Journey through the Past

The weather forecast showed 12 degree temps, which the sunny morning skies confirmed.  I decided to spend the day playing connect the dots.  I had already walked a series of routes down in south Nara prefecture, but subsequent internet fiddling showed me that I had 'eaten the loaf, but left the heels,' if you will.  Where did those routes connect?  A fine day to find out. 

Nothing terribly special to report, as I'd already consumed the tastiest bits.  Nara is world famous for its lengthy history, nearly 1500 years of history, so its no surprise at how lived in the area looks.  Even the newer house look weathered, the older ones hanging on.  There are the odd small blemishes of industry, and the obligatory highways and rail lines, but I like the way the mountains and fields close in to hug everything. In particular the first section of the day, along the eastern reaches of the Yamato Kaidō, as the valley walls grow closer and closer as if to shield its kiss with the Hase Kaidō, a kiss I'd missed on my walking the latter road two years ago. 

Not far away is the junction with the Kami-tsu-michi.  I had thought that I had covered this 2-km elbow of the Ise Hon Kaidō while on a walk of the Tokai Shizen Hodō in 2009,  but the TSH is further up toward the hills, a fact I discover as I sit sunning myself beside Shiroyama Jinja, perusing a series of online websites and refueling on a rice ball and some cold chicken.  The Ise Kaido proper follows the river below, and so now do I.  A handful of children play in its dry bed, two grannies gossip on a bench above.  I criss-cross someone's farm, passing a number of signs pointing toward the seemingly infinite shrines and ruins that dot this, the Yama-no-be Michi, one of my earliest walks in the area, and still one of my favorite walks in Japan.  I move through the village of Miwa, following the shrill sound of a flute to an Hatsu Ebisu festival and its giant red fish omikoshi.  This is an affiliate shrine of nearby Miwa Jingu, where the god of alcohol is deified. I smile at the smaller shrine's eponymous beer, and realize that I have yet to drink that particular brand this year.  Hatsu Yebisu is most definitely called for, but will have to wait, as February is generally a dry month for me.  (Perhaps then, a Super Dry instead?)  A handful of steps away brings me to Miwa Jingu's massive torii, supposedly the tallest in Japan.  Not long after arriving in Japan, knowing that sake is enshrined here, I sat drinking a cup in the shadow of that very gate, watching the sun set over the Katsuragi range.  This gate more or less marks where I had thought I'd finished my walk of the Kami-no-michi in 2014.
But now, my walk of the Ise Kaido can finally be called complete. 

I toast this with a tea and some chocolate, before heading down Route 169, into the heart of Sakurai.  It is a modern road, yet thankfully lined with mom and pop shops rather than box stores.  It never ceases to amaze me just how many beauty salons and eyewear shops there are in Japan.   It is as its citizens want not only the perfect coif, but also the ability to clearly see the perfect coif of everyone else.   (This is where I will insert a snarky quip, saying "for a people so dead set on 20/20 vision, it is amazing how astigmatic is the government's hindsight view, in following the definition found in Merriam-Webster: 'showing incapacity for observation or discrimination.'" Perhaps my own lenses are rose-tinted.) 

The Kami-tsu-Michi is now cut by a rail line and a river, but after a little creative detouring, I am walking the section known locally as the Yamada Kaidō (confused yet?).  It is more or less the rural Route 15, which curves itself toward Kashima Jingu.  The sky clouds over for the first time all day which brings the wind and chill.  Alternately, the mists of time part to reveal the landscape of the sixth century capital Asuka, dotted with dozens of key-shaped burial mounds.  A village, then a town escort me back to the rail-line, which I follow south a few kilometers until I enter the train station. 

This ending will too serve as a beginning.  I have one last road to walk down here, leading from this tomb kingdom of Asuka to the later-era Heijo Palace of Nara, paralleling the temporal progression that marked the transition from newly sedentary hunter gatherers to a more established civilization defined by collective agriculture and a new import --  Buddhism.

No map links per se, due to the nature of the day.  Instead:

On the turntable:  Annie Lennox, "Medusa"
On the nighttable:  John Nathan, "Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere"
  

The Sacred and the Cows (Ise Sangu Kaidō III)

I took the first train of the day so as to beat the rain.  It also enabled me to beat the rain that had just ceased, after falling all night, after falling for two days.  

The cobbled lanes shone in the faint light of dawn.  Tall hedges rose on either side, framing perfectly an old man riding toward the castle ruins.  Walking toward him, I did what most feudal period travelers would have been hesitant to do;  that is visit the castle.  In those days, the average man on the road would have wanted to get through these administrative centers as quickly as possible, since they were hotbeds of authority.  Far better to carry on up the road to the next town, and a small quiet inn somewhere with its sake and its gambling and its women.  Climbing up to the ramparts I found where the keep had once stood was a wide open space now cleared for a city-center park.  All along the perimeter of the walls the grass had been tramped down by the footfalls of walkers, though it is not hard to imagine that they too have been walking in the same footsteps as the feudal era sentries now long gone.  

I found that I had no beef with this Matsuzaka, with its large decorative cowbells and statues of horse-headed Kannon.  It is an attractive little city along a rather ugly industrial corridor that extends southward from Nagoya's distended belly.  This was my third single-day walk along what had once been the Ise Sangu Kaidō, and I'd seen very little but bland suburban homes and massive structures looking almost abstract objet.   In fact I don't believe that I found myself in the midst of any sort of open space since leaving Yokkaichi on a hot August day now a year past.  No wonder really since this was the primary road connecting the well-visited Ise Shrines with the Tokaidō and thus Edo.  Inns and tea houses would have lined this route, free as it was from any significant hills.  

Matsuzaka's folk museum had many artifacts from this time, and delighted even more in being free on this national holiday morning.  I continued along the rough hewn stones to pop my head into an old samurai house or two, then got on with the walk at hand.  

Arriving at the river's edge, I continued my own steps of yesteryear.  The day turned out to be warmer than what people were dressed for.  The recent rains had brought with them chill, and the train ride down was accompanied by the scent of musty clothes pulled out for a new and premature season.  One exception however was an old woman bent at a perpetual 45 degrees, sweeping the path to a shrine with a broom twice as tall (now) as she.  

The suburban corridor led me over a couple of rivers.  Beside one, an eda-mame field looked parched despite the recent weather.  What was coming in didn't look too promising either, and as the first drops began to potsu-potsu off the road ahead, I pleaded with the sky to hold off just a bit longer.  It seemed to heed, and besides the odd drizzle here and there, I was left unmolested to finish my walk.  

Over the last river, paralleling a bridge I'd crossed back in March when I wrapped up the Ise Hon-kaidō.  This bridge had far less traffic, and I walked in the center of its low white rails toward the zigzags that fed me onto the intersection where I met with my previous route.  Seeing no real need to go to the shrine again, I bee-lined for the station, and onto a platform abuzz with people returning from a long soggy holiday weekend.  And while I was pleased to finish a route that I had seemed destined to never complete, a glance at my map reminded me that I still have one more Ise route to do, one that stretches away from the Kumano shrines out there beyond the hills...


MAP:  http://latlonglab.yahoo.co.jp/route/watch?id=efb29286f5157e2b9dd66c95b474165a


On the turntable:  "Frank Zappa, "Zappa"
On the nighttable:  Victoria Glendinning, "Raffles and the Golden Opportunity"

Eluding Closure (Ise Sangu Kaidō II)

The forty five km I'd done the previous day had seemed to come easily.  Or at least while vertical.  When I lay down to sleep, the pain began, mainly in my right instep.  There's a good reason I don't walk those kinds of distances anymore.  But even more bizarre was what was happening in my mind.  The brain was a-babble with a monologue without any real point, just adrift in the seas of the subconscious.    I began to wonder (among other things) whether certain reflexology points in the foot are stimulated by long distance walking, causing, say, the pineal gland to trigger a fight or flight response.   And the two glasses of a very fine Malbec weren't doing their job of shutting it down.   

But a bad's night sleep isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the brain slowed some and I could keep a better focus on what was before me, rather than on lunch, logistics, and other distractions.  It was easy then to note the birds warming up their voices, and the few flowers that, though potted, added not only a bit of color to the world, but offered a tease of the olfactory delights to come.

It didn't take long to walk out of Tsu, where I had stayed the night upon completing my Ise Kaidō walk the day before.  I was back then on the Ise Sangu Kaidō, which I had begun walking last August.  Hot and stormy weather had prevented me from finishing the walk then, but I had hoped to cover the final 38 km today.  But already my legs were heavy, and the sore instep was beginning to worry me.  Were those extra km I'd done yesterday in search of lunch coming back to haunt me?  

I took a long rest on a river bank, sipping coffee, and watching a trio of men fish.   It was about that time I decided that I would finish today at the walk's midway point of Matsusaka, and return sometime later in the year.  

This seemed a wise choice as the last five km were spent trying to distract myself from the pain in my foot.  One such distraction were the occasional stele denoting where the Meiji Emperor had stopped while on his own pilgrimage to Ise in 1869.  What was going through his mind as he stood before the most holy of shrines to Amaterasu, his mythological ancestor?  Much of the scenery I was passing through was right out of his own journey, as the countryside looks to have changed very little out here, in the old homes and reasonably unspoiled rural landscape.  Yet I had comforts that the Emperor hadn't, in the form of a nice coffee drunk in a warm train carriage, and the view seen from  the train window, of my footfalls rolling backwards.



On the turntable:  "The Rough Guide to Tex-Mex"

Waiting on the Sun (Ise Hon-kaido VI)

It was a day too warm for February, and the birdsong was in the key of March.  I'd wanted an early start, so had come down to Matsusaka the night before, in order to catch the first bus of the day.  My feet hit pavement not long after 7:30.  

The road on which we'd ridden out here to Kakinō was a busy one, but luckily I was walking a smaller road just above both it and a river that was quiet today.  In former times, the latter must have raced through this gorge with great power, scarring and twisting the rocks in the riverbed into phantasmagoric shapes.  These, and the mist hanging between the hills overhead, lent itself to the cliche of a Chinese landscape painting. 

This smaller road was leading me through the remains of a post town, the location of the old inns designated by paper lanterns hanging in the eaves of what were now modern houses.  The oldest house in the village dated from the Meiji period, but rather than lanterns, Christmas lights hung from  its cracked and faded beams.  This lingering holiday sentiment was refuted somewhat by the sight of plum blossoms that exploded into view a few steps on.

Before leaving the river, I climbed up above a Shingon temple whose twin waterfalls hinted at esoteric practices, to an overlook that was becoming hemmed in by the untrimmed pine branches that blotted out the view.  I imagined an older priest here, no longer interested in undertaking tough manual labor for the sake of a dwindling number of parishioners.  As the day went on, I noticed that the few temples I did pass seemed to be all Shingon.  I was closing in on the Ise shrines, and imagined the pro-Shinto fever that must have purged this area of all signs of Buddhism as State Shinto raised its snake-like head in the Meiji Period.  These Shingon temples had Shugendo roots, so were therefore deemed Shinto enough.

The river now behind me, I found myself walking a straight line throughout the day, village begetting village, with only rice fields between. Kadomatsu New Year's decorations hung from many of the doors, making it feel as if my previous walk in January was still going on.  

Villages, farmland, villages.  The one forest I did enter was flat, along a track that bisected a thick bamboo thicket that must be rife with snakes of its own in warmer days.  At the forest's far end, I heard what I at first thought was gunfire, but was merely a pile of bamboo trees ablaze, their air-filled chambers bursting as the heat escaped. 

Lunchtime came, and it brought with it hunger.  In many ways this was a dream walk as the path kept me far out in the countryside.  However, the walker tends to grow reliant upon the small cafes and convenience stores found just about everywhere across Japan.  I eventually came to a small yakuniku place, but the owner told me he was finished for the day, despite it only being just past one o'clock.  A bit annoying.  

Earlier while walking the river, I had tossed a fist-sized rock into a pool of very still water.  I was amazed at just how wide and for how long the ripples traveled.  I thought this a good metaphor for those who complain that a single individual has no effect upon a large and complicated world.  And in the same spirit, this fellow's refusal to serve me had ramifications throughout the day.  The ripples of my initial annoyance growing eventually into full blown anger, as my energy waned and waned.  I just couldn't find food anywhere.  More than that, I wanted an excuse to sit awhile as I was now about 25km into my day.  

Around 3 pm, I finally decided to detour off my track to a convenience store a few km away, not far from where the Ise Kaido meets a lesser traveled section of the Kumano Kodo that leads south toward those grand shrines.  I finally got my lunch, and as I sat I noted that I was just on the outskirts of Ise City proper.  Not long now.

When I rejoined the path, my laughter cleared out any anger I was still carrying when I came upon a food shop a 100 meters on.  Then another.  Spirits high, I walked on, trying to ignore my eyes made runny by the pollen that is always an unwanted companion to the welcome warmth of spring.  The farm villages continued for an hour or so, then crossing a broad river, I was in Ise proper.  

The kaido took me past the Inner Shrine.  I debated going in, but it was past 4 pm now, with the light fading.  Plus I'd recently paid my respects a few months before.  So I carried on the last four km toward the inner shrine, which I found more important anyway.  

This section was quite fascinating, as it had once been lined with brothels and inns.  Had this been 150 years before, I expect it would have quite the lively scene.  Today, all was quiet, just a few school kids cycling home.  One of these inns was the scene of a multiple murder that soon inspired popular entertainment. But it, and most of the other inns, were now replaced by bland new suburban homes.  Only Asakichi Ryokan remained, stacked up in a jumble of wood upon the side of a hill.  

I hadn't expected that I'd finish this walk with a climb.  Thanks to my lunch detour, I was clocking about 45 km for the day, far more than I'd walked in the last decade or so.  But incredibly, I felt fine, with none of the aches I usually get after about the 27th km.  But I could have done without this last hill. And along the descent down the far side I felt the pull of momentum, leading me through the mock Edo frontages that are a large tourist draw these days.  All were shuttered and closed by now, the punters having moved on.  

And at the far end, the bridge led over to the water to where the Sun Goddess awaited, just as her spherical form was beginning to leave the heavens.    

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


On the turntable:  "Skankin' 'Round the World"

Mitsue Mountain Hop (Ise Hon-kaido V)

When I returned to my room, I noticed that the water had spread across three of the six tatami.  Shit.

The inn hadn't supplied me with any towels, so I quickly stripped the pillow from the pillowcase and used the latter to begin mopping up the spill.  I rubbed and rubbed the faded surface of the mats until they took on a uniform color again, the darkened wet spots now nearly indistinguishable. I then pulled the water reservoir from my pack, thinking I'd not screwed the top on properly,  but found that it was snug and secure.  I must have set the bag itself on top of the mouthpiece, which then leaked while I was out of the room.

I tend to travel an comparatively exorbitant amount, so I'm allowed a certain percentage of culturally stupid fax pas.  But they always seem to happen in the most remote inns, the ones where, due to the seemingly few foreigner guests, I'm thrust into an uncomfortable role of bumbling ambassador.  I am still mortified by the sukiyaki incident of '09.

And my hosts had been incredibly nice.  Not only had they accepted me as the sole guest during the New Year's holidays, but they spent a great deal of time talking with me about my walk and giving me pointers for what lay ahead.  They joined me for dinner, where the television served as an additional companion,  the conversation turning into questions about topics seen on screen.  Again, my foreign background seemed to make me an expert on such diverse topics as mountain rescues in both Nepal and Niigata; the growing economic cold war between Russia and the Balkans (China's relative quiet of late has forced Japan to join the growing international criticism of Putin.  Helps to build support for a pumped-up SDF, especially when you remember that the two countries are still technically at war); and drunken English revelers passing out or otherwise behaving badly on New Year's Eve.  (Quoth the Pot:  "Kettle, there none more black.")

When staying at inns I tend to decline breakfast, since that allows me to leave when I like, usually just after first light.  My hosts graciousness had extended to making me breakfast at six, then bowing me out the door when the day's first rays topped the hills lining this long broad valley. 

I made my way gingerly over the sheets of black ice. Nothing moved but myself, passing beneath a massive camphor tree and the humble shrine visible between its bare branches.  A little further on, a pair of fireman carried out the first rubbish of the year.  I entered the hills, moving over the crunch of snow beneath my feet, toward a large oval structure seen through the trees, which proved to be a rather unorthodox primary school.  A man was sweeping out front, making me wonder if school was in session on this first Monday of 2015.  After passing beyond the frozen swimming pool and pitch-white athletic grounds I had my answer in the sight of a young boy waiting beside the road with his father, the pair of them turning their heads in unison toward the small bus tottering up the hill.

It was yet another hour and two more villages before I got my coffee.  Surprised I made it that far.    As I sat on a low concrete wall I thought how I had seen no vending machines nor shops since leaving Haibara.  Whereas the day before I had only encountered hamlets of a dozen homes or so, this morning I found myself walking through what could be properly termed villages, expanding spatially rather than temporally, as many of the trappings of the second half of the last century had yet to enter their orbit.  And this is precisely why I love these old roads and the places they take me.  Here, it is still definitely 1958, and my surroundings are right out of that golden age of Japanese cinema of which I am so enamored.    

And further beyond were views from even further back in time.  To my left I was leaving behind the tell-tale peaks of Soni Kōgen, and up ahead was the saddleback shape of Ōborayama (which only later I realized I had climbed in 2009.)   The mountains out here were truly magnificent, and I really needed a return visit to give them the attention they deserve.

But luckily not this day.  My hostess of the night before had mentioned that this would be an easier day than the last, in terms of topography.  I would be therefore able to move at a greater clip, which would enable me to cover the 25 km to my intended accommodation by noon.  Far too early to stop, but it was unthinkable to push on another thirty km to a train station before the darkness fell at five pm.   Even without the heavy pack, my age bracket takes that out of the realm of possibility.  Fifty five kilometer days are a decade or more behind me.

So I decided to simply walk as far as I could until four pm, then find a bus, or hitch to a rail line.  The weather and my high spirits were in my favor.  Upon reaching a train station at Ise-Okitsu, I stripped down to a T-shirt and sat eating my lunch in the sunshine.  This town literally was the end of the line, perhaps due to the very steep mountain wall on the edge of town, where an hour before I had needed my poles to manage its steep descent.  I had at first thought the station to be closed, but found that it had been reduced to one third its previous size.  The rest of the structure was divided between a civic hall of some sort, whose bored-looking employees giggled when I came in and spoke Japanese at them.  (And that was just the men.) The other half was a small folk museum, emphasizing mainly that the town had the previous year been the principle location for a film that had received quite good reviews, yet one whose title always brought giggles to the part of my brain that is perpetually thirteen year old.  Wood Job.

As I moved away I noted that this town, like Mitsue where I had spent the night, finally had the marks of a post town.  Every community in between had been too small. The houses here were built broad and squat, with lower roofs to keep off the accumulated weight of snow.  There were also quite a number of Tenri-kyo signs, no real surprise considering that the sect's founder had been born not far away. The locals seemed to delight in their history, and each home along the way had a plaque bearing the name of the inn it had once been.  I imagined the bustle of porters, hustling up business to assist with the pass up ahead.  Despite the town's charm, I knew what was to come.

I arrived at the top soaked and winded.  My choice of lunch location had been less about the aesthetics of a pretty place, and more about the timing of refueling.  But the weight in my belly had been a hindrance, and I sat a long while on a bench that marked the location of a tea house long gone.

The descent made me feel worse, upon finding the beautiful valley where I had intended to stay the night.  I had visions of sitting in the chairs out on front of the inn Nakaya, alternating between my reading books and engaging in sake-laden conversation with the owner.  I felt quite guilty as I slinked past.  This inn and my previous one Matsuya are the only ones that remain along this section of the old road.  Once they are gone, it will be impossible to do a through-hike without a tent.  In fact, my host from the previous night had told me that that was the reason he kept in business, despite being close to the age of eighty.  His son wasn't interested in taking over (the old story), so it was up to him and his wife.  The walkers relied on them, he said.

What came next could almost be seen as a sign of karmic retribution.  The beauty of the valley was short lived, for I was pitched once and for all upon the wide modern highway I'd been paralleling since the day before.  It was mercifully free of traffic, but its asphalt form was devoid of any charm as it climbed and climbed and climbed.  And as I made my weary ascent, I kicked myself for believing the old woman and her words that this day would be easier than the last.  No matter the good intentions, I know better than to listen to the advice of those who haven't themselves walked.

Upon reaching the pass, I found that the previously ample signage was now gone.  What was there was conflicting, matching neither the terrain nor the maps.  I carried on in what I was the right direction, but another sign quickly tempted me in yet another.  Gullible as a schoolboy with a crush, I moved into the dark of the unknown.  Another sign further on directed me over a stream, but I was soon thwarted by a dead end. A side road here seemed to head the right way...

From the pass, the trail was supposed to drop an incredible 300 vertical meters in less than a kilometer.  And for now the road beneath me was straight, but at least wasn't climbing.   I had another look at my guidebook, which told me "by all means follow the stream."  And the sunny spots just around the bend could be the pass, right?  Oh, well, then maybe the next one.  It was late afternoon, the shadows beginning to fall over the road.  It just didn't seem right.  The altimeter on my watch told me I was now 150 meters above the height of the pass.  Another look at my other guidebook.  At the pass, make a right turn after the bridge.  Had I crossed a bridge?  Shit.

I whirled around and moved quickly back down the hill, beneath shorn hillsides, in a demonstration of what passes for forestry in this country.  Eventually, I found myself at the spot where I had been an hour before.  No bridge.  I moved along the main road again, found the trail proper, and raced along the decline, poles swinging from my wrists, my four limbs a flurry of motion.  (At the bottom I found that local school children had left cheerfully-painted wooden sticks in a box to be used to aid walkers on this section.)   The guidebook told me I had two walking hours until the nearest bus stop, and I had a mere 45 minutes of daylight left.  If I missed the bus, I'd never get a lift since the Japanese tend not to stop after dark.

So I raced on, feet aching, mind tense and clenched.  I barely noticed the shrines and old farm houses fading into shadow.  The final approach took me along a small stream, but mercifully kept me out of the forest.   From above, a pair of crows heckled and jeckled my rushing, shuffling form.  A mother and son were a bit kinder as they rode their bicycles past, a New Year's greeting coming from their receding silhouettes.  And I made the main road at exactly five.

I turned and walked toward the bus stop, thumb out just in case.  Across the road, a voice asked where I was going.  A workman on his way home had pulled in to buy a coffee at a vending machine beside a shuttered factory.  "Any train station will do."  "Okay, I'm going to Matsuzaka."  Perfect.  A station that had express trains back to Kyoto.

My driver was my age, and had remained single in order to maintain his lifestyle as a surfer.  We talked of world famous surf breaks that we'd both visited, until the lights of the city welled up and I hobbled toward my train.  Along the way I noted that I had covered just over 40 km on the day, a distance I rarely do anymore, and never in heavy boots better used for snowshoeing.  And later still, as I peeled off my socks to climb into a hot bath, did I see the bruises around my ankles, the blackened toenail, and most of all, the holes in my feet, stigmata perhaps for my sin of refusing hospitality, a complicit act of betrayal against the spirit of pilgrimage, which in this particular case, may be beyond the hope of resurrection.



MAP: http://latlonglab.yahoo.co.jp/route/watch?id=4cc9415e09dd2d174d0d38987812e0fb  
On the turntable:  "Daytrotter Session:  SXSW"

Uda Garden of Eden (Ise Hon-kaido IV)

It wasn't too long before it became apparent that I was carrying too much gear.  It was was weighing me down, and I was still a bit fatigued from fighting off a minor cold that was trying to get me. 

My intentions had been good.  It had snowed over the past three days -- days corresponding to the first three of the new year -- and I wasn't sure what I'd be in for up at 600-plus meters. 

I wasn't alone.  I passed the better part of the day following the footsteps of someone who had walked this path the day before, an assumption based on the fact that the slushy bottoms of the prints had refrozen overnight.  Whoever this person was, his feet were bigger than mine.

But now it was just the snow and I.  The cold had greeted me with a sudden smack in the face the moment I had stepped off the train in Haibara.  It must have terrorized the townspeople, for no one was in sight as I walked the streets back to where I had hitched a lift just over a year ago.  The cold dogged my own footsteps, kept me from dawdling too long as I would greet any passing shrines or stone statuary with a mere glance, rather than my usual thorough look around.  Ponds were frozen into a thick opaque white, hiding the carp beneath that swam slowly, slowly, as if a physical manifestation of the passage of time. History itself can be lifeless and cold to the touch.

What had taken ten minutes by car took an hour on foot, the newly carved wooden signs eventually leading me into forest.  My sudden presence scared off a deer, the bounce of its receding white bottom blending quickly into the white of the hillside beyond.  The signage was remarkably good, thanks to the city of Haibara.  I worried a little that the trails would be tougher to follow once I got beyond the city limits.  But for now, all that troubled me was the weight in my pack, the majority taken up by my twelve-point crampons.  I had nearly brought my snowshoes as well, but at the last minute had decided against it, considering we had gotten a mere third of the seventy centimeters that had been projected to fall upon the region over the holidays.  Even still, it was the most snow to fall upon Kyoto in over fifty years.

I climbed out of the village, and past the thousand year old cedar above.  The trail continued to climb, topping out at a tall stele marking what had once been a barrier station.  Beside it were a pair of picnic tables, frosted like a cake with at least ten centimeters of snow.  It saddened me a little to have to disrupt such symmetrical perfection, but with a sweep of the arm I provided myself with a place to sit.  It had been a long slog, and my body's resources were depleted, so my intended snack break quickly expanded to become lunch.  Each bite of my metallic onigiri was a taunt: "Wouldn't you much rather have brought a thermos of soup?"

I left the villages in the valleys below, their grey right angles standing out against the roundness of the surrounding snow.  Every now and again I'd pop out of the forest and into a small hamlet, a chain of which was strung across this, the highest section of the old road to Ise.  These proved to be more dangerous than the snowy passes, as I would gingerly navigate patches of road slick with ice.  It was little surprise then that I saw very few people, except for an old farmer who stopped his car to ask me if I was walking the Kaidō, and an equally old woman who set me straight when she saw me pondering the trail with a GPS that was beyond a signal.  The old ways are still best.

I climbed over three passes, each one taking a greater toll than the last.  Then I descended, arriving at a small gazebo below a shrine, where I sat and overlooked a valley as the first rays of the day's sun broke through the cloud cover to caress the contours of my face.  It wasn't to long before arriving at my accommodation for the night, where a kind old woman led me into a warm room, and placed a steaming cup of tea before me...


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


On the turntable:  "Clicks and Cuts"
On the nighttable:  Murakami Haruki, "A Wild Sheep's Chase"

Upon us All a Little Rain must Fall (Ise Betsu Kaidō)

 
The land on either side of the train was covered in a fine green quilt.  Along the stitched edges, a casually dressed pair walked beneath umbrellas blooming upward against the rainy sky. 

Damn you Mie and your damned changeable weather! The forecast just an hour before had been for rain early, then cloudy skies.  But now it showed rain all day.  The view from my train seat served as co-conspirator. 

Back in Tsu lot much later, I returned to the stone that I’d passed three days before, which demarcated the southern terminus of the Ise Betsu Kaidō, another spur branch that connected with the Tōkaidō  8 km to the northwest for the convenience of Kyoto pilgrims heading to the Grand Shrines of Ise Jingu.

The rain had dulled to a fine mist, so I didn’t bother to unfurl my umbrella, lashing it instead to the side of my daypack.  I ziz-zagged my way out of Tsu, through quiet rural neighbourhoods.  It wasn’t long before I arrived at the massive Takata Honzan, headquarters for the eponymous brand of Pure Land Buddhism.  The temple had a long history, though the modern halls didn't reflect that.  Their grandeur was instead represented by its size, a hint that financially this temple was doing very well indeed.  Workmen rushed about, changing banners for the throngs expected during the Obon holidays. With little of interest barring the spectacle of scale, I quickly left the gates and was back walking again.

The rest of the day was spent along this small road, which wasn’t particularly interesting but at least it kept me in the countryside.   The humidity was incredibly high. I don’t think I’d ever walked in such intense humidity .  The day threatened rain, and when it eventually fell, I felt relief, as the humidity index dropped quite a few percentage points along with it.  Then relief turned to frustration as the skies threw at me everything they had.

After lunch I left the rather bland farming roads for the larger, more heavily trafficked roads, with the pachinko and the convenience stores and the cake shops.  So many cake shops.  From that point on, I began to notice the signs for dentists. 

The rain eventually let up, and some blue sky began to reacquaint itself with the earth below.  This new lighting revealed a more attractive landscape, of woodland and fields, and quainter villages of a older look.  When I first came to Japan, I loved this old style of architecture, and would go out of my way to find places like this.  Today, my eye is more drawn to the anomaly of Western buildings of which one or two can often be found, though those too have have one foot in the 19th Century.    

Then finally I ran into the Tōkaidō at the post town of Seki, passing beneath the great torii arch that faces the direction of Ise Jingu.  The beautiful preserved look of the town was as good as it gets anymore.  After all, this was the Tōkaidō, the granddaddy of the old feudal highways, and I promised myself I would follow its length before long.  But it also made me ask myself just how far I want to take this walking of old roads.  As this day had proven, there are small spur roads simply everywhere in this country. How minor a road do I want to walk?  That said, each of those roads does have its own history, but how much of that history is still visible and remembered?  

MAP: http://latlonglab.yahoo.co.jp/route/watch?id=946677c21ff84f969a3cf159a271c5ec

On the turntable: Skatalites, "Skabadabadoo"
On the nighttable:  Christal Whelan, "Kansai Cool"

 

If the Sun Refused to Shine (Ise Sangu Kaidō I)

The old man was standing at the base of the stone steps, hands clenched in prayer.  The steps were steep, and at their top, I could see the pitched roof of the shrine, emblazoned with overlapping gold.  The old man had bandaging and tape on both legs, and didn't look all that healthy.  But there was life in the smile that he gave me as I walked past and began to ascend toward the shrine.

It was hot.  It had been since morning, during a bucolic train journey that took me across the Mino plain.  The train was old, and of a surprisingly narrow gauge, the seats close together like on the London Tube.  The train pitched and rocked every time it picked up speed, and if I were to close my eyes, in the heat I could almost image being in a hammock in the tropics somewhere.

I disembarked on the outskirts of Yokkaichi, an ugly city of towering smokestacks striped in red. A short walk away I found a tall stone marking where the Ise Sangu Kaidō parted ways with the Tokaidō, and made its way to the famous shrine.  In the feudal days, the only real excuse for a peasant to travel was to go on pilgrimage. and those coming from Edo would have passed this stone as they made their way toward the holiest of holies.  I followed suit, bowing a greeting to a man filling two water jugs with water from the sacred spring shaded by stone.

For the first hour I found myself on a busy highway, unhappy with the 36 degree heat.  Two years ago while walking sections of the Nakasendō I had promised myself that I would no longer walk any sections of road in the summer.  But yet here I was once again.  I justified by it to myself by saying that the countryside was always interesting in the days leading up to a traditional holiday.  But this wasn't yet countryside, and all I saw were cars and trucks going their way on what was still a normal workday.

An hour later, I found a convenience store built beside a low hillock atop which was a small temple hut. Provisions quickly bought, I had my lunch sitting beneath the huge cast iron bell on the hill, the temple building beside very old and apparently long abandoned.  I was unable to see an actual temple hall anywhere amidst all the new suburban homes below.  This must have been a training temple in its day.

Just as I was thinking this, a middle-aged woman came up and confirmed it.  Broom in hand, she had come to clean around the hut, and found me sitting here.  She explained that the structure was barely stable, and had suffered a great deal from three centuries of being battered by the typhoons that seem particularly attracted to this prefecture of Mie. But since I was here, would I like to see the statues inside?   They too were 300 hundred years old, but still revealed a nice color when conjured up by the light of my torch.  A dozen protective deities each had on its helmet the unique feature of one of the animals of the Chinese zodiac.  The woman told me that she'd never seen these details anywhere else. 

She next took me down to the actually temple building, which was essentially a nondescript older house amongst all the new plastic homes in the neighborhood. The living room served as the Hondo.  There was no danka here, she explained, but the statues and altar needed a priest to do the proper rites at the proper times.  Formerly Shingon, it was now a branch temple of Kyoto's Myōshin-ji Zen sect, and was being looked after by her father, who would be succeeded by her son when he was old enough.  Being an only child, she was unable to become a priest according to the tenets of Rinzai, and her husband, adopted into the family upon marriage, appeared to be no longer in evidence. Impermanence.

As I walked away, I thought it funny how often I am approached by someone who is interested in explaining some obscure bit of Japanese history or tradition, who then expresses relief that I can understand the language.  I wonder what would happen if I didn't.  Yet I am impressed that the stereotypically shy and reserved Japanese make the effort anyway.

I crossed the Suzuka River, and dropped into what was finally the look of an old road, flanked with the two low parallel rows of houses. This would be my scenery for the remainder of the day, barring the rice paddies that demarcated the villages, or the odd burst of arborial splendor that were the shrines, their precincts screaming with cicadas.  Most thankfully, it also keep me off the main highway running just parallel, as it weaved and zigzagged through small farming communities and some of their larger suburban cousins.  

I arrived at the sea by midday.  Despite that, I never actually saw the water, hidden as it was by the bodies of large factories, and the long unending walls of grey concrete. The only reasons I knew the water was close were the signs warning me that this was a tsunami zone, indicating that the area would be inundated by a wave four meters high, then two, then one-point-five.  Far off behind them, I could see the tall cumulonimbus clouds stacking up.  Being this close to the water made me feel hotter for some reason, so I took a rest on the grounds of an old feudal police office, now being used as a park.  In one corner of the park was a sumo ring, covered by a tarp made concave due to all the water that the recent typhoon had brought.  As I sat there, a swallow repeatedly swooped down over the waterlogged tarp in order to quench its thirst.   

As I went on, I saw more standing water everywhere, covering the vegetable plots, and carving channels in the sand of building sites.  The grounds of one shrine was a bayou where the trees extended from the water.  The majority of the rice stalks, just shy of full maturity, lay lazily atop one another, the mud around their roots so waterlogged it could no longer handle the weight.  But like in the Coleridge poems, there was not a drop to drink.  

In the heat of the late afternoon, I saw the first of a handful of signs for local sake.  Just as I was thinking how nice it would be if they did their own beer, those same magic words appeared.  I made a quick detour down a narrow side street, entering the grounds of the distillery.  It was quiet just before the holidays, but I found a young man sitting at a desk.  I asked him if I could buy a beer directly from him, and he without responding pulled one out of a fridge and poured it for me.  As I drank we talked about sake, and about some of our respective favorites.  We both agreed that the sake made in Kyoto wasn't very good.  I had the same opinion about that city's beer as well. He professed to being more of an expert on sake, and poured me a few cups so I could taste his product.  He felt that beer sales were rapidly declining in Japan, and that the craft beer scene wouldn't go anywhere.  Sake sales were on the rise again, he told me,  and he and his colleagues here were attempting to cater to younger taste buds, creating suitable flavors.  "Can you taste it, smooth like white wine?" he asked as I took a sip from my glass.  "Something for the young ladies."

My carbohydrates suitably reloaded, I walked the final hour toward Tsu.  The clouds I'd earlier seen out to sea now began to roll in, mercifully taking some of the heat off of the day.  Perhaps they were conjured up by the massive wind turbines visible on the peaks to the west.  Through those peaks wound the Iseji section of the Kumano Kōdō, a walk I hoped to do sometime next year.  

A walk through the hills sounded pretty good right now.  Post work traffic was rushing a little too quickly down the narrow road, and at one point I had to sidestep into a shrine to avoid getting clipped by a mirror.  The placard hanging off the shrine's aluminum torii was charred a dense black.  Beside the torii was an poster for a classic film series to be screened through the autumn.  Each day there would be a free double feature.  The starting time of the first film was 1:30, a hint at the demographic that they were hoping to entertain. 

For me, I'd find my entertainment on whatever was in front of my feet. The following day, I was facing a further 37 km to Ise, not an impossible distance, but one I'd rather not undertake in the full heat of August.  Luckily, I'd be trailing a train line for most of the day.  Come afternoon, I'd simply walk from station to station, then gauge whether I wanted to carry on walking.  Wherever the answer would come up "No," I would get on a train.  A block or two before arriving at my hotel, I saw a sign written in English, "You've got the Power."  Not any more, I thought.

And that sign proved more prophetic than I had thought.  As I slept, Mie had turned her charms to yet another storm.  Rain brushed the window of my hotel room, and the forecast was for heavy rain all day.  While the 27 km I had covered to get here hadn't been horrible, they hadn't been particularly wonderful either.  I'd be back in the cooler days of autumn, my footfalls leading me to Ise Shrine, the motion of my feet to be succeeded by that of my two hands coming together, to greet the gods who had attracted the feet of so many others before me.

   
On the turntable: "Urgh! A Music War"
On the nighttable: Shigeru Mizuki, "Onward Towards our Noble Deaths"

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"   

Kuragari (Ise Hon-kaido I)

I stepped out of the subway station, and look slightly up the hill toward the castle.  The grounds were a Pollock splatter of pink buds, but I didn't detour to investigate whether they were plum or cherry.  Probably the former, as the sakura weren't due for a another few days still.

I grabbed a cheap 380 yen bento, and walked over to Tamatsukuri Inari Shrine, sitting on the steps since benches weren't provided.  This area was once home to the craftsmen who had carved the magatama jewels that were so sacred to the ancient Japanese.  Today, it was a quiet neighborhood, that still held the same slightly working class vibe, personified I suppose by the man who'd made my lunch.  

More importantly, this shrine was the Osaka terminus of the Ise Kaidō.  Just what I needed, yet another road to walk.  I was already in the process of walking a couple of others.  But this particular old path received priority status as it was considered most auspicious to undertake the Ise pilgrimage in a year following the shrine's renewal, a fact I learned from a recent post on my friend John's Green Shinto blog.  I had already planned to walk the Ise-ji section of the Kumano Kodō later this autumn, but now I felt compelled to undertake this parallel, 170 km road as well.  Good thing I bought new shoes last weekend.

I moved downhill, beneath a massive kusunoki standing in the middle of the road, then rejoined grand Nagahori-dori.  Signage was good here, and it led me seamlessly onto the smaller parallel streets that followed what in these early stages was referred to not yet as the Ise-Kaidō, but rather the Kuragari Kaidō, and old road that led from the capital Nara to an ancient part of modern Osaka called Kōraibashi.  The name was reminiscent somewhat of the word "Korea," proving an interesting linguistic parallel since it means Goryeo bridge, a reminder of the strong contacts between Nara and Korea at the time, and may even be where boats from the continent were moored.   

I was curious when the signage would end, and it didn't take long.  I was moving hesitantly into Higashi Osaka proper, along the busy Rte 15, or occasionally beneath the large factories lining the roads that flanked it.  Very run down and rough looking.  A couple of workmen in their 50s gave me a good glare as I passed.  The lack of signs made sense if you consider that it's difficult to care about history when it's hard enough just to focus on the day-to-day present.  


I had been long intrigued with this area, in particular with the section once called Kawachi, since it and its people had been the setting for Imamura Shōhei's first film called Stolen Desire.  The locations of the film reveal a small rural town surrounded by vast farmland.  Today it was all new, suburban, the absolute worst of Japanese development, right down to the rugby stadium in the middle of town, a testament to the rough and tumble people here.  Any time I passed a person of the film's vintage, I wondered if they might have been within Imamura's frame, as so many residents had been extras.  More important was the changes they must have seen during this last half century.   As I walked along, pondering this, Mt. Ikoma rose like a wall ahead of me.  

Before long I reached her feet.  I paid respects to Hiraoka shrine, as picnickers enjoyed the plum groves nearby.  I stepped back onto the concrete path of Route 308, which wound narrow and steep up the mountain's flank.  It wasn't a long ascent, but it was a tough one, forcing me to stop a few times.  I passed a couple of walkers coming the other way, each of whom nodded but didn't say anything as I came past.  Were they trying to emulate the holy men of old, taking some sort of vow of silence on the climb?  

I finally made it to the small hamlet up top, the tea house closed on this Monday.  I moved beyond it, to admire the view of the Nara basin beneath the seasonal haze.  Then quickly down the other side, past the fields and the Basho stone, the stone statues and the small temple halls. When my feet leveled out again, I was at a train station, tired, hungry, and foot-sore.  But the shoes had performed marvelously.  


MAP: http://latlonglab.yahoo.co.jp/route/watch?id=a1b3380854ca35b251629e89901729d1


On the turntable:  The Clash, "The Story of the Clash"
On the nighttable:  Rob Scheltheis, "Bone Games"