Ballad of a Thin Road

 

Before I even got close to the lake I found myself bobbing along the current.  This was mighty peculiar in that this current flowed uphill.  Or more precisely, up the stairs of Hikone station.  I had purposely left early so as to avoid rush hour, and I was successful for the first part of the journey.  But eventually, rush hour found me, and the train filled up with businessmen and schoolchildren, all of them kitted out in the dark attire appropriate to the season.  I eventually left the flow upon arriving once again at the castle.  I paid quick respects to the adjacent shrine, my mouth down-turned at the sight of a stele marking aikoku, patriotism, a concept I've never really understood, or accepted. 

I traced the narrow trails along the old castle moat, passing fishermen, elderly walkers, and a man sitting in the bleachers above a tennis court, ready to launch a basket full of balls, atop which a racquet was laid.  Workers were hard at work on extensions to the soccer stadium.  These grounds on the castle's far canal were surprising in the their scale, an efficient use of ample land which had already existed.  

I moved to where I had last left the Umi no Be, but along the canal I was surprised to see an elbow bend marking the path. Before long I was led back to the bicycle course I'd followed last time.  As that had been a pretty uneventful walk, I had chosen a few Bob Dylan bootlegs to distract me from the steady and ever present flow of traffic hissing past to my left.  For the most part I kept my eyes turned right, out over the waters of the lake.  The peaks across were clear and well-detailed, and over my shoulder, the unmistakable shape of Ibuki loomed far to the north.       

Luckily, a path led me down into a another lakeside park, as I'd found to Hikone's north.  It was much more pleasant going, along a welcome promenade of trampled grass, and beneath sakura and pine.  They'd obviously had some pretty severe weather recently, with a tremendous amount of flotsam as far as three meters from the now quietly lapping shore.  The ground itself was sodden.  Must've been a hell of a storm

And there were signs; warning of kamikaze crows, warning off the playing of ground golf (although one area must've been okay, either that or this city had some pretty rebellious seniors).  I'd rejoin the road at river crossings, on one occasion startling a bicyclist zipping along.  I popped into a convenience store to stock up on lunch.  It was due to close in two days, though the remaining stock looked like it wouldn't last even that long.  Had it been an hour later in the day I would've instead stopped at a  tasty looking deli about fifty steps away.  As I stood in front perusing the menu, an elderly woman caught me in the act of singing Dylan lyrics out loud, something about a tax-deductible charity organization.  

I rejoined the grassy promenade.  Further on, I noted that the Umi no Be signs were oriented toward the shore.  Was the shale beach there the actual trail?  I walked along it awhile, but it slowed my momentum, as my shoes found resistance in the stones.  As feared, it ended abruptly at the next river inlet, forcing me to do a high-wire act along some sodden concrete wall slippery with moss.  

The main highway moved away to the east, and my road was all quiet suburb now, except for a small factory where large and powerful pleasure craft spent their winters.  My trail led me behind the houses, moving just above the beach, here too strewn with debris.  There were many vegetable gardens here, and a friendly old man greeted me from his.  Behind was a lovely deck with some comfy looking chairs.  In one of them he would surely reward the day's labors with a brew and a view.  He moved toward the shore, to rake the driftwood and detritus that had built up., telling me that this line of debris was about two meters further inland than usual.  He then bid me take care, and we both returned to the work ahead of us.     

A black robed priest bicycled past, wearing a construction helmet.  Obviously heeding the new helmet laws, or perhaps concerned by the crows the signs warned about.  The stretch of beach beyond him was lined by a meter-high concrete wall that apparently protected the houses within.  More of the land here had been converted to fields, and in one an old man in a conical hat squatted to pull weeds.  A few houses also had basketball hoops, in most cases the rims bent thirty degrees toward the ground.  These were obviously the homes of bigger, stronger kids.  

The houses began to get further from the shore, and my path was once again shaded by pines, much welcome as this early May day grew warm.  Summer wouldn't be so far away. Finally the houses themselves disappeared altogether.  I now walked through the grass just above the shore, amazed at the various shapes and sizes of detritus, at the forms trees and branches and twigs could take. Then it occurred to me that the patterns in which they lay were the actual shapes of the waves, which mimicked the shape of the underwater line further out where the deep becomes the shallow.   

Ano benchi was listed on my map as a historical landmark.  I imagine this is tongue in cheek, this lone bench sitting at the side of a carpark, denoted by bicyclists and bikers, and people out driving on a Sunday.  The parks continued, broken now and again by inlets and bridges.  Thus went the day.

 

 

I finally left these altogether, tracing the peninsulas covered by farm houses and their corresponding plots of land.  I began to hate these, as they offered little by way of scenery, or variety, and simply meant more kilos walked under the hot sun.  Most of the fields now surrounding me were wheat, and a couple of combines were making the rounds.  Adjacent fields held green onions.  Two workers sat pulling bulbs on overturned milk crates, faces unseen due to conical hats and unhealthy postures.  I assumed from the tough physical work involved that they weren't Japanese.

I moved back along the beachfront now.  Cars were parked in the intermittent pullouts, men lazed behind their vehicles in folding camp chairs or even hammocks, shirtless in the sun.  One small section of shoreline had been cleared of debris, forming a clean sandy approach shaded by a table atop which were drinks.  A trio of vehicles were parked above, filled with paddles, lifejackets, SUPs.  One of the drivers was reclining along the length of one board, his own hammock of sorts.  This stretch of the Umi no Be certainly was bucolic.   

The beachfront was eventually replaced by a grove of trees that lined the shore.  Through one break in the foliage I saw a half dozen people on SUPs, slowly paddling along the coast.  Which explained the trucks, and their sleepy drivers.  

I followed this frontage road to where sand hit rock, and finding no trail into the forest, I moved along the face of the small mount now looming above.  There was a gate, which contrary to similar gates that break most country paths, was impossible to open, fixed as it was with three sets of thick, Gordian-knotted wire, the whole works smothered in cobwebs.  Luckily someone had knocked down a small section of adjacent fence, which solved the problem of getting through.     

In the carpark ahead I found a marker for the Umi no Be, the first I'd seen in awhile.  It pointed me up a forested path toward Isaki-ji temple, which I was assured was 900 meters away.  The trail was broad, lined with railway ties and covered with gravel which made for easy walking.  But the slow steady incline gradually brought the rhythm of my breath into pace with that of my footfalls. 

The temple hondo was an attractive wooden structure perched atop rock. A smaller Fudō hall further down by the shoreline was a mix of wood and concrete, which though less aesthetically pleasing, made sense I suppose, considering its position on the windward side of the lake.  

Doubling back to rejoin my trail, I met the temple priest in the garden, the color of his work clothes matching that of the weeds he was pulling. He confirmed for me that people once traveled here strictly by boat, a fact made evident by the stones steps descending through an elaborate gate and to the water's edge.  

But I moved away from these, up a path steep and overgrown and pointed due south.  I kept my eyes lowered, ever aware of snakes.  More active were the wild boar, who'd torn up sections here and there.  I moved along, climbing and puffing into the dappled sunshine, quite pleased that, after days of trudging on tarmac, the Umi no Be would draw to a close in the hills. 

Or nearly.  There was a final short meander along a shoreline road, which terminated on the beach of the Kyukamura resort.  All was quiet, but for a guy whacking weeds somewhere, and the occasional car drifting by above.  I was able to thumb a lift from one, which brought me into Omi-hachiman proper, to celebrate with a pint (or two) at the local Two Rabbits brewery, an activity made more auspicious in this year corresponding to the same animal of the Chinese zodiac.    

 

On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "1995-04-05, Jefferson Civic Center Coliseum"

Wherever you Roam

 

 

I should've called a taxi.  I'd arrived at Kawake, granted a small country station, but as it displayed within a regional museum, I'd somehow assumed there'd be taxis waiting to meet arriving trains.   I know better than to assume such things.

Hitching a ride saved me from repeating the dull 90 minute slog I'd undertaken in late 2021 when I climbed the ridgeline south from Shizu-ga-take.  I'd followed the Umi no Be on that day, yet descended from the castle ruins at Yamamotoyama east toward the station, rather than west along the actual route.  Ever the purist, I raced back up the mountain in three-fourths the map time, tapped the summit marker, snapped a couple of pics, then shot back down the other side along a very steep trail. The electrified fence at the bottom was hung with a drawing of a ferocious looking bear of the type that doesn't exist on these islands. 

The Umi no Be led through some quiet farm villages, then out to Biwa's eastern shoreline.  Here, near the waterfowl park, trees rose from the waters themselves, as well as along long, pencil-thin islets.  Tiny waves gently made their way to the shore,  and dotted here and there were the top-heavy white figures of cranes.  I stood on a bridge, watching cormorants fish, seemingly unbothered by the trucks roaring overhead, shaking the entire structure. 

My ex-wife used to often ask me what I am looking for on these walks.  I guess today it hit me that I'm seeking melancholy. And melancholy is everywhere in the Japanese countryside.  Its in the gradual physical decay and loss of memories that accompany population decline, perhaps Japan's greatest manifestation of mono no aware, the pathos of things. It is during these moments, particularly in autumn, when I am most happy while out on the road.  I don't know, maybe it is that I'm looking not for the ghost of my late son, but for the ghost of the melancholia that accompanied the deep mourning from that time.  

Again and again, I spied caterpillars crossing the tarmac.  With the bicycle lanes it is basically a four-lane road, so they have a long way to go.  It is almost like a scaled down version of what I'm doing.  I too simply keep my head forward, seeing nothing but grayish blue tarmac stretching out before me.  

I took a short snack break beside a small lake into which retired men fish, then its back to my long, straight trudge.  The land jutted out at one point, and my feet were finally able to move along a softer surface, the path now connecting a series of waterfront parks and campsites.  These led me into Nagahama.  

I did a quick round of the city, up the castle for the view, into shrines and temples for the history.  I'd twice visited here while walking the Hokkoku Kaidō, but warily passed through rather than visit.  And again that was more of my focus here, admiring the old architecture and the well-preserved streets.  I couldn't help but feel that tourist sites I paid to enter didn't quite live up to expectations.  The best highlights were the last two: the railway station (where I spent a fair bit of time admiring the old photographs), and the Keiunkan villa across the road with its vast garden.  The view from the second floor revealed a little too much of the borrowed scenery of Showa and Heisei Japan.  As I left, I passed a group of quite elderly women admiring the azalea bonsai exhibition. I was reminded of Dylan, "your old road is rapidly aging."    

 

 

I took a long rest with lunch and beer at Nagahama Roman Beer, to fortify myself for the final 12 km to Hikone Castle.  Perhaps I'd waited too long, as the weather grew heavy, with dark, dark, overcast skies.  Gone now was the beautiful blue waters upon which the sunshine danced.  A set change had replaced it with the slate gray lake surface which mirrored the colors above. I preyed that this was merely a staring contest, and that the clouds wouldn't blink first.    

When the rains did find me, about halfway along, I swore a bit. Not at the sky or the weather but at the meteorological team who seemed to have grown far less precise after the very expensive technological upgrade that the government had been so proud to announce not long ago.  All remained a mere drizzle, mercifully. I was occasionally led into more of those little lakeside parks, but for the most part I was up on the main road, devoid even of a bicycle path.  As such, it was a walk to get through, rather than enjoy.  The rains slowly increased, and when I finally pulled out my umbrella, they ceased.  I guess it was I who blinked first.  

Slightly higher waves now brushed the shoreline, here and there decorated with a surprisingly large number of dead fish. Large brown kites feasted on the more fresh, showing that they too have an affinity for sashimi. Further out, what must have been one hundred cormorants, flying and diving, flying and diving, stalking a massive school of fish unseen beneath the water. 

The final section in town was down a smaller, quieter road that hugged the shoreline.  I remembered swimming here two summers back to wash off the sweat, after climbing some peak further north.  I liked then the look of this little lane, the tidy little vacation houses across whose frontages leaned the toys of summer: kayaks, inflatable rings, SUPs, and small boats.  A few sailboards lay along the water's edge, and a handful of people were taking advantage of the winds that the rain had brung.     

A short walk away, I turned the corner to find myself face to face with Hikone Castle.  

 

On the nighttable:  Ian Buruma, "China Lover"

On the turntable:  Bob Dylan, "Rundown Rehearsals"     

 

The Top of the Top of the Lake

 

 

It had been a pretty uneventful morning.  I tried to hitch, but only three cars passed, none of them going all the way anyway.  My reward was a long beautiful walk, pointed toward the rising sun.  I was freezing when I got off the train, but my temperature was rising in the sunshine, though dropping quickly under the odd patches of shade. A few fisherman were standing up in those mini one-man boats I noted on my last walk up here.  

Having hitched along this section on my walk the month before, I felt guilty that I hadn't taken in this section on foot, as lovely as it was.  And the weather was far better today.  After returning to Tsukide village, the plan was to backtrack, then follow the Umi no Be across the top of the lake and up to Shizu-ga-take to meet the section that I'd walked (though not written about) last year.  Online info was sparse and not terribly accurate, so I'd be relying mainly on signposts.  I recognized the futility of this, being in inconsistent Shiga after all, but signage for the route had been pretty good elsewhere in the prefecture.  Fingers crossed.  

I fell in behind another walker who was about 50 meters ahead of me.  He stayed along the water's edge, I cut through the center of Tsukide proper, but we eventually met at the base of the steps of Hiyoshi shrine.  I thought that he was looking for the trailhead that I too had sought out last time, relying on the same incorrect maps as I had.  It turned out he was on a different mission altogether, walking the countryside to connect the area's shrines.  In cases where the distances between were too great he would drive, ditch the car somewhere, then loop around on foot, as he was doing today.  

As we were both returning the way we came, we fell in step to chat.  He too was a seasoned walker, having successfully summited the Hyakumeizan, albeit stretched over 25 years of weekends. (A pace not unlike my own, though I've not been actively seeking out the goal.). Since retirement, he went on to climb the 300 peaks of the Sanbyakumeizan, and now was aiming even higher to pay house calls on the gods.       

His car was parked along some rice fields, so I bid him farewell, heading across and through Shiotsu, a small post town along the Shiotsu Kaidō, a spur route off the Hōkkoku Kaidō.  Jizo that had once lined this route had been unceremoniously clustered together at the edge of the concrete walls meant to prevent erosion.  But what protects against the erosion of tradition?  

Good new signage contradicted the older weathered signage. The newer was aimed at the bicyclists attempting a loop of the entire lake.  One sign at the far end of town made little sense, the arrow pointed in the wrong direction, and the accompanying text completely bleached away by the sun.  So I continued to follow my online map.  I decided to pop in and pay my respects at a large shrine, and climbed the leaf-strewn steps behind up to some smaller shrines higher up.  From there I noted a small clearing with a sacred tree and a stone marker, the latter perhaps indicating trail, had that odd arrow earlier been correct.  But the path between had been rubbed away by the crash of a pair of tall trees felled by storm.  I tried to make my way there anyway, moving up steep slopes slick with mud, into which I dug my fingertips, seeking a better grip. Finally at the stone marker, it revealed nothing. 

The sign posts continued to fail, any lettering long ago faded.  I followed the map along a course that looked right, which crossed a river and a highway, then a bit of wasteland.  I knew I had to enter the forest at the far end, between the two buildings of a concrete factory. I hurried through, not wanting to get told off by the workmen zooming around on heavy machinery.  Then I found my signage again, having been more or less on course all along.  

The entrance to the forest lay in the shadow of two slag heaps.  And for the first few minutes, the hike reeked of old oil.  Not many did this route any more, to judge from the fallen bridge, and the trail overlaid with debris of stick and stone.  I reached a junction, my map splitting into two routes.  The followed the one to the left, until it became less trail and more stream bed.  In some sections it felt more like I was canyoning than hiking. I was grateful for the cold temperatures, which ensured the absence of leech and viper. Felled trees proved an obnoxious obstacle, making for a lot of up and over, or ducking beneath on weary legs.     

Midway up, I again checked my map, and realized that the trail I'd forsaken below had actually been correct.  The junction wasn't that far back, but I didn't fancy navigating all those downed trees again.  I knew the trail was above and to the right, and the hillside didn't look that steep.  It turned out that my scrambling at the shrine was a dress rehearsal for what was to come next.  I stretched and lurched upward, a few steps at a time, testing and grasping at roots, or throwing an arm around medium sized trunks.  To miss would have meant a slide rather than a fall, but the risk of injury was always there.  And yet again, I found myself wondering when I was going stop doing such stupid stunts. 

Safe at the top, I found my trail, which eventually joined a junction with a better marked trail, and the rest of the day was an easy stroll along the ridge line.  One col had been sheared away to construct massive electrical towers, which opened up the view of Oku-biwa and the north end of the lake.  I lunched here with the view, then met the ridge line which ringed Lake Yogo on the other side.  I plunged down to another saddle before making the final and ascent to the familiar clearing of Shizu-ga-take. 

I'd originally intended to do this entire hike in reverse, until train delays and the threat of missed connections made me come up with a better Plan B.  My initial route had me cheating with the chairlift up to this very spot, so imagine my delight in seeing that the lift wasn't running at all. Closed for the winter, a fact neglected by their website.  So, with brand-new trekking poles in hand, I raced down the switchbacks like a skier, into the village below.

It was a 30 minute walk from here to the station.  I considered hitching, as I always do in these situations, but the day was still bright and warm.  So I walked happily, feeling the sun on my face, a sensation that is at a premium in this month when the days continue to grow shorter, and cold. 

 

On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "1983-04-17, Meadowlands Arena"

 

Western Front Redux

 

 

 

When I set out to walk the Umi no Be no Michi in August 2009, I hadn't realized that it extended along the Katsuraka-go-ozaki peninsula.  My mistake became clear last year while driving the high Oku-biwako Parkway which parallels the trail, with signage for the latter popping up now and again along the way.   So it was that I returned on an overcast morning at the beginning of November.  

It was a less than auspicious start. I made the rookie maneuver of not checking my return train times until on the outbound ride, and was horrified at how early this line shut down.  I'd have to race all day to catch the last one at just before 5 o'clock, leaving me just under six hours to do an eight to nine hour walk.  Hitching would be crucial, and it was in my favor that it was a national holiday, meaning more people on the road, many devoid of any solid plan.  Picking up a foreign hitchhiker made for a pleasant diversion.

Unfortunately the road itself conspired against me.  The long stretch running south from Ōmi-Shiotsu station was lined with a guardrail, offering no place to pull over, thus no chance of a pickup. For the first half and hour, my thoughts were as dark as the fog that enshrouded me, made even worse in noting that there were no busses along here after about 8 a.m.  But I kept the faith, spinning frequently with thumb out.  And in doing so summoned up a miracle ride somehow, the driver stopping just in front of the village police box, prompting me to jokingly ask if this was legal.  A woman who I'd been keeping pace with during the last ten minutes was standing nearby, and laughed. 

The ride was a short one, along a quiet road that traced the shoreline before terminating at the tiny fishing village of Tsukide.  I dutifully followed a directional sign pointing up toward the hills,  pleased with both my good luck and with a gorgeous thatched roof house whose surroundings were decorated with items of a long ago age.  Within a minute the smile left my face, as the trail halted below a massive dam.  I scanned for any trace of trail, but all was overgrown.  I was further puzzled that my online map showed the route to be on the complete opposite side of the village.  I retreated back to to the sign I'd seen earlier.  

Besides being a national holiday, it also appeared to be a day when the entire hamlet was out for their village cleaning.  A man and woman were busy pulling debris out of the rocks at the water's edge.  I asked them if they knew about the Umi no Be, and in broken English, the man beckoned me to follow. 

I followed him into the house that I'd be admiring minutes before.  Both he and I were unmasked (mine in my pocket), but he seemed little concerned as he sat just beside me, and spread a paper map across our laps.  Local knowledge once again trumped technology, but he talked incredibly slowly, in what seemed to my deadline-obsessed mind to be like one syllable every three seconds.  Finally armed with the right directions, I moved quickly up some steep switchbacks, finding myself out of breath on the ridge a mere hour after leaving the train.  There was a decrepit little park there, so I stopped to de-layer before moving on.  

This was the time that I most feared the risk of bears, and I was walking a trail pockmarked with spiky horse chestnuts, most of them already cracked open.  The trail led over a little rickety bridge, offering me a Sorcerer moment in every step.  The opposite side had recently been torn apart by wild boar, probably the night before.  From here the path was carpeted with magnolia leaves, under any of which could be a viper a-coil. I wanted to believe that they were already in hibernation, as the cool fog chilled the sweat of my earlier climb.  

The paved parkway road below twisted and turned with the contours of the ridge.  But I followed a roller coaster that rose and fell, in keeping with the actual ridge line. I was still hoping for the fog to burn off, not only for the views that weren't too far in front of me, but also so I wouldn't surprise any bears that might also be.  I probably had nothing to fear from animals, giving fair warning with my huffing and puffing, this being my first real hike in almost three months.  And the moment I thought this, from the forest below me I heard a strange kind of yelp which wasn't a deer or any other bird I'd ever heard before.  It repeated a few times, followed then by a low roar. Shit!, a mother and her cub.  Their cries repeated a couple of times:  the yelp, the roar.  The squeal. The roar. It took the mind a second to parse out the motorcyclist on the road just below, firing up his bike with a squeaky kickstarter.

My route wasn't on either of my trusty go-to hiking apps, so I was flying blind, putting my trust in the signage.  It had been pretty good so far, but of the worn, 1990s vintage. Inevitably three decades of storms coming off the lake will have brought rot to the base of the post of one, and an arrow that I might eventually need to rely on will be lying in the overgrowth of weeds a half step off-trail.  Fingers crossed, I came over the peak that served as the ridge's high point, and continued my undulations south.  

And the fog lingered on, past the lunch hour.  Every time I came to a view point, I could do nothing but smile.  When I solo hike I'm generally pretty good with the weather, and I could have easily chosen the following day, though the forecast for the current day had looked better.  I could write an entire post on how poor the meteorological system has become in Japan over the last decade.  Not surprising, right on the heels of their investing massive amounts of money in new technology.  

I stopped for a moment to confirm my course from my digital map, which did at least include the southern half of my course.  And as I did, a venomous yamakagashi drifted across the trail two meters in front of me.  Some steps led down to the road proper, and then lo and behold I saw through the trees the lake opening up below me.  With the lifting of the fog, thus did my spirits.  

The trail began to drop steadily toward the fishing village of Sugaura.  I played peek a boo with views, the structures getting bigger each time.  The final descent to a lower section of trail was hazardous even with trekking poles, but it was through a gentle pitch of cedar forest that I returned to the water's edge.  I had flown over my hike today, and found that I had ample time to make my train.  It would be a two hour road walk to the station, but the course was flat, the skies now blue, and the lake's surface shimmered in the warm sunshine.

There were no signs here to speak of, but I knew that I was supposed to hug the lake's edge.  I detoured to follw a now closed trail that led directly along a long beach, before returning to the road again.  A quick glimpse of the map brought me to a halt, as it was possible that the trail might have returned to the hills above.  I backtracked on the road proper, looking for signs or any indications that it actually did, arriving yet again back where I'd popped out of the forest.  I scanned what little online info I could get on the trail, and finally came to the conclusion that I'd been correct all along.  

I thought I'd hitch to make up for my backtracking.  There were only a couple of features between here and the next town, so I walked to the first, a small cluster of Buddhist statues, before throwing out my thumb.  There very very few cars, but the second one did stop, driven by a middle aged woman on her way to work.  We were only together for five minutes or so before I hopped out again at a campsite, to walk the rest of the way to the station.  The town began to slowly build up not far along from here, past sorghum fields, run-down shacks, and the odd fishing business whose small stature betrayed a fleet of high powered boats. One beautiful and stately home looked recently abandoned, now overrun by a troupe of playful monkeys.  

Nagahara had the look of a feudal town, its narrow main street lined with houses mainly of wood.  I detoured to a shrine or two, then arrived early at the train station, to sit and read and sip from an iced coffee.  I watched some schoolkids play in a park just down the hill from my platform perch, and thought how we had all gotten the day right, had capitalized on the holiday and the weather, and the spirit of play that should be a mainstay of all of us, yet is too regularly obscured by the grey gloom of fog that rolls in from time to time, often of our own making.    

On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "Community War Memorial Auditorium, 09-02-1980"

 

Moving to Stand Still. (Western Front II)

There was a slowness to the morning.  Something about its nature, as everyone about seemed unhurried.  Many of the people I saw appeared to be heading home after passing the wee hours bringing in the new year.  There is a refreshingly languid feel to Japan at rest.

The train too felt unhurried, as I rode for over an hour to the northern reaches of Lake Biwa.  I made certain to get a seat on the right side, and await the first sunrise of 2014.  It too tarried a bit in arriving, needing a little more time to clear the bank of clouds nestling against the water's surface.

I'd certainly picked the wrong shoes for the day's walk.  There was a good 10 centimeters of snow on the ground.  And even it looked like it was in no hurry to get anywhere. 

The village of Makino was quiet, though occasionally a besuited man or two would cross the road ahead of me, moving toward the local shine with a wooden stick in hand.  One man smiled broadly and wished me a happy new year in my native language. 

On the outskirts of the village, a thatched roof house was working out the pace of its own state of decay.  As the main highway through here was flanked by snow, I walked down the middle, unmolested by cars which seemed to pass by only every ten minutes or so.  Beside the road, one car had a freshly torn left front fender, perhaps skidding on this very road last night.  Its driver may have been amidst the dozen or so people lined up at a small shrine in order to welcome the local deities into 2014.  I looked past them to the mountains on the horizon, a range on which I nearly lost my life in a snowstorm nearly a year ago.  I'd have to do my own praying later on.

I walk only a hour and a half, and come to Omi Imazu Station.  As I'd already walked the next section, I needed to leapfrog ahead 15km.  Hitching would be impossible due to the dearth of cars on the road.  But there was a taxi waiting at the station, so I hopped in.  I asked him to take the road along the water, retracing my steps on a hot August day just before I moved from Kyoto.   The driver moonlighted as the owner of a local inn, and seemed keen on talking me into buying a holiday home up this way.  We had a pleasant chat as my eyes stayed upon the ground over which I had previously trodden.

Today was a far more pleasant day for walking, the sun indifferent about keeping a consistent temperature as it popped in and out of the clouds.  It shone miraculous beams down upon the lake, the water gently lapped the snowy shore as if tasting ice cream.  I wandered into an neighborhood of beach homes with their free-form approach to architecture.   I left the road to walk atop the carpet of pine needles that coated the beach,  and followed it all the way into town.

Takashima had yet to awake this morning, which felt about right.  I moved past the shuttered galleries and cafes to the station, catching a train that got me home before lunch.  Over five days, I'd finished all the unfinished walks in my guidebooks, and looked forward to just sitting still awhile, easing myself into the laconic canter of this New Year of the Horse


On the turntable:  Yonder Mountain String Band, "Old Hands"
On the nighttable:  Richard Russell, "Dancing over Kyoto"

Western Front III

The day after the typhoon gave us a beating, the sun rose to reveal a day crisp with the promise of autumn.  I decided to take advantage of the good weather by continuing the walk down the west coast of Biwa, a walk I'd begun in the summer of 2009.  

At that time I had been walking the "Umi no be no Michi," ignorant to the fact that this moniker is of recent vintage.  Since older times, it has been known as the Nishi Ōmi-ji, and is a section of the longer Hokkoku Kaidō, as it is called where it runs along Biwa's eastern shore.  It was this route I walked today, headed toward where it linked up with the Tokaidō down in Otsu.

I get off the train in Ōmi Takashima, walking toward a Lake swollen with flood water and bright with sunshine.  The pedestrian tunnels, and the shoreline walkway to which they led, are completely submerged.  I stay high up on the quiet road that ran through the village, before getting prefunctorily dumped onto the significantly busier Rte 161, which unfortunately would make up most of the day's walk.  As such, it is a relatively uneventful walk, and I remind myself that this same monotony caused me to thumb a ride last time.  

But I stick it out.  The wind isn't high, but breezy enough to keep things cool.  It creates whitecaps on the surface of the Lake, a surface stained brown with mud.  I know from my map that I won't be off road much today, so I relish the small path that take me past a dozen stone Buddhas enjoying the sun on their faces, and down to the Shirahige Shrine, whose vermillion is a nice earthy contrast to the impossible blue of the sky.  The forests around shrines are usually the healthiest to be found in a nation famed for its deforestation, yet above Shirahige are strands of dead white wood.  Even more ironic, if you consider the 'white beard' that is the shrine's name.  

Thick conifer boughs lie across the road in some places, their needles still moist with life.  But above Komatsu I see the real damage.  A river that feeds the surrounding rice paddies had jumped its banks, the waters finding new beds as they ran along the roads and into the fields.  Luckily, the farmers had already harvested here, but I imagine that it'll take some work to get the mud out and make the fields fertile again.  A sinkhole has dropped out the center of one field as if a plug has been pulled.  A scarecrow stands nearby with arms in the air as if being robbed.

Meter high watermarks show on the sides of the houses of the village, and many of the low concrete walls that surround them have been pushed over.  The water is back in its riverbed, but trees and debris are piled high on both sides to the height of a man.  The owners of the house closest to the river are lucky that it is still standing, with the mud on the roads below it 10 cm deep.  I step up and over dead trees, past the residents busy with their shovels.     

I cross diagonally through rice paddies.  The maker of the map I'm using seems to have lost his mind completely when I'm directed along a zigzag course across the berms separating them.  I choose to stay on the road, which then leads directly to an anti-simian fence.  It is effective against this particular simian, forcing me to detour.   But I find some small satisfaction in the fact that I'm walking faster than the traffic up on the Rte 161 Bypass.  

Ōmi Maiko is the terminus for the Umi no Be no Michi, but the Nishi Ōmi-ji A crow lies dead in the road, which surprises me considering their agility.  It is rare to see them as roadkill.   But it makes more sense when I see the farmer in his field, aiming a slingshot at the birds and firing off shots at them.   But they don't move too far from their mate, who looks freshly dead.  I 'm not sure what the farmer is protecting, as his fields have already been harvested.  After yesterday's rain, they take on their flooded appearance of spring, accompanied by the sweet smell of manure.

The rural scenes leave off after I pass below the peak of Hira-san.  The mountain, and all below her, reveal their details in the clearness of the air.  I find myself stopping often simply to gaze at a richness of detail seen only on the day after typhoons.  It is almost worth having a day or two of bad weather, but I'm sure that those currently shoveling mud would disagree. 

And with the coming of city, my enthusiasm begins to wane.  I wrote a year ago about how I won't walk 25 km on a day over 25 degrees, but I've broken my word once again, and push close to 35.  The breeze can no longer resist the heat of the day, and I wind up sunburned and slightly dehydrated.  My amusement at the quirkiness of my mapmaker turns to abuse when I'm led along a stone beach now underwater.  The highway has long lost its charm, though I'm pleased to find a marker for an 'ichirizuka,' the only indication all day that I've been on the right path after all.  

Heading toward Sakamoto Station, schoolkids begin to pass me on their way home.  One girl nearly walks directly into me.  On her bookbag is the English word, "Look!"  But I've been looking all day and am weary.  I knew that I wouldn't do the full 40km stretch in one day, and am pleased to have come so far.  It'll be a mere stroll through the suburbs to get to the terminus in Otsu.  Hopefully, some remnants of the past will reveal themselves.  "Look!"     

(MAP: http://www.yamareco.com/modules/yamareco/detail-275232.html )
 

On the turntable:  Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, "Studio Jams"
On the nighttable:  Azby Brown, "Just Enough"

Western Front

For some reason, I wanted to walk the west side of Like Biwa. I thought it would be nice to find small beaches and have a swim when it got hot. The day had a poor start, when I took a train on the wrong line and got off at a station with a similar name. Once I got to where I needed to be, the morning was nearly over. I walked a quiet road, well shaded and with beautiful views of lake beside me. I figured to simply follow whatever road was closest to the lake, and was surprised to find that there is an actual trail, the Umi no Be no Michi. It stayed on the pavement mostly, but once in a while I'd be treated to a short stroll on the beach for a couple 100 meters or so. Being Obon, many families were camped at the water's edge, the kids playing in the water. Most of these were in clusters at the bigger, more famed beaches, but quite a few had scored a small strip of sand out of the sight of anyone else. I was passed by many bicycles, riding past me with a rush of wind ever growing in pitch, as they did the 185 km circumnavigation of the lake. I'd often come come across a bike or two leaning against a tree, with the sounds of someone cooling off in the water below. There were also many fishermen, the most enviable without shirts and waist deep in water.

While walking in 'nature' you often come across the abandoned remnants of frenzied 'bubble' spending. There were some pretty resorts left to decay up here. One of them spooked me in that the clock over the entrance still kept accurate time. It gave the feeling of a cadaver about to rise up on the table. The path took me over some rocks that helped me avoid a long tunnel. At the top of the trail was a small temple dedicated to Kannon, whose main hall was built from wood bloodied in the great Azuchi castle's fall. Once beyond this, I succumbed to worldly desires and had an ice cream.

Leaving the quiet road behind, I came to the first of a series of small villages. The first, Makino, had an almost Christian graveyard of small stones laid across the sand. Nearby was an old Edo period sake shop and another for soy sauce, as well as three barber shops all in a row. Later I came to Omi Imazu, whose residents had the foresight to display photos of buildings that they hadn't had the foresight to save.

It was hot now, full afternoon. I wanted a swim, but I was near a bird sanctuary, and the coast became wetlands. The view of the lake dropped away and the road became dull. To escape the heat, I crossed to the west side in order to walk in the shade of sakura lining this route. There were a few times where I could drop into the marsh and walk along a series of wooden walkways. They looked unused, with bamboo and other plants growing between the planks. I eventually got my swim where I found beach again, bobbing and easing my achy feet in the warm water.

Back on the road I grew sick of the monotony and thumbed a ride with a car full of cute young women. One of them impressed me with her knowledge of old Shinto. She's the only Japanese person I've met who has actually read the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. It was fun to ride along singing to a Nirvana CD, but after they dropped me off I began to wonder if they were kitsune, since I was stuck at an massive concrete station, whose boastfulness was undeserved, hosting a single train per hour. Having far too much time to kill, I wandered out again, trying to hitch to a busier station. No luck. At all. Ah, Shiga-ites, how I'm gonna miss you!

On the turntable: Andrew Bird, "Armchair Apocrypha"