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"
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