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"
No comments:
Post a Comment