirit to its preferred mode of travel, which is to meander almost aimlessly between the islands, in wide circuitous arcs.  I liked the designer's ideology of providing a means of forgetting the passage of time.  It was a far cry from my method of trying to link up the linearity of train and boat schedules.  One could well appreciate Guntu's well-choreographed aimless drift, as if at the mercy of wind and tide, like the mariners of old. 

On the turntable:  Phish, "1994-10-31, Glens Falls, NY" 

 

Sunday Papers: Gore Vidal

 
"It makes no difference who you vote for — the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.""

On the turntable:  The Alarm, "History Repeating 1981-2021"

October 14 Elegy

 

 

 

The Super Parisian

 

 

Finale in a trilogy of posts, over at the French blog.

http://viewsfromaprovincialperch.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-super-parisian.html

On the turntable:  Phish, "Baker's Dozen"

 

C'est la Guerre

 

Another post, over at the French blog.

http://viewsfromaprovincialperch.blogspot.com/2022/09/cest-la-guerre.html

 

On the turntable:  Rufus Wainwright, "Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall" 

 

Sunday Papers: Martin Buber

  

"Never think of men except in terms of those specific individuals whose names you know." 

On the turntable: Roxy Music, "Siren"

After the Fire, the Fire still Burns

 

 

First post in three years, over at the French blog.

http://viewsfromaprovincialperch.blogspot.com/2022/09/after-fire-fire-still-burns.html

On the turntable:  Red Hot Chili Peppers, "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan "

 

Sunday Papers: Noël Coward

 

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” 

 

On the turntable:  Rod Stewart, "Thanks for the Memories"

Knowing Tranquility XXVI (Hiroshima)

 

 

Despite being only a couple of kilometers apart, there were no direct ferries between Honjima and its neighbor, Hiroshima.  So it was that for the second morning in a row I found myself on a boat leaving Marugame, as it streamed past the cantaloupes and rocket ships that are the most common shapes of industrial ports.  

The night before, I'd lucked upon Miroc Brewery, housed in an old warehouse and filled with decorative trappings often seen in similar microbreweries in the States or the UK. There was only another pair of customers, so the bartendress stayed mainly in the kitchen with the cook, whose teasing conversation drifted out to me as I sipped my udon IPA, a nod to the region's famed Sanuki Udon.  Belly filled, I wandered the older part of town, which had a curious beauty in the shuttered dark.      

At the wharf this morning, the ticket taker seemed determined to speak to me only in English.  I was asking him clear questions in Japanese, but I'm not sure what language he was actually hearing.  I asked twice if I could buy a round-trip ticket, which he confirmed.  But the ticket machine had a different opinion. I turned to him and say, "Oh, so we actually cannot?"  To which he said yes, again in English.  At least he pointed out the correct departure pier.   

I'd called ahead to rent a bicycle, an old beater bike which I found waiting for me at the pier.  I cycled clockwise, following the shoreline, past little clusters of houses that popped up again, and again.  I'd initially wanted to spend the night here, but there were only a few guest house, and none appeared to do food.  Maps showed that there was little else in the way of shops or eateries, and my ride confirmed the sparsity of just about anything.  Obviously, not many tourists visited Hiroshima.  

Nor had Richie.  He may have known about the quarry, whose scars now covered tremendous swathes of the islands northwest corner.  The accompanying small industry made up the other structures near the water's edge.  Were they instead picturesque homes the island wouldn't have felt so forlorn.  Unfortunately, at some point in the island's history some political bigwig had decided it expendable, a mere resource. 

I pedaled away from all this, into the island's heart. There I found a lovely little shrine, and a dusty road that pulled strongly against gravity over its sharply ascending pitch.  Luckily the trail, or what was left of a trail, quickly led into the forest.  Bamboo and felled trees leaned into my path, the footing below dense with last year's leaves.  Despite its condition, the path was reasonably obvious, but like the road below it climbed briskly up the mountain face.  

I reached a low saddle and turned right and toward the peak. It was easy going for some time, then a steep descent forced me to climb once again, this time through low spiky brush. Out to sea, I could hear the engine throb of passing ships that is the ever-present soundtrack to the Inland Sea, a throbbing that matched the rapid beating of my heart. It was hot along this stretch.  At least the earlier sections had had shade.      

 

 

The peak had no view, so I continued toward a picturesque formation of stones not far off, which I'd seen on a sign beside the road, but whose shapes were oddly not visible on Google maps.  I ran and climbed along the smooth faces of the stones here, softened and shaped by centuries of erosion, an ironic counterpoint to the severely-hewn quarries down by the shore.  

After a quick detour to a small Kobō Daishi temple cut into a cliff face, I backtracked to my bicycle, then rode to a lone vending machine where I quickly downed two cold drinks, under a sun growing even hotter.  My goal was to do a loop around the entire island, and check out the two other settlements to the north.  But I quickly found that the sole road around the island didn't stick to sea level, instead rising and falling repeatedly over Hiroshima's hilly topography.  I managed one set of steep hills, but midway up the next I pulled the bike over to cool myself in a small patch of shade.  

I sat here and thought awhile.  The island hadn't been giving me much, and what little there was seemed to be along this southern shore.  Plus the high temperatures and rolling hills were conspiring against legs already weary from the challenging hike.  In general, I have good physical endurance but I just didn't have it today. So it was that I wheeled the bicycle around, my conscious nagging at me.

I returned to a small stretch of beach that I'd seen earlier on.  As I was locking the bike against a small shelter, I peered into the shaded interior to see a handful of people silently watching me.  And who needs words when you have gestures, and the next gesture was one of unmistakable welcome, when the middle aged patriarch came over and handed me a cold beer.   

He and his family had come over on the early ferry, day-tripping to barbecue and to give the grandkids a day in the water.  I joined the latter there, looking across the windless, still surface of the water, to the mountain I'd not long before suffered up.  Yes, I'd made the right choice in quitting early.  

I hopped the early boat which would ride out to a few remote neighboring islands, before making a brief return to Hiroshima  prior to the crossing back to the mainland.  I felt even greater relief now, passing before a veritable roller coaster of shoreline hills, one dropping upon a village that was an overly concreted mass of nothing at all. 

The clouds began to come over and the wind changed, the sea taking on the slate-grey color of the sky.  Far out to the west, the horizon wore a distinct petrochemical glow.  Sailing past the shipbuilding factory was like going through a supermarket, each component part laid out in various hangers.  Immense cranes towered ten stories above.   

Onshore, a man asked for my tickets, then showed a bit of consternation that I'd done the loop to the outer islands free of charge.  He called a superior in an office somewhere, then told me that they wouldn't charge me extra this time, but that I mustn't do it again.  I knew my role here and dutifully apologized.  All very Japanese, each of us playing our parts, each getting what they wanted, yet still preserving face.  

 

 On the turntable:  Phish, "1998-11-02, E Center, Utah" 

 

Spirit of Shizen

 

Quite pleased to have contributed to this anthology, the catalogue for the exhibition “Spirit of Shizen - Japan’s nature through its 72 seasons” at Musée national d'histoire naturelle Luxembourg.

 

On the turntable:  "The Big Chill (Sdtk)"

 

Sunday Papers: Richard Burton

 

"Soul is not a thing, it is a state of things"

  

On the turntable:  Roxy Music, "Heart Still Beating"

Leap-frogging along the Iseji IV

 

 

It felt earlier than it was, with the cool of dawn, due to a light breeze blowing off the bay, and the shade of the canopy spreading massively above us.  

A couple of the camphors of Asuka Jinja would have been saplings around the time that the nobility began passing by in their finery.  It was shirtsleeves for us as we listened to one of the local old-timers run down some statistics about the area's depopulation.  The most startling fact was that this village of Kata had gone nineteen years without a single birth.  It explains in some way why the beautiful old school that once stood nearby here had recently been razed, replaced by a bland new structure now serving as a community center for the elderly.  A similar fate could befall more of this pleasant little place, as one in six houses stand empty.    

But there was still a vitality here.  The old shrine gave a feeling of being somewhere in mainland Asia rather than Japan.  A timelessness, a placelessness.  It was pan-Asian somehow, a feeling that you get anywhere across the continent, in a pristine environment far older than man.

The sea was part of it.  Fishing communities anywhere have a universal rhythm, one dictated by the fickleties and moods of nature.   This one had a number of fishing charters, including one couple who lived on their floating dock, behind a long dead coffee shop.  Their linked flotillas were crawling with mewing cats, and a cluster of tinnies on the table betrayed what was probably a usual part of life out here.  No doubt we'll eventually empty a few tinnies ourselves, for it is here that future tour groups will shower and have lunch, after kayaking across the bay itself.   

The kayak guides were with us, and we found that we shared many commonalities, including yoga and taiko.  It was like members of my community 15 years ago, when my life more revolved around those things.  They led us through the village to the start of our climb, up Hobo-tōge, and I smiled at the homonymic pun.  

My smile left me soon enough.  The climb was steep and yet again, rocky.  I could never picture the royals doing some of these tougher trails, but the evidence is surely there. The local man earlier had mentioned that they've found traces of a path older than this one.  And closer to the next village, one older still.  But we, as had they, took a long rest at the site of the old teahouses situated at what I took to be the top.  But the path continued to rise, then fall, and rise again, a trick repeated a number of times.  I've mentioned that in coming from this direction, the descents are longer than the ascents.  But this one deceived in continuing to rise, and one could never let down one's guard.  

Finally, on the true descent, the sharply dropping trail took us past a number of chest-high stone walls that had been built in older times in order to keep out foraging deer and marauding colonies of boar.  These served the same function as today's electric fences, yet had a look and feel that were very ancient.  The name Kosrae came often to mind, a place I've not yet been.  

After an unceremonious passage across a concrete bypass road, our feet again met sea-level, down a quiet back alley on the edge of town.  This was Nigishima, the shooting location (no pun intended) for one of my favorite Japanese films.  Himatsuri (Fire Festival) is the study of local people living in harmony, and sometimes at odds, with their natural environment.  It is beautiful and lyrical at times, though I hate the ending, which ironically, is the reason the film was made in the first place. 

I wanted to linger, but the train we needed was leaving literally in minutes.  No matter, I'll take a closer look when I return to finish the road sections of the Ise-ji. (I'd stay a night here but there are no inns.)  Then the train swept us up and immediately entered a tunnel that bore us through the very mountain on which we'd so laboriously passed our morning. 

 

On the turntable:  Julee Cruise, "The Voice of Love"

 

Leap-frogging along the Iseji III

 

 

Kii-no-Matsushima had been our quiet base for the night.  Dinner proved particularly entertaining, as our hostess regaled us with charming stories.  Good manners dictate that one doesn't eat while being addressed like this, but you could drink.  With each sip of my beer I was laughing inside, thinking that perhaps this is a ploy.  The longer she talked, the longer you'd drink, and ultimately would need another in order to wash down the immensity of courses that was dinner.  A clever strategy I thought.  And it paid off in our ordering not one more sake, but two. 

I woke early and well rested, so decided to have a look at the town, still asleep at the dawn hour. The beach was quiet and had the day been hotter, I'd have started it with a dip.  I regretted missing the town's onsen, which sat in a quiet grove of pines at the other end of town.  But I'd be back, perhaps as early as winter, a time when the warmth of its waters would be far more welcome. 

After a lavish breakfast, we leap-frogged ahead to the trailhead for Magose-toge.  The stone stairs began right at the base, and didn't cease until the pass itself.  I've seen a lot of these ishi-tatami paths throughout Japan, but never one the went from head to toe.  We rested a few minutes at the pass, then pushed up an even steeper set of steps to the summit of Tenkurayama, the path wild and rough like many of those I'd climbed in China.  The summit was rocky, with one incredible boulder that was as big as a three-story apartment building.  A long iron ladder led to its smooth surface, and from here we gazed awhile at the sea off to one side, and on the other, the towering Omine peaks running down toward us.  Amongst these, the smooth grassy head of Ogai-ga-hara stood mysterious and proud.     

It was the usual long descent that brought us to Owase. We had a noon-time meet with a couple of people from the tourist board, but had done our traverse in ridiculous time.  Keiji stayed in the A/C of the Tourist Info building, but I set off in search of a coffee, not wanting to put on the mask (both literal and figurative) and make small talk.   But this proved elusive.  I wandered a number of streets, past dozens of shuttered businesses, finally giving up and grabbing an iced joe at a convenience store.  A line of preschool kids stood across the street from me, gawping.

I returned at the appointed hour to meet the folks from town, who led us around on a food walk, where we would pop into a business to be given a small bite, the cumulative half dozen building to the equation of lunch.  We sat later in a restored old home and discussed what the town was doing to regenerate itself.  I asked question after question, aiming the usual things that communities were doing to attract young people, but to each of these they answered in the negative.  The work-from-home ethic had been a boon to many parts of Japan, but these people had done nothing to capitalize on it. 

As such, I'd never seen a town so dead.  Naturally I pass though hundreds of such communities on my walks, but while many look to be teetering, these is still some semblance of life.  But Owase was as bad as I'd ever seen, and even a well thought out gimmick like a food walk would change that.  Who know that the large cemetery I'd passed though on my way out of the hills would be a foreshadowing of the town to come. The company that I was consulting for this week operates in the spirit of trying to revitalize rural communities, to bring them new life.  But this one had just gone to far, as if the citizens themselves had declared a DNR.  I just couldn't see bringing clients here.  The food walk was a fun and innovative idea, but in walking around, tour clients would get too good a look at the town, and how dire the situation was.  It was written in the patterns of rust upon all those shuttered shops. 

 

On the turntable:  Husker Du, "Zen"

 

Leap-frogging along the Iseji II

 

 

I started the day far away beside the sea.  Being summer, I missed sunrise by about half an hour, but it was still early as I watched the light come up behind Meoto-iwa, the rope between cutting through the orange sphere as if slicing fruit.  The wind was up, and every fifth or sixth wave would throw spray onto the concrete trail.  This Futamiokitama Shrine had an Ama-no-Iwato, somewhat fakily man-made, and facing the wrong direction.  The Ama-no-Iwato cave in the hills not far from here was smaller but had more authenticity in being a bit of work to hike up to.  But the Ama-no-Iwato in Kyushu's Takachiho was most impressive of all.   

My pick-up was early, and for much of the morning we'd followed the trail I'd left a couple of days before. I showed my colleagues the Bakamagari, and was surprised when they wanted to go through.  After the previous visit I'd thought it a miracle I hadn't picked up a leech.  And sure enough, back in the car I noticed one wriggling off my ankle.  I hollered for the driver to stop, thinking the leech hadn't yet locked its jaws on me, but I was too late.  Oddly enough I'd received some sacred salt at my inn the night before, but not wanting to kill the little bastard, I asked the driver for his ETC credit card.  When he asked me why, I joked that I wanted to bribe him into letting go.  But I found that I could use the card to laterally scrape away the leech's mouth without breaking his head off under the skin, which tends to get infected and itchy later.  Incredibly, the leech then fastened itself to the card,  making it quite a chore to flick him away as he maintained a strong grip into the plastic.  

We continued our drive south.   Gone were the days of the beautifully photographic image of the mini rice stalks beneath glass, as the water had by now mainly drained away.  It was up to the rains now.  But those seemed far away today.  The weather was pleasant with a cooling breeze that ruffled the tips of the stalks, like the tousling of hair.  

The shops we passed were the usual chain stores found only in the countryside, places familiar to me from my years up in the 'Nog, places I had 'grown up with' and assumed were everywhere.  Now living in urban Kansai, I recognized them as country cousins, as old friends.     

We finally pulled up at Umegadani Station, where I'd begun my ascent of Nisaka-toge three years before.  Today, we'd go up the parallel Tsuzurato-toge that crossed over a ridge to the north.  This had been the older pass, until replaced by the Nisaka 300 years ago.  Before walking away from the car, I was kitted out in pilgrimage gear:  red vest, wooden staff, conical hat.  The later proved a bit of a nuisance since it would get jostled by my pack, so after an mere hour I simply hung it from the bag, where it would stay for the rest of the week.

I was kitted out this way so as to be the model for a video being shot to promote the tour.  We'd filmed at the Ise shrines the day before, much to the amusement of other visitors.  One old granny asked to take a photo together.  I wondered what others thought when I was walking alone, far from the camera.  But after awhile I forgot about it, much in the way that I tend to forget that how much my height and features make me stand out, how I don't look like everyone else in this country.

Thus attired, I moved out along the rice-laden villages strung along the valley floor.  It was a warm day and the clothing didn't breathe well, so it was a relief when we eventually returned to forest.  The locals had used the pass until the 1930s, when the road was built.  It was a good well-marked trail, with stone steps rising steadily upward like toward Machu Picchu.  Now and then I'd have to act out a scene, and I was surprised how much I've missed film acting. There's an awareness that's not self-conscious per se, but more a hyper-consciousness, a focus on every movement and gesture that bespeaks the zen of tea ceremony, or martial arts. Not an action is wasted. 

After a brief rest and some off-the-cuff narration at the pass, we began the long walk down.  I remembered Nisaka as being similarly long, but this one went on and on.  It would be the character of all the passes we'd eventually go on to cross, and pity the poor walker doing this pilgrimage from the other direction.   The villages in this next valley were a bit more built up but had a pleasant feel, and its primary canal led us into Kii-Nagashima.

Lunch was fried sunfish eaten outside the michi-no-eki, just as it had been in 2019.  We jumped forward then to meet Ueda-san, who would lead us around on a tour of Uomachi.  A hipster surfer of sorts, he had a light touch about the whole thing, shooting the bull with fishermen repairing their nets, or flirting with the aunties serving us fish-related bites in the local shops.  It was all a reminder of how I've missed spending time with people in rural Japan. There was not the slightest hint of chill in their demeanor, unlike my stone-faced neighbors in Kyoto.  

There was a quick climb to the village shrine shadowed over by an immense camphor tree, followed by a long sit in an old house filled with funky Showa-retro delights.  Here they screened for us a shadow-puppet version of the village's local legend, cleverly rear-projected onto the shoji screens at the end of the room.   When it was finished, we turned in surprise to find standing behind us the thirteenth generation descendant of the film's heroic and long dead samurai.  He didn't have much to say, and I felt a little sorry for him, assuming that he is often trotted out to meet and greet passing tourists. 

In the temple grounds nearby stood two stones marking the victims of a pair of tsunami.  Surprisingly, one of these waves had been caused in the Hōei eruption of far-off Fuji, an event that birthed the eponymously named Hōei pimple that is now a prominent feature on Fuji' eastern flank.  

Next to the temple was the house of a woman who had spent most of her young adulthood in New York City, where her husband had been sent for work.  Now a widow, she seemed the town celebrity of sorts, leading us on a rapid-fire tour of her home, moving with the grace of true hostess,  There was an ease in her being, along with a definitive flirtation.  I wondered how she feels now living with her elderly mother in this small village, far from Manhattan and all that the metropolis contains.  But she had certainly created her own reality here, teaching English to the local children, and charming foreign visitors who pass along the Kumano Kodō running past her front door. 

 

On the turntable:  The Beat, "I Just Can't Stop It"

 

Leap-frogging along the Iseji

 

I'd made three attempts at this particular walk.  The first had been in 2009, when I walked all the major sections of the Kumano trails.  By the time I got to Shingu, I'd had enough of concrete and cars, and decided to begin the Shikoku pilgrimage a little earlier, assuming it would have more natural bits. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.)   I'd twice gone so far as to develop an itinerary and book accommodations, in May and December 2020, but the pandemic had different ideas.  

Good things come to those who wait, I suppose.  An adventure tour company approached me to help them revamp some of their tours, and so it was that they sent me to explore the forested parts of the Iseji.  As they paid for my transport down and back, I decided to leave a day early, for a bit of extra credit.  

A very early train took me to Tamaru, and a very short walk brought me to the true start of the Iseji,  While the trail technically continues another 13 km to the Ise shrines proper, I'd done that walk already as the final stretch of the Ise Hon-kaidō, which I walked back in 2015.   Yet despite the familiarity, it took me all of a minute to follow the wrong road, but I quickly figured it out and backtracked to the true path.  

Tamaru was one of those in-between places characteristic of Japanese towns connected by rail line.  With a character neither rural nor urban, history and charm seem to have hopped a train toward other places.  I longed to do the same, after a looping masugata detoured me through a quiet neighborhood, then dumped me onto the unpleasant and busy Route 13.  This stayed unpleasant and busy for far too long.  

Over the hour I walked the highway it grew narrower, and only slightly less busy.  These are exactly the moments that I put on the headphones, to drown out the roars as they roll by.  Today was a Leonard Cohen kind of day, and when "Sisters of Mercy" came on, in this part of the world it reminded me of the bikuni nuns, those sisters of mercy who walked the pilgrimage route in order to raise money by selling subscriptions for the upkeep of their home temples.   Legend dictates that some also raised money from prostitution, but this could be hyperbole, in the way the same misunderstanding is associated with geisha.    

Despite the road, it was great to be out.  This was my first multi-day long walk since Covid, the first time in the deep countryside for a month or so.  It was great the way the hydrangeas were coming in, and how the fading beauty of the azaleas still commanded equal attention.  

Big concrete Fudō-ji temple failed to move me.  But it was development's last hurrah, and I moved deeper away from the symmetry of structures to follow the curves of a more natural landscape.  I finally left tarmac and began the climb over Meki-tōge, whose name bears the curious characters of Female demon.  Recent legends state that there was a demon who ate travellers along this stretch, but all I saw were traces of ox-cart wagon tracks, which led to the deep cutaway of rock that marked the pass. I had my lunch at a small Kannon altar, then descended to pop out of the forest beside a dam that looked more like an alpine lake.  After the labor of the albeit brief climb, a swim would be in order, but on a day hotter than this one.   

There is something wonderful about walking low passes in Japan.  You follow a long valley out to its farthest reaches, and after the up and over, you enter a new landscape, with another broad valley opening before you.   This next section was through a quiet village, stretched high above the river which wended slowly below me.  

I passed plenty of ruins: a temple founded by Shotoku Taishi; an old feudal school; an old tea house which sold famous steamed buns.  There was also the open grounds of a modest temple complex, a sake brewer, then a long walk down an arrow-straight road lined with cozy looking homes.  At the far end was Tochihara, known to walkers for its Edō period inn that marked the first overnight for those who'd started at Ise proper. 

Not far beyond was the unusual Bakamagari, where the trail left the main road and passed beneath it through a long drainage pipe, over a set of raised rails so that people could keep their shoes dry.  At the far end however, you were forced to wet your feet crossing the riverbed itself until reaching the trail again on the far side.  I thought this all a tad bizarre.  Why would pilgrims bend at the waist and walk through a pipe?  But it hit me that historically they never had, at least until the road and railway were built.  

I was led off-road twice more before the day was done.  Saruki was similarly brief, the trail clear but beginning to be overgrown as rainy season bore down.  I wondered if these brief sections had been open when I did my big Kumano walk in 2009.  I imagine that many sections that I'd unwittingly strolled right past during that walk had since been discovered and cleared and were now open for traversing.  What motivation a little world heritage status can bring!

My enthusiasm for, and expectation of, finishing 28 km today was beginning to wane as the humidity rose.  It came back to that psychological game where, if I see the distance of what I've already covered, in the subtraction lies the fatigue.  The markers, helpful as they were, handicapped in reminding me of how far I'd already come, and what still remained.  

I missed one train by about half an hour, and it would be over two hours until the next one.   I was tempted to catch that train at the next station up, but it was just out of the realm of possibility. I could possibly make it, but would need to race to get there, diminishing the enjoyment of the journey along the way.  So rather than at Misedani, I would call it quits at Kawazoe. 

With such minimal train service on the line, how odd that during the final rail crossing of the day, I was stopped by a passing train, forcing me to wait.  From there, it was a pleasant walk amongst tea fields, then along the quiet lanes into town.   Kawagoe was again one of those in-between places, rural, but with a railway stop.  The former meant there was little in the way of amenities, or things to engage the traveller.  The latter meant that it was too built up to have any rural appeal.  But it did have a lovely old school where middle school students were getting the pool ready for summer swim classes.  And there was a bizarre little toy shop showing Showa era memorabilia, which multi-tasked as a temple of the Tenri sect.  Kawazoe also had the cleanest, shiniest, honey wagon I've ever seen.   

I confirmed the train schedule, then walked over to the bus stop to see if there was anything leaving sooner.  And how like Japan, in having this similarly infrequent service leave just a few minutes before the train did.  For every train.  All day.  The verb "to stagger' must not exist in the local dialect.   I was in no hurry to get up to Matsuzaka as my dinner meeting was not until 7, so I toyed with the idea of sitting somewhere to await the train.  But there was no place to do so.  There was no coffee shop, but there were dozens of vending machines, all in the shadow of the massive Dydo distributor that had colonized the town.  So I stayed at the bus stop, thumb out, in a half-hearted effort to control my destiny.  Traffic was steady, but no one seemed interested in stopping. I was considering giving up when I got a lift from a man commuting to his job as night shift in a car factory.   His act of generosity ensured me an early bath, and even better, a nap. 

 

On the turntable:  Husker Du, "Flip your Wig"

 

Jazz & The Spoken Word, set two

 

 

With the Joshua Breakstone group, Bonds Rosary, July 01, 2022

 

On the turntable: Rolling Stones,  "Beggars Banquet"

Jazz & The Spoken Word, set one

 

  

With the Joshua Breakstone group, Bonds Rosary, July 1, 2022

 

On the turntable: Rahsaan Roland Kirk,  "Here Comes the Whistleman"