The internet certainly has made route finding easier. In the old days, I'd buy any new book that dealt with walking Japan's old roads. In every case, the maps were primitive and cartoon-ish and near impossible to follow. The now defunct Latlonglab was my only online resource, which was immensely helpful, but as it required a satellite signal, the battery on my phone would be bone dry by the time I was racing toward my home-bound train on the far end.
Hiking too involved plenty of guesswork, which in a few cases near proved fatal. Then about two years ago, friends enlightened me about Yamap, and from there I discovered Yamareco. Their downloadable maps proved a godsend, and as I began to rely on them (especially on the older mountain tracks I seem drawn to, despite common sense), I was no longer sure how I'd managed without them. Luckily, these sites also have the odd map of an old road, and I have begun to edit previous walks, which I now know I got wrong.
The first of these do-overs was the Sanin-dō, which I walked with Miki back in 2008. Memory is a funny thing and mine betrays me. I remember that day as being a long slog along Gojō which then eventually begat Route 9 as it left the city. Yamap showed the true path, which served as the initial prompt to return. (Matching it against my old guide book, I saw they both followed the identical course. Inexplicably, we'd stayed on Route 9 into Kameoka, and had gotten it wrong.)
Another reason for the return was that I wanted to orient this walk from west to east, as I did so while walking two sections of the route known as the Sasayama Kaidō (detailed here and here), a direction I hope to maintain when I eventually follow the entire road as it leaves Shimonoseki to trace the Sea of Japan.
So in a westbound movement I returned by train to Umahori Station with my painter friend Joel in tow. We spent a number days last winter hunting up old Buddhas in the hills of Nara and south Kyoto, and he has quickly proved a good companion for these walks through history. The road leading away from the station was along a charming little path through suburban homes now colonizing the older look of things, but with enough of the latter to hold our interest. (Though the highlight of the day was certainly the beauty salon called "Terrapin Station.") We popped into a couple of old shrines, one of which had a mound off to one side where warriors once left a single arrow as a talisman of good luck while heading off into battle. Before another grand old shrine, the road dropped into farmland to trace a small creek. Joel and I sat and lunched atop the stonework of a wall that defined the property line of one of these farms, bemoaning the ruins of an unusual-shaped thatch farmhouse that had always caught my eye whenever I drove toward Kameoka. As often happens in this crowded country, a person will turn up when you are doing something possibly verboten, but the farmer didn't seem to mind us sitting there, or perhaps couldn't be bothered to tell us kids to get off his lawn.
The road narrowed to cut through a series of dense vegetation. Below us, a fox nibbled along the stubble of rice fields, before rushing off into the trees. We hopped over the busy Route 9, and up a forest track that had eluded me 12 years before. It led us down into a little slice of Appalachia, the homes looking poor and a tad eerie. Most of them were crumbling back into a dank shadowy landscape that must never get much light. The one active farm was watched over only by an old boombox, serenading the plants as if a desperate attempt to coax some life out of this bleak part of the world.
I suppose the shrine at the pass above provided some explanation. Kubizuka is considered a haunted place, named for one of Japan's top three yōkai. Legend has it that in life he was known as Shuten-dōji, leader of a clan of oni who terrorized either this area or around the similarly-named Mount Oe to the northwest (though in reality they were probably simply bandits). But the numerous films and stories agree that his decapitated head continued to snap at the five warriors sent by the Emperor to subdue him. Not wanting to bring the head back into Kyoto, it was buried here, beneath a small mound of gravel at the back of the shrine. Similarly neither Joel nor myself wanted to bring any of that bad mojo back into town ourselves, so we quickly pulled our attention from the amazing trees there and dropped into suburb.
Civilization returned in the form of what must be Japan's most depressing high school, hemmed in between this busy road and the expressway behind. Next up were an array of love hotels, and I'd be curious about the rate teen pregnancy at the neighboring school, though the physicality of the students was more likely directed toward sports, to judge by all the champion banners they boastfully displayed along the roadside.
As we skirted a large suburban development, the view was mainly of cookie cutter homes, though there was the occasional tell-tale old inn, as well as a parade of small shrines along the hillside. And town began to build as we moved toward the heart of Kyoto, along with its accompanying traffic. Light began to fall, as did our enthusiasm, so we jumped a train at Katsura Station, speeding us to coffee taken in a park as we watched the last full moon of the year rise over the eastern hills.
But ever the completist, I felt compelled to walk the remainder of the road. It was a cold dark day threatening rain, but I only had an hour worth of walk ahead. Joel wisely opted out of sucking exhaust, and after winding through a few quieter neighborhoods, most of that hour was indeed spent moving along a busy boulevard. But it was Shichijō rather than the Gojō of 2008.
I thus carried on through the usual monotony of west Kyoto, rewarded from time to time with an old house, or a stone marker etched by a chisel that had centuries ago grow rust. This close to the end of the year I'd expected much activity about, but there was little to capture my eye, save the sight of a boy trying to shyly take the hand of the girl beside him, but she was having none of it. Then Kyoto Station loomed up with its promised of food, beer, and a warm train home.
On the turntable: Charlie Poole, "You Ain't Talkin' to Me"
On the nighttable: Terry Gilliam, Gilliamesque"
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