Looking for the 'There' There Pt. I

The train had been a rattletrap affair that moved through a landscape growing greener by the minute as the rain thickened.  The businessman adjacent to me had kicked off his shoes and placed his feet on the seat before him.  His wristwatch sat atop the train's window ledge, as if an acknowledgement that this particular slice of time was his and his alone.  

I left the train in Miyako, end of the line.  I could have started further north in Aomori, but the name of this place had caught me, translated simply as 'old capital,' a named shared with old Kyoto.  The history of the latter had been superimposed over this region, and all the regions of Japan, as the opening to the west in the Meiji period had simplified the definition of this vast country to that of a specific city, and to that of its culture.  Thus, all the provinces had lost their gods, quickly followed by the richness of their character. 

What characterized the town today was rain.  Ironically, Miyako had been the site of one of the most important naval engagements of the Boshin Wars, which had helped usher in that same Kyoto culture.   The immediate vicinity of the city center looked like it hadn't suffered much damage in the most recent tsunami, though the city had been completely destroyed in the 1933 Sanriku earthquake, as well as in another tsunami less than a half century before that.  

Yet the waterfront was a massive construction site.  I couldn't see past the high wall that had been erected beside the busy Route 45, but from beyond came the sounds of large machinery noisily moving earth around.  Further along, I began to see reminders of the recent disaster, mainly in all the bent things: railings along the top of older sea walls, more along the odd bridge.  One bridge itself had been cut in half.   

The road ran below the sea wall for a long while, and on the opposite side were large open spaces where the machines were pushing earth into tall hills whose tops were flattened to resemble Mayan pyramids. I imagine that new housing would be built atop these, the added height to protect from the tsunamis to come.  A number of homes had already been rebuilt, their structures balanced atop tall pillars under which their cars were parked.  Well beyond were the older homes, safe as they were higher up the hillsides.  

I also saw areas where the reconstruction had not yet started,  vast and open and covered in knee-high weeds.   If one could ignore the cement rectangles of former foundations, and could forget the terror the people who had lived above them must have faced, there was a certain beauty in all the new green glistening in the rain ever falling.

I eventually arrive in Yamada.  This had once been the center of commercial fishing in the area, it had been completely inundated by the waves. Many of the buildings still remaining have been blown out at their bases, but appear to be usable from the second stories upward.  One hair salon was completely gutted, yet a date and a mark written on the wall by rescue teams indicates that no bodies had been found inside.  A few meters beyond this, a man sits in a recently built prefab office with his back to the sea.  How long did it take him to regain this amount of trust?  Schoolkids wait at a bus stop out front.  What are their memories?  I pass an old woman with pained eyes.  What has she lost?  

I walk south.  Despite the entire shoreline having been converted to a construction zone, there is a sign erected by the sea preservation society, stating their case against cutting the communities off completely from that which had brought life as well as death.   Another sign brings a smile, that for the Ippo-Ippo Cafe.  Step by Step.

I also notice a good deal of police cars passing by, perhaps one every fifteen minutes, including one of an older 1970's vintage.  I remember reading reports about thieves burglarizing intact homes abandoned after the tsunami, but that was three years ago.  A strong police presence has an profound psychological effect in Japan, where the police are still seen as the friendly Irishman on patrol-type who, ensconced in his corner police box, serves as a lynchpin of the community.  My skeptical American-born eyes see a cop suspicious of a random white dude tramping through.    

This is a reminder that I need to be very careful not to project my own beliefs upon what I see, as I did with the office worker, the schoolkids, and the old woman earlier.   On the contrary, the staff at my hotel just outside Ōtsuchi are friendly, and overtly express a happiness rarely seen in big city Japan.  The hotel was opened a month ago, mainly to house the workmen operating all that heavy machinery at the water's edge.  The facilities are somewhat spartan, as is the food.  At dinner, I hope to engage some of the workmen in conversation, but they all look exhausted, and even the ones in small groups barely talk with one another.  

Again, I begin to have doubts about what I am doing here.  I had hoped to talk to people that I encounter along the road, yet there aren't any, since in many places there is barely even a road.  Instead all I encounter are the weeds, the rain, the sound of machinery.  What did I expect to find here?  It's not like I would walk up to a random stranger and begin to ask them insensitive questions.  I decide that I'll later try to connect with aid groups, to get a more emotionally neutral sense of what is happening here.  

Geography dictates my next decision.  As I walked, I grew puzzled by the repeatedly used word "Rias," which the internet later tells me is the shape of a coastline that is composed by a series of isthmuses cut by parallel coastal valleys, like a hand with fingers splayed.  While walking across the 'fingers,' Route 45 takes me far inland.  So I decide to hitchhike these sections, and to merely walk the coastal 'webbing' between.  Hitching will bring the contact with the locals that I'm looking for, and the nature of all hitched rides is shared stories.   Rather than ask them their stories, and bring up things they may be trying to move away from, I'll instead try to entertain them with my own.  

This isn't easy to do with the ghost that visits my room during the night. I don't necessarily see this one, but a presence is definitely felt.  I've had a number of these sorts of encounters during my life, most dramatically on the morning of the Kobe earthquake in 1995.   When this happens, I usually tell whatever is there that this is my space, and that they aren't welcome.  But this time I say nothing, since I feel like I'm the outsider.  It isn't long before the presence is gone.  Shortly thereafter, so I am...



On the turntable:  Charlatans, "Some Friendly"

  

Looking for the 'There' There (Prologue)

If I were asked what defines my life at this particular phase, I would say that it is to research 'place,' to see how a particular place defines the culture, beliefs, and lifestyles of those who live there.  My marathon walks have proven to be the best means to get out into the world and examine these very points.  (An fact obvious to all those who read this blog.)  But what if there is no longer any 'place' left? 

It was with this in mind that I decided to walk through the Tohoku tsunami zone.  I am driven by history, and this event went beyond history, into the realm of epic.  Like many of us, the triple disaster had haunted me.  On the day that it occurred, I was living in New Mexico, and even from that distance, it had been horrific to watch the suffering befalling the country that had become home.  My first instinct had been to pack all my camping gear and hop on a plane, in order to do what I could, to lend the strength of my arms, or utilyze my ability with the language to interpret for the international rescue teams.  But my wife was then seven months pregnant, and I knew that my place was with her.  

Returning to Japan nearly a year later, I had heard the stories of those who had gone to help, and I still felt guilty that I had been unable to offer any assistance.  Another year, then two, passed, where my own immediate needs took precedence.  But the desire to do something continued to work on me.  

When I heard the announcement that Tokyo had been given the 2020 Olympic games, I was crushed.  I felt that this was the ultimate betrayal of the survivors.  This decision seemed immature to me.  It had all the makings of a sympathy bid, but would be much more meaningful were the Tohoku region to be completely stable and rebuilt, a parallel to a 1964 Tokyo rising from the rubble of war. I decided that what I could do was to visit the area and talk with the locals, making their tales known.  We heard many of their horror stories about the disaster and its immediate aftermath, but I wanted to tell how things were today, three years on.

It was an impetuous decision to be sure.  I relish the planning of my walks almost as much as the walks themselves, but this one was much more impromptu.  I had no maps, no idea of the current circumstances.  Whereas my earlier thought of bringing camping gear and food had been more about not wishing to add more strain to an already difficult situation, this time I thought that I'd need the gear since I wasn't sure if there were any places to eat or sleep.  I packed my big backpack for a two week walk.  Then sitting down with Google Maps, I saw that I could break the walk in two parts, so decided to do just that, racing as I was the start of rainy season.  I unpacked the big bag, and packed my medium bag with lighter gear -- a bivy sack, sleep pad, sleeping sheet.  But a few days later I took all of these out and decided to go very light.  I recalled an earlier conversation I'd had with a taxi driver in tsunami-stricken Shiogama, in which he'd mentioned that all the clean up had already been done, but what was needed was a means for the people to move forward economically.  In this spirit,  I'd eat what I could find, sleep where I could, hopefully putting much needed money back into the hands of the locals.  

But how would they take my presence there?  Despite my best intentions, something about all of this felt a bit off, like I was trying to find entertainment or adventure in an area that had been very badly traumatized.  My discomfort continued throughout the preparations, and hung more heavily upon me when I stepped off the train on a Monday morning in the Iwate city of Miyako...   



On the turntable:  Taj Mahal, "The Essential Taj Mahal"
On the nighttable:  Jeffrey Eugenides, "The Marriage Plot"

(untitled)

Plum rains
Bring definition
To what's no longer there.

On the nighttable:  The Velvet Teen, "Daytrotter Session"

 

Sunday Papers: Kurt Vonnegut

“Do not use semicolons.  They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” 


On the turntable:  Juli Hendrix, "Are You Experienced?"

Deep Kyoto: Walks released!

Just quick note that the book Deep Kyoto: Walks is available as an ebook on Amazon!  A year in the engendering, it's time to release this baby into the wild! Naturally, any help you can give to find this child a home would be highly appreciated! 

More details are here:

http://www.deepkyoto.com/?p=10128 

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFM2J0C  



On the turntable:  Bob Dylan, "Slow Train Coming"
 

Even Further on Basho's Narrow Road... (Narrow Road Signs III)

At the foot of prayers
Etched in stone:
Freshly cut grass.

Suzumebachi
Mimics the chanting of monks
Within the Benten hall

Petals upon the trail,
Envy the longevity of
The maples' fresh green.

Basho, Sora, Ekaku.
Companions drinking sake
On the rocks.

Two ducks sail the waves,
Riding out the tempest
In the rice paddy.

Zen master sea gulls
With their scolding cries of 'Now!'
Follow me from Sado.

Flotilla of fleur-de-lys
Sails up the narrow stream,
Moving toward summer.

After jumping the rooftops
Beneath the full spring moon,
Weary ninjas sleep in.

On the turntable:  Headlights, "Daytrotter Session"

Sunday Papers: Leonardo da Vinci

"Wipe the dust from awareness."


On the turntable: Air, "City Reading"

Sea of Japan to Biwa...revisted.

Before walking the Hōkuriku-dō last December, I spent a fair amount of time deciding which of the two routes to take to the east shore of Lake Biwa.  What bothered me was that neither of those routes connected with the Nishi Ōmi-ji on the western side.  There was a road by that name, but I knew that it wasn't the real thing.  In Japan there are plenty of highways that take the monicker of an older route which traditionally lay close by, but not necessarily directly beneath.  I found what I thought was the most likely course, and decided that I'd walk that.  

Then one day, I came across a different map which showed the true route I'd been seeking.  The road didn't branch off the Hōkuriku-dō at all, but started its southbound journey from the western outskirts of Tsuruga city.  And rather than follow the broad river valleys, it snaked its way into the mountains, before rushing headlong toward Japan's largest lake.  

And so it was that I once again found myself on the first train bound for Tsuruga.  What is it about towns on the Sea of Japan that makes them look so tired? It took me a good hour to actually walk out of the city and into the rice fields that were in an earlier point in their planting cycle than those I'd been walking through earlier in the week.  

There wasn't a single trace that this had once been an old road.  Rather, it was busy with farm vehicles, with absurdly wide sidewalks, despite the dearth of bicycles out here.  I looked at the parallel roads to the right and to the left, but those too were lined with newer houses, lacking the usual wonderful line-up of old Edo period structures.  

The morning started muggy, but began to cool as I climbed, not due to the change in elevation which was very steady and gradual, but more from the wind coming off the sea, pushing me along, urging me toward the hills.  The landscape never seemed to change, just that bland, broad highway moving slowly on. There was a lone Jizo, and a majestic old tree.   Other than these, the road remained featureless.  I grew bored pretty quickly, and began to sing songs by Paul Weller.  That's entertainment.  

The mountains rose to meet me.  As they did, the road became a single track, which began to trace the bank of a concreted river.  This took me through a number of small farming communities.  Just beyond them, the concrete and the asphalt dropped away, and I happily found myself walking on bare earth.  My eyes were occasionally turned up toward the hillsides, as the memory of a bear warning sign that I'd seen further below resonated within my head.  But it was important to look down sometimes too.  Not too far along into the forest, I saw a sign pointing down a side trail in the direction of a Jizo that had been carved onto a giant, split bolder.  I followed this overgrown and unused trail until I saw a hut covering the stone upon which was imprinted a deity many centuries old.   As I took a step to investigate a smaller statue nearby,  I noticed a snake of a meter or more, moving slowly past my feet.  
  
The rest of the morning I followed the path as it hugged and crisscrossed the river.  It looked as it must have in feudal times, and I mused on this while walking along, climbing gradually into fresh green.  The forest around me was filled with birdsong, and if the constant chatter and squeals were any indication, rife with monkeys unseen in the trees.  On the final approach to the pass, the clouds began to roll in, and it wasn't long before the "potsu potsu" began.  Luckily there was a shelter at the top where I could sit and eat lunch.  The rain didn't last very long, but the clouds remained close.  Rather than linger, I headed quickly down the other side. 

The road here was paved as it moved toward the valley, eventually joining a broader one when it finally flattened out an hour later.  I continued on, chasing the shadows of clouds which blew along the road's surface in the direction of the lake.   Frogs serenaded me as I went.  They were given a standing ovation by two towering rows of dawn redwood trees, which ran in parallel on either side of the road.  It was puzzling that these trees were here, as this species is more commonly found in the Sichuan Province of China.  But here they were, shading me for the next few kilometers.  I've read a great deal about the namiki shade trees that once lined great stretches of the old Japanese highways, offering the traveler respite from the sun and the weather.  I'd seen patches of them here and there during my journeys, but never a strand so grand and unbroken as these.  

The redwoods begat chestnut orchards, which in turn begat rice paddies.  Approaching one, I saw a man standing over a woman sitting on the bank, her arms stretching behind her to support her weight. This was the body language of the young, for no old farm woman would sit like that.  As I drew closer I saw that this couple were probably still in their thirties, smiling and seemingly happy at this rural setting and life in which they found themselves.  I imagined them as recent city transplants chasing a dream, an impression created for no other reason than their newish clothes and the slightly perplexed expression on the man's face as he looked at his newly flooded fields. 

I checked my GPS, which told me I had 35 minutes to get to Ominakasho station, from which my desired train would leave in 30.  The next train would depart an hour after that.  I picked up my pace, nearly speed walking, keeping it up for the final three km, before breaking into an outright run for the last few hundred meters.  God I hate running!  Each slap of foot on pavement brought shooting pains into the lower buttock muscles on the right side, a place that usually begins to ache this far into a walk.  I'd done 30 kilometers on the day, and as usual, the last five began to hurt.  But I was proud that I'd done this distance in six hours, a blazing speed made more remarkable by the fact that I had climbed over 600 vertical meters in crossing the pass.    

I made it to the platform seconds before the train pulled in.  And with that, my feet came to rest.  While there are still a few longer routes I'd like to walk  -- four days on the Ise Kaidō, about a week on the Kumano Kōdō -- in terms of distances that can be measured in day trips, there were no more roads in Kansai left for me to walk. 



On the turntable:  The Beatles, "The White Album"
On the nighttable: Winston Davis, "Dojo:  Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan"

The Road to Kameoka

The bus ride was a film played in reverse, as it followed the course it had the week before.  Where on that journey I had been surrounded by young schoolgirls, today it was their male counterparts, filling the bus with their musky hormonal scent.  Along the way I noticed other hormones in action, that of a blue heron striding across a rice paddy, taking broad deliberate steps through the mud, as if tiptoeing up to its potential mate standing nearby.

The bus dropped me off it Hatta again.  I moved up the road under the bright sunshine, a brilliant example of just how good the weather can be in May.  Entering a village further on, I heard a rapid tapping from around the next bend, and assumed it was a carpenter getting an early start to the morning.  But there in the street was a lion, carrying on its shoulder a man's head, which was smoking a cigarette.  There was another lion a few houses away, swirling and spinning in the gravel yard.  Beside him was the source of the banging, a tall man beating a simple tattoo on a small drum to keep time, as a pair of flutes trilled a repetitious tune into the morning air.

A housewife standing nearby told me that this troupe came up from Ise once a year, traveling and performing around Kansai and the Chugoku areas. As a fan of classic Japanese cinema, I have a number of times seen films that used these traveling actors as protagonists.  I'd like to pursue this more as a subject of research for a book, these old troupes that would wander the roads of Japan, literally singing for their supper.  It was quite fortuitous then to come across this lion dance, this shishimai, going house to house.  I had originally intended to do this walk a couple of days before, but the bad weather had forced me to postpone. Had I done so, I'd have missed this encounter completely.  Blessed by the gods I am.

The villages here were more spread out than they had been over the passes to the west, the patchwork of fields between much broader.  There were fewer shrines and temples as well.  I did find a Inari shrine up a low hillside, weathered and dull.  A trio of dull orange torii leads further up the hill before giving up, almost in exhaustion.  The forest beyond was overgrown and strewn with bamboo fallen in a long ago storm.  Back on the road below, I saw a number of stone lantern written with the characters for Atago, as well as one old road marker pointing the way, a testament to the fact that pilgrims had once followed this road while on pilgrimage to that sacred peak.   

I crested a low pass, then dropped toward Kameoka.  Along the way, I passed Yu no Hana Onsen, or 'Flowering Hot Springs.'  Though what was really flowering was an acidic cocktail of sulfur and burning plastic.  Perhaps what I was smelling was the captive oni of legend, whose tears contributed to the magical qualities of the waters.  Apparently that had been good enough reason for John Lennon and Yoko Ono to once pass the night here.

On the outskirts of town, a series of streams crisscrossed the plain, its clean waters providing raison d'etre for the sake brewery which imposed a proud presence in wattle and brick amongst all the surrounding shops and homes. As the town's density increased,  I grew a little concerned that I'd have difficulties following the path.  I'd already spotted its likely path on my GPS, but was concerned by my rapidly dwindling battery.  Yet the road itself never let me down, never lost the traditional look of low homes lining its narrow passage.   

The townspeople had come through too.  Once in the town proper, the signage began, leading me through a number of right-angled turns befitting a castle town.  And if the direction continued to remain in doubt, both sides of the road were paved with light brick.  I followed this yellow brick road and navigated the turns, paralleling the old castle moats whose waters were partly responsible for the riot of colors in bloom everywhere I turned.

I quite liked this town, having never seen its true face before.  My only experiences here had been traveling the unattractively busy Route 9 along the outskirts, or walking through the bland suburbs up to the hilltop temple of Hōsen-ji where I'd polish my zen a few times a year.  Today I saw well preserved homes, narrow lanes free of utility lines, and ample signage to explain it all. 

I arrived finally at Umahori Station, reuniting me with a section of the San-in-do that I'd followed out of Kyoto back in 2008.  Not far from the station stood a single fifteen-story monolith, rising to flip the bird at the traditional part of town.  I remember many nights sitting in meditation at the temple in the hills above, looking down at these lights ablaze, the darkness beneath cut only by the trains pulling in and out like glow worms.  Since I knew that the trains ran through at twenty minute intervals, I was able to cheat and use them to time the meditation, waiting for the 8:39 to come in to signal a mere minute remaining until I could relieve the pain in my knees.  Today too, the train proved a respite for weary legs, as it bisected the steep gorges that cut into Atago's flanks, then dropped me into the heart of the Old Capital.



On the turntable:  J.J. Cale, "J.J. Cale Live"

Sunday Papers: Wendell Berry

“Stop somewhere, and begin the thousand-year-long process of knowing that place.”


On the turntable:   Warren Zevon, "The Wind"

The Road to Sasayama

Once again the weatherman lied.  He'd promised me clear sunny skies, but all was dull and grey.  My train moved beneath, pulling out of an equally grey Osaka, and heading northwest into the hills.  In the seat before me, a young high school couple sat, heads close, sharing a look at a smart phone, or perhaps sneaking kisses.  At one stop, the boy abruptly got up and sat down beside me.  I was puzzled, until about fifty other kids wearing the same uniforms filled the carriage.  I liked this whole scenario, of this young couple hiding a love found during a longer commute.

From the train, I saw signs of spring coming back into the land.  A farmer was turning slow circles around his field upon a tractor.  Neighboring fields had already been flooded.  The rice would go into the ground within the week.

I disembarked.  Wisteria crawled upon the trees above the station, purple streaks amidst the new green.  The residents of this small village were a bit taken with my foreign presence, something I wouldn't have expected this close to the cosmopolitan centers of Osaka and Kobe.  I wandered away and out into the grid of rice paddies, the world doubled due to the placid water in the fields. 

Today, I was following the Sanin-do, one of the most ancient of roads, which led from Kyoto to Izumo Taisha. I had lived just off it during my 12 years in Yonago.  This particular section was known as the Sasayama Kaidō, named after the frontier town into which I would walk an hour later.  A castle had been built here by the Tokugawa, in order to keep watch on the powerful lords to the west.  The narrow streets parallel to the castle ruins still retained their feudal look, and the newer shops of downtown could hardly be called contemporary.  The '60s look of their frontages mimicked the stock beyond the doors.  There was the bamboo and wicker shop, the kimono shop, the shops which sold only umbrellas. Black beans seemed to be the coveted souvenir here, being sold out of wooden bins everywhere.  

There was a bizarre double retro vibe going on here, as if fifty years ago the town fathers had decided to celebrate the town's history but preserving it, yet the town of that time had found itself unintentionally preserved as well due to stalled economic growth.  Sasayama appeared to be capitalizing on this, and it was working.  New life had evidently flowed in, personified by the younger, hipper presence here, in the form of a woman in her flowing India clothing, hanging more of the same upon the racks of her boutique.  I saw two cafes run by men in ponytails, and some rather progressive menus written in colorfully swirling chalk lettering.  These artist types had been charmed enough to relocate here, and I too felt the spell.  I promised myself a return trip for further exploration. 

But I didn't linger long, and moved once again out amongst the fields.  They had done some remarkable things with the trees here.   Many of them lined the banks of the fields, hinting that strong winds must blow wild out here.  A pair of real giants towered above the small Jizo hall nestled at their feet.  Many of the homes still retained their thatch roofs, one of which having recently been replaced, glowing bright and green like fresh grass.  Flowers both wild and domestic added such a rich burst of hues that almost made me forget the grey clouds above.   Hand in hand with all this new life came the inevitable partner, death: a snake, and later on a frog, lay crushed into the asphalt.   

The Sanin-do carried the burden of its age with a certain weariness.  All-night lanterns were overgrown with creeping vines.  Memorial stones of an ancient vintage lay in the weeds to the side.   Deities resided in wooden structures that were rotting and covered in mold.  Even the few shrines I passed had simple torii of a few tree trunks merely lashed together, the shrines behind being of an underterminable age. Underlying this all was the immature voices of juvenile frogs who tested their new legs by raising themselves from their beds of mud.      

This valley was broad and easy for farming, the road unobstructed as it moved arrow-straight through a chain of villages.  These communites must have gone back far more than a millenium, back to a time when clans were migrating from the provinces toward a Yamoto state just being born.  The shrines all dated to this time, when chieftains held far less sway than the gods.  The rain sodden gate of one of these gave off the scent of wood as I approached.  I took a rest at a different shrine further on, one even older, with a certain air of mystery.  As I sat before yet another massive tree, the caretaker came out and began telling me a bit of the shrine's history, and about the festivals that were still held every year.  There was a selection of black and white photographs commemorating a time when the shrine was the cohesive bond for the community, a bond that would begin to erode once those same photographs were put into a electronic box and began to move. 

As I left the protection of the shrine, a squall rolled over and unleashed upon the paddies, and upon me.  I took shelter in a bus stop for a few minutes until it relinquished its urgent intensity. The rain itself kept on, so I pulled out my umbrella and followed suit.   As if a co-conspirator with the weather to my misery, my narrow road merged with the busier highway, and I began moving uphill against the trucks that doused my trousers with the mist coming off their tires.  

Approaching Anabiki Pass, I eventually found a section of the old road that helped me to avoid the unpleasantness of a long tunnel.  It wove and wound up the slope, littered with leaves and small branches.  At the pass was the obligatory Jizo, this particular one turned toward the hillside which was in a rapid state of deforestation.   But the forest got its own back, as one section of the road had fallen into the valley below, the white guardrail twisted and extended out over the abyss in a gesture of pleading. 

Until this point the walk had been fantastic, the Sanin-do well preserved, despite a few short sections on the busier highway.  The remaining hour unfortunately stayed with the new road, and though expecting a descent after the pass, I found myself climbing again.  The highway crossed the next pass in a series of S-curves, and without a real shoulder, I had a few tense moments of walking upon the road itself, into blind turns.   Over the top, and I was given perhaps a meter of space, as the oncoming traffic slowed and veered around me.  

Looking down into the valley, I noticed the ghosts of old rice paddies, their terraced shapes obvious and unnatural.  I imagine that the fields had provided the food for the tea houses that had surely been atop this pass.   But even these would be lost soon, judging by the tree-felling being done above, as well as further done the valley.  Based on the curves of the road earlier, I imagine a tunnel is to be bored beneath, the new road laid atop those traces of fields.  But who cares about history when you can shorten the drive by five minutes?  I supposed there's some consolation to be found in the fact that the new road will be true to the original route of the Sanin-do.  

I walked into Hatta, and found my bus stop.  I had about twenty minutes until the bus arrived, so looked for a place to charge my phone.   The adjacent police box was open, with no one around.  It did have an outlet, so I plugged in and sat awhile.   When the bus came I boarded and rode the final eighteen kilometers into Kameoka, joined at some point by two dozen school girls, which served as a bookend of sorts to the day.  I was surprised that the bus avoided the main highway and followed the Sanin-do itself, making us the latest set of travelers moving along this, the most ancient approach to the old capital...


On the turntable:  The Band, "Live at the Academy of Music"
On the nighttable:  Art Davidson, "Minus 148º"

Sunday Papers: Satō Issai

"One gazes at the moon to appreciate its purity, not its phase or visibility. One gazes at the flowers to appreciate their vitality, not their color or fragrance."


On the turntable: Crosby, Stills, and Nash, "Crosby, Stills, and Nash"

Walking Blues...

Here's a little something Michael Lambe and I have been quietly working on for the last few months and as it is almost ready for release I thought I would let the cat out of the bag.

Details at Deep Kyoto...  


On the turntable:  Air, "Airities"

Taking the High Road through Nara (Ise Hon-kaido II)

I found the signs for the Ise Kaidō right away, little white rectangles of plastic tied to low hanging tree limbs and to signs.  They helped me navigate the twisty road through the suburbs.  Housewives lugged garbage sacks from their kitchens to the street.  School kids swerved around me, not expecting my figure to appear before them as they sped downhill on their bikes.   

These suburbs began where I disembarked from the train, just below the Kuragari Pass that I'd crossed a few weeks ago.  Atop the next hill, I left them for forest.  Stone buddhas lurked in the bamboo groves on either side of the road.  Further along were a handful of small industrial compounds, surrounded by high, rusting, corrugated iron walls.  At my approach, a pack of dogs began a racket close by beyond the trees, which had me worried until I passed the gate to the police dog training facility. 

I spent the good part of the morning looking for beauty, something to shoot photos of; something to write about.  But beauty's so thin on the ground down here.  For years I'd considered buying property somewhere in Nara prefecture, a house in a small rural village, somewhat remote yet with easy access to Kyoto.  But this entire area has had so much concrete poured over it.  It was getting more and more difficult to find those ancient pieces of beauty that had existed for a millennium, but now lay beneath. 

I began to move closer to Nara proper.  The road grew straight, lined with the usual suspects.  I think if it were not for Mt. Ikoma, Osaka would've sprawled right into this town.  It's to Nara's great benefit that the mountain is there.  The suburbs lead right up to both flanks.  This final stripmall was absolutely horrible.  The walk kept getting worse and worse.  

The road led directly to the edges of Sarasawa-no-ike, beside whose water I sat, admiring the sun-worshipping turtles who, eyes closed, craned their great necks toward the five-tiered spires of Kōfuku-ji's dignified pagoda.   I wove through the narrow streets, each well marked with history and character.  Most seem to have been converted into small eateries.  Sadly, it was still early.  I began to move south.  

Within blocks, all charm had faded.  I passed a long hour or so moving through more uninspired suburbs, the railway hugging the side of the road.  One house did try to liven things up, its front door framed by wisteria, perfect and purple and in full bloom.  In another season, I'd have walked right by.  

By the time I arrived in Tenri, I was starting to get rewarded.  The villages held onto what they'd always had: the small canals, the tiled roofs, and even one short section lined with arbor.  Tenri itself was founded around its eponymous religious sect, and it showed.  I found myself behind the sect's 'campus,'  the temples stacked high and looking like dormitories.  Everyone I passed was wearing these long sleeved black over-robes, looking like extras in a 1970's sci-fi film.  I've written about Tenri before, and I was actually quite moved by the faith that I saw displayed here.  But I also have a problem with organized religions, in particular those that are this, well, organized.  There incongruously at the southern edge of town was a condom vending machine, bearing the optimistic pitch of  'Cheerful Family Planning.'

I was paralleling now the ancient Yama-no-be-no-michi, which I consider to be one of the premier walking courses in Kansai.  Though still essentially part of the Ise Kaidō, this stretch that I was walking was called the Kami-tsu-michi, or high road to Nara.  (The lower road lay to the west of me, and I intend to walk it later in the year.)  The scenery began to rival the older road, passing before forested shrines, reservoir ponds, and towering hillock burial mounds.  These final two hours walk redeemed the day for me.  

As did the coffee I drank al fresco at a simple cafe beside Miwa station.  The sun remained high and so did my spirit, despite more than 30 km over hard, uninspiring roads.  I've walked the next section of the Ise Kaidō already, and will pick up the road again further on, as autumn leans into winter, when the dry leaves fall atop the fields and hamlets of the deep Mie hills...


MAP: http://latlonglab.yahoo.co.jp/route/watch?id=4cc9415e09dd2d174d0d38987812e0fb


On the turntable:  Ramblin' Thomas, "Ramblin' Thomas and the Dallas Blues Singers"
On the nighttable:  Mark Law, "The Pyjama Game"   

In Bloom...

Trusting in the mysteries
Opening one petal at a time.

On the turntable:  Robbie Robertson, "Robbie Robertson"

Sunday Papers: Galileo Galilei

"I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, has intended us to forgo their use."


On the turntable:  Chinmaya Dunster, "Karma Circles"

The Fortunate Earth is Happy

Kyoto Journal has published a review I wrote for them on their webpage.  Please have a look.


On the turntable:  Doobie Brothers,  "Best of..."

Sunday Papers: Raymond Bradbury

"You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices."


On the turntable:  Brad Mehidau, "A Tribute to Joni Mitchell"

Mycolic Manifesting

Deep in meditation,
I gradually become the world.

On the turntable:   The Dave Pike Set, "Got the Feelin'"

 

Kyoto's Bountiful Minister

Quite pleased that I had a travel piece appear in last Sunday's Japan Times. The piece was originally conceived as an addendum for the Deep Kyoto Walks book I'm co-editing with Micheal Lambe, scheduled to be released this month.

The link is here.


On the turntable:  The Band, "Across the Great Divide"