For each of the three days on the Kohechi, we'd begin the day with an enormous climb, each day more challenging than the last. Yamamoto-san drives us to the suspension bridge which will usher us out of town. The ishitatami stone path begins just the other side, its pitch set at an eye-wincing angle. As the trail finally levels off, the eyes are in turn treated to the sight of a set of massive cedar trees, their ancient forms twisting ever upward in phantasmagoric shapes. Where one sees tall trees on ancients trails is an indication of a former settlement, or at least teahouses, protected by the man-made arborial windbreak. Daniel and I stopped a long while to admire them, and our conversation stays on trees for far up the trail.
It doesn't take too long before we arrived at Miura Pass, The trail deteriorates rapidly from here, scarred by landslides that adds a bit of excitement to a somewhat uneventful day. As we have no real views to speak of, we focus on the odd stone statue, the small clearings where teahouses once stood.
Our pace too is getting faster, and we are back down in the next valley by lunchtime. A small shrine provides a nice picnic spot, which gives us the energy to trod the nine kilometers of pavement to follow. This begins with a few pleasant villages, but midway through we come across an immense construction project, where they've graded the entire valley and covered it with concrete and grass. At the center is a dirt pile of near-mountainous proportions. When we ask a workman about it, he says that it's a refuse dump of sorts, where debris is brought after landslides and other typhoon damage. It makes some sense, but not really.
Just beyond the Subaru Hotel we cross another suspension bridge. This one dances and bounces under our weight. I'm not great with heights, so stop and wait for Daniel to cross before I continue, trying to make three points of contact where I can. About 3/4's of the way over, I think, screw it and stride across as quickly as I can.
Our reward comes with a beer and a foot bath just up the road in the center of Totsukawa Onsen. Our hotel is around the corner, but it is still not check-in time. The hotel itself is pleasant and clean if a bit dated, the staff friendly enough, but not as warm as the owners of the inns of the last two nights. We have come to civilization once again.
Someone from the inn drives us back to the trailhead in the morning. We'd wanted an earlier start so as to beat the rain, but they were a bit fussy about the breakfast time. The driver is about to take us slightly up the hill, but I, ever the purist, ask him to drop us off down at the river. I'm glad he did, for this initial section is one of the prettiest of the whole Kohechi, with ishitatami climbing at a degree gentle enough that we can admire the wet green after the night's rain, and the mist filling the valley for the rain to come.
And it does come, though thankfully after we've climbed through the hamlet of Hadenashi. It is a pleasant little snippet of homes and vegetable plots that clings to the spine of the ridge which peels away toward the roll of dozens of mountains on both sides. The hamlet's name is almost a synonym of the commonly heard expression sumimasen, it never ends, it never ends. And for awhile, neither does the ascent, and it is apparent why this is the toughest day on the Kohechi. The rain adds to our misery. While we'd had light drizzle on and off over the past few days, today it is merciless. I stop at a small Kannon hall to pull on my rain gear. The weather spurs us to climb more quickly, and before long we reach the pass. Maps show this route to be a perfect bell curve, and within minutes we're again fighting gravity down the other side, the stonework tricky in the rain. Along the way we startle no fewer than three huge bullfrogs, one of them taking a near suicide leap out into space.
We finally reach the road, completely drenched. I pull out my umbrella for the next stretch, which follows the Kumano-gawa to a michi-no-eki that promises curry rice and a hot bowl of noodles. Inside is a small exhibit showing the day by day travels of a traditional pilgrim, making a 28-day return journey from Kyoto.
Warm now but still very wet, we return to the tempest, which has lost none of the typhoon-like fury we've experienced all day. Luckily this is without wind. We climb again over the next kilometer, to the teahouse that marks the intersecting Nakahechi route. I've passed this a half dozen times, and never failed to look up the trail we just walked, thinking someday, someday... But now the Kohechi is fianlly done.
But we still have a couple of kilometers down to Hongu proper. The trail is more a series of interconnected lakes, waterfalls spilling through the stonework steps on the hill. We eventually pass that odd housing develop that sits behind Hongu, and a minute later, are praying before the grand shrine itself.
On the turntable: Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond, "The Complete Storyville Broadcasts"
As I've made multiple trips to Kōya-san, I try to choose a different temple each time. Eko-in is still my first go-to choice with clients (though their prices have gone way up over the years). Or Fukuchi-in for those with deeper pockets, A third I won't mention prompted the only review I've ever written on TripAdvisor, and a scathingly negative one at that. Tonight's temple, Sekisho-in is my seventh, out of the fifty offering accommodation on the mountain, a deliberate choice due to the controversy it stirred up a couple of years ago. Despite this, I find the staff friendly if somewhat perfunctory, the gardens and grounds lovely, the rooms surprisingly large and comfortable.
I find Daniel at dinner. As the Kohechi had always made me a little apprehensive somehow, I casually asked a couple of friends to join me. All had other commitments, though as Daniel too saw his guiding work fall victim to the coronavirus, he popped up a week ago and said he would come along. When we meet again at breakfast, we decide to wait out the rain, then set off.
The morning is cold, and the rain returns soon enough, in the form of snow. The views to the south that I'd admired here while guiding are lost to mist. After skirting Koya's face we drop steeply into the small hamlet of Otaki, where we have a mid-morning snack in a covered shelter pointed out by a villager of considerable years. The food gives us the strength the push on up to the Skyline road, quiet for the most part, though every ten minutes or so we're buzzed by a cluster of vehicles, no doubt released by a traffic signal somewhere. The road takes us in and out of Nara prefecture three or four times in about 15 minutes. Finally, a slight climb leads us to a forest path and Mizugamine, the high point of the day. Not far along is shelter, where we have lunch before an unseen sea of sugi trees that I know are out there. Then the road leads us down to the town of Omata and our lodgings.
The day has been surprisingly easy, and as we arrive early, we walk another 20 minutes to our inn. The words "onsen" are barely out of the owners mouth before Daniel and I mount bicycles for the ride over to the baths at Hotel Nosegawa. Daniel draws the short straw, and is forced to ride a bike the size that an 8th grader would use for his paper route. It always feels good to ride after a long walk, and it is an enjoyable few kilometers out along a river that shows some previous flood damage, including one tremendous piece of concrete than may have once "coaxed" the river's flow.
After a quick visit to a small shrine that honors some local gods, we soak awhile, looking out over the river and cherry trees not yet into bloom. It is still hours to dinner, so we enjoy beer and fried octopus before riding back. As we are the only guests, we talk through dinner with the owner and his delightfully ancient mother, the flow of conversation dictated by the bad news coming from the TV screen.
I awake beneath my now dry clothes, hung along a rope like signal flags. Rain again threatens as we face the quick and steep climb out of the village. We rest when it levels off at Kayagoya-ato, a beautiful cabin stocked with wood and bedding for the benefit of travelers. Beyond this we climb and climb, up and over the peak of Obako-san, one of the Kansai Hyakumeizan. Its open summit is supposed to offer the best views of the whole Kohechi, but all we see is white. The trail down a perpendicular trail is even less inspiring, a veritable mudbog impossible to navigate even with poles. At the base of this slalom course is another hut, stocked bizarrely with ample rolls of toilet paper, which I suppose could be used as pillows if you should overnight here.
We opt instead for lunch, before heading back into the mist. The trail is narrow as it hugs the forest wall, moving along big drops and over rickety bridges. Moss covers all, the ferns thick like tempura. The mist adds some mystery to a clearing where once stood tea houses, and supposedly even an old hag who used to frighten off travelers. The ishitatami stonework down proves scarier, gravity conspiring with the unsure footing.
Once down safely, we again laugh at the early hour, and decide to move along the road to the inn. We've chosen the wrong bank of the river as a half hour later, we find the entire hillside has given way. My eyes scout a route across, but any attempt promises to be fatal. In the end we call Yamamoto-san, who graciously picks us up. After a long quiet afternoon in a small bungalow built adjacent to the main house, we join the Yamamoto family for dinner, our running commentary accompanying the news, until we all fall silent at the tribute to legendary comedian Shimura Ken, who the virus has taken that day.
On the turntable: The Birdland Stars, "The Birdland Stars On Tour Vol. 2"
As I've done all too often with this region lately, I play a staring game with the rain. It blinks first. The tell-tale drops in the hotel car park cease, and I make my way toward the door, energized and with a full belly. While most business hotels are of the cookie-cutter variety, I tend to go for Route Inn, partly because the name always reminds me of Luton, which the Pythons got so much comedic mileage from, but more so because they generally have hot baths and an izakaya pub on site. Oddly, the latter was across the car park rather than attached. So it was that at dinner last night, I found myself sitting at a counter seat in a pair of rubber room slippers and those loony-bin pajamas that these types of hotels always provide. In these days of corona, there weren't many other punters besides myself, but I did get a few stares. From a distance.
The train takes me a brief way to Kudoyama, an old castle town associated with the Saneda samurai clan. I detour along the town's main street, past a funky little coffee shop that sits at the edge of town, and whose views of the spreading rice fields make me envy the location. All is quiet at the early hour, as I bisect the low earthen walls with a live album by The Decemberists in my ears.
Sakura are in full bloom at Jison-in Temple. I remove my earbuds upon entering, and am about the engage the friendly priest in conversation, but my attention is pulled to all the breasts on display, affixed to the ema prayer boards, as this temple looks after the spiritual needs of women, affiliated as it is with Kobo Daishi's mother. Women were traditionally forbidden to climb Koya-san, so she reputedly visited her son here nine times a month, hence Kudoyama, "nine times mountain."
A long staircase takes me past the first of the Chōishi route's 180 stone markers, many going back to the 13th century. They accompany me up yet another paved path, which meanders up through another orchard. The clouds are beginning to hem in, and before I reach the relative safety of the trees, the rain gets its final say. Verbose it proves to be, keeping up its chatter for a good hour or so.
Forms of Koya culture appear now and again, many with good English explanation about the amazing exploits of Kobo Daishi. And of course, there are ever present stone markers, ever marching out of the mist. Somewhere around the 150 mark, two trail runners come past. I hear their voices looming up from behind, and after a quick greeting, they disappear again into cloud. Not long after arriving at the Ropponsugi clearing, I catch the jingle of a bear bell rising from below. A college aged guy greets me from beneath an umbrella, a greeting I return, but before he can overtake me I am off again, not wanting to hear that incessant ringing for the next three hours.
I have my lunch at Futatsu Torii, under the same shelter as yesterday. I shiver as I eat, and decide to pull on all my rain gear. Of course it is then that the rain stops for the day. But even after it lifts, the mist remains. Things loom out: tall broken trees, massive bullfrogs. I rewatched Apocalypse Now a few days before, and I'm reminded of those sections near the middle of the film, when things get mysterious and foggy, north of the Do Lung bridge. Frogs and insects creak just out of sight off trail.
I'm getting close to the top, way ahead of the estimated course time. This is the advantage I guess to walking in the rain, that you just put your head down and power on. While I've had absolutely no views as promised by the guide book, I know that there is a shelter ahead, and I need another snack break for the final push. When I arrive, the picnic table is crowded with a hiking group, all over 60, as usual. They offer me a place to squeeze in, but as I'm carrying a bit of coronoia, I say thanks and go to sit on the ground. As I begin to lower myself, my hand slips on the damp concrete floor, and I come down hard on my right knee. Not a good thing as I still have a week of hiking ahead. One of the women drops a handful of chocolate into my outstretched hand, which crawls with virus in my mind's eye.
I only have an hour left to Koya's main gate. This section of trail seems to have gotten the brunt of the 2018 typhoon that devastated the mountain's southern flank. Enormous trees have been toppled, some resting atop the canopies of their younger brothers. It feels like walking through a mine field. Then, the trail suddenly and steeply switchbacks upward, and I find myself at the edge of town.
Stone marker Number One is a little further down the road, and then I'm in town, familiar from many visits. It looks like rain at any moment, not that it matters, as I've been wet all day. I'm relieved to find Bon On open, one of my favorite cafes in Japan. There are only two customers, an Italian researcher busy at his computer, and an older local playing classical guitar in the corner. I chat with the owner a little, then he joins the music on his cello. The Italian and I talk softly from our respective tables, and distance. At a time when it feels like the whole world is shifting, we are already making the necessary adjustments.
On the turntable: Chet Baker, "Chet"
A man on the train has what I first think is a shinai in a cloth case, but as I step closer I realize that it is a wooden staff. As we walk away from Myōji Station I ask him where he's going, and he tells me that he's going to take the Chōishi-michi up to Koya. He smiles as he says this, his eyes bright over his white Van dyke beard, giving him a stereotypical wizened look. I'm a little surprised, as it is just about noon and he's got a good seven hours of climbing ahead. He'll have a long day.
My own day was half complete. It started with a taxi driver taking me to a place he knew, not the place I wanted to go. But in fact it started well before that, back on January 20, when my wife saw something brewing in Wuhan, and talked me into cancelling our mid-April trip to China. What went next was all my guide work for the spring, followed by the inevitable school closures. My daughter went to visit granny in Hiroshima for 10 days, and with no work or daughter in town, and my wife in self-isolation down in Singapore, I decided to head for the mountains.
I stepped out of the taxi at Eisan-ji, nestled between the Yoshino river and a low bank of hills. It all smelt of spring. In the car park there were a number of kayaks stacked beside a Montbell shop. This must be a popular stretch of river. The temple was founded in 719, five hundred years before the adjacent shrine that brought the place favor with the gods. Both held their age, particularly the hexagon prayer hall at one end of the compound. I truly love this part of the world.
I was forced to walk the old road out front that brought me back to the present day for a while, despite it being part of the old Kōya Kaidō, the route that brought pilgrims down from Osaka and the old capital. After far too long on a highway running through the busy town of Gōjō, I finally detoured off to the town's older main street, which kept some faith to an older feudal look, but for being spectacularly draped with powerlines. I popped back onto the highway again at the far end, and after a quick visit to the Inukaisan Tenhorin-ji (itself draped in the spreading canopy of sakura), I wended my way through a quiet rural stretch before arriving at a small unmanned train station. I sat on the platform with my simple lunch, until a light drizzle relocated me onto the old wooden benches within.
The rain is going to be a problem. I'd been fretting about the weeklong forecast of rain, unfortunately timed to fall between long parades of sun marks. I'd been tempted to push the trip back a week, but then I'd be away after my daughter was back. More worryingly, Japan appeared ready to go into lockdown any day. The latter concern would be a steady companion through the entire eight days I was away, the plans formulating and reformulating every twelve hours.
I leave the wizened old pilgrim and move over a long bridge that spans the Kii river. I remember crossing a similar span ten years ago, as my ex-wife and I began our long ramble into the Kumano region. Today the rain begins to increase, but I remain optimistic, refusing an umbrella kindly held offered me by a shopkeeper I pass. By the time I arrive at an old shrine around the corner, the weather clears. Nyusakado Shrine is the "male" in a pair of shrines on this side of the mountain. I'll spend the next couple of hours getting to its "female" companion. This climb begins up a narrow concrete slope, slippery with muck. The steep hillside is covered with orchards, and along the way I'll pass a number of rock formations, including one long staff atop which another rock perches like a propeller. As expected, this bizarre Kasa-ishi, along with the nearby Hakotate-ishi, are remnants of Kobo Daishi's own pilgrimage up the
mountain.
I curse the concrete as I climb. Who decided it was a good idea to pave mountain paths? I move along at about half my stride so as not to slip. These little mincing steps are wearing me out. Though much like as with a headache, it is gone before I realize it. Matō-iwa is just off trail, a stone cube emblazoned with two ancient Buddhas. I am tempted to sit in its quiet and splendor, but the threat of rain drives me on. I move upward, past stonework suggesting the teahouses that once lined the path.
Rain falls lightly again just after arriving at the female Niutsuhime Shrine, erected by Kobo Daishi in honor of the female deity of the mountain. The grounds are quiet, shaded by massive trees and with a tall arched bridge that acts as approach. Around the side is a quiet grove that has tall stone stele commemorating important shugenja from nearby Ōmine-san, including founder En-no-Gyoja.
The rain is falling in earnest as I walk over to the old hut that once served as hermitage for Saichō, the founder of the Tendai sect of Buddhism. Though the hut has been obviously rebuilt, the graves of his wife and daughter just below are most certainly real. It is a lonely place, and I'll pass another ancient grave as I undergo yet another steep, concrete covered ascent to a pass.
Futatsu-torii is true to its name; the two tall stone gates have been here since 1649, replacing older wooden ones erected by Kobo Daishi 800 years before. I take a rest in a covered shelter nearly, recharging with chocolate as the clouds close in over the scenery below. I race on, trying to beat the inevitable rain. Luckily it is all descent into the adjacent valley. As I make my way down one of those earthen half-pipe landscapes that define most older mountain routes, I meet the earlier pilgrim from the train, now engarbed in white and striding strongly uphill with his staff.
I find my trail junction, which drops quickly down a set of steep switchbacks. Once at the valley floor, I am amazed by a massive wild boar trap. I've seen many before made of steel, but this one is all thin cedar trucks, open to the air like a corral. It isn't long before I get to a village, and across the valley, I see a train pulling away from the station. It'll be an hour until the next one. The landscape forces me to drop all the way down to the river, then climb steeply to the station. I'd hate to be a villager here, to do this climb every time. And I'm hating to be myself at the moment, as the sky completely and definitively opens. I'm far too close to want to stop to pull out on my rain gear, but the pitch of the path slows me and I'm soon drenched. Once inside, I sit awhile, my shivering marking cadence until my train pulls out.
On the turntable: Horace Silver Trio and Art Blakey, "Sabu"
