Wakasa Kaidō II

I board a bus on the shores of Lake Biwa, which climbs back into winter. Above the Self Defense Force driving course stands lone deciduous tree, its branches bare and splayed to look like a fossil.   

I disembark in the village of Tōchū, where I left the Wakasa Kaidō six months ago.  Whereas that day had been a late summer day tinged with the chill of autumn, today was a spring walk heavily wrapped in a shroud of bitter cold.  

The road sign shows 2º C.  The outermost of my many layers is a bright orange hardshell.  This color is mainly used for winter gear and is completely psychological, as it symbolizes warmth.  But I had chosen it for its practical purpose:  to be completely visible to traffic as I move through the series of upcoming dreaded S-curves with shoulders hardly wider than my own .  I've probably researched this section more than any walk I've ever done, trying to find a way to avoid them.  As I ascend, I scan the roadsides looking for anything resembling trail, but aside from one track that appears to lead into the wilderness, there is nothing. I do get a quick break in cutting across a forested section of one curve, and just beyond this I receive a little help by a surprising source: The Ministry of Construction.  One of their newest follies is to reinforce the hillside by cutting away all the trees and laying the bare  ground with string netting.  I get in touch with my inner Spiderman and begin to climb, up a pitch that increased rapidly to beyond 45º, forcing me to crawl along on all fours like some bizarre humpbacked orange beast.   This leads me to believe that this is the actual Wakasa kaidō, as the climb is too steep for people to climb straight up, they'd have naturally created switchbacks.  Later on, the modern Route 367 would have been laid atop it.   

I take a long rest at the top, taking a thick stick and trying to unblock a drain of a winter's worth of debris.  There is a certain satisfaction to watch it begin to break apart and rush down the hillside.  Not far above this I come to the old road which avoids the long tunnel and winds up and over the pass.  The road surprises in having been recently resurfaced, which makes sense when I come to the cryptomeria plantation, the bellies of most trees wrapped in a veneer blue haramaki.  I'd gambled in my choice of footwear, taking my chances in the risk of lingering snow in wearing my light trail runners rather than a sturdier winter boot.  This proves to be the right choice as there are only a handful of patches here and there, including one surrounding the rusting hulk of a Suzuki Samurai, victim of a duel decades ago.  Mostly I move across carpets of fallen cedar branches, a welcome relief from 26 km over hardened tar.

I move down the far side of Hanaori Pass, so named for the pilgrims who would pick flowers there to leave as offering at Myōō-in Temple a couple of hours further on.  But to paraphrase the Japanese proverb, hana yori yuki, rather than flowers, snow.  The old road parallels the river, and here I find long interrupted stretches of white a meter deep. Still, it beats to busy road above and its tunnels.  I try to follow a single set of footsteps a week or so old, over crusty snow that gives under me.  The footprints have packed the snow pretty well, but my shoe size is greater, and my weight certainly heavier, so again and again I posthole up to mid-thigh.  Now and again the footprints cease completely, my predecessor having chosen another route somewhere.  I try an old martial arts trick where I put all my mental attention on my belly and slide rather than step across.  This works surprisingly well as there is no dramatic weight shift, though the moment I think about how well I'm doing, I crash through the surface.  Weird ninja magic.  

Luckily, and bizarrely, the snow patches are only in sections that curve toward the south.  All are sections are clear.  My feet are thoroughly soaked as I move along beneath the entrance to Ushi no Hana tunnel. (There are a number of passes throughout Japan with the same name, so called because they were so steep that they would have to coax the pack animals up by pulling the rope attached to the ring through their nose.)  In the end I should have been a better a Buddhist and chosen the middle way and worn light hikers.  But before long I've wound beyond the tunnels and come to the broad valley of Katsuragawa.  I have fond memories of a summer day here, of a dozen bottles of Kirin beer cooling in a stream running fast before a ryokan.   

A fresh memory I suppose is upon reaching the place, the sun finally appears.  I sit on a log by the roadside and eat a rice ball, finding some feeling again in my feet.  The sun is feeding an array of newly laid solar panels, which explains all the freshly cut timber I passed a kilometer before.   Here the powers that be have decimated a section of healthy forest so as not to interfere with the panels with their shade.  It reminds me of the time I was caught in a sudden squal with a friend who is very active in the Japanese antinuclear movement. Post Fukushima, Japan is now one of the greatest importers of fossil fuels in the world, and the offset of carbon emissions is creating the exact kind of weather patterns that had forced us to run for cover. More solar power is a preferred alternative, but at the expense of the forests?  I begin to think that there are no simple issues to anything.    

I carry on.  There is a new petrol station I've never seen, called "Smile Oil."  You'd smile too if you monopoloized by being the only service station along most of Route 367.  I receive a true smile from a woman in a passing kei-truck, who asks if I'm going to Miyata-san's B&B a kilometer of so further on.  I tell her what I'm up to, but that I'll drop by for a rest.  Upon arriving, I find her and a friend having lunch in the sun out front of an old farmhouse.  They are bith artists, and mention that this entire area is like a big museum, due to all the creative people living here.  The woman in the truck, Makiko, mentions that she'd appeared in a Papersky article, photographed on one of her horses, which she rides along Kaidō from time to time.  Her friend Keiko and I found some common ground in our connection with Kōdō, with whom she'd been closely affiliated until retiring out here.  We could have easily spent the rest of the afternoon in conversation, but I had ground to cover.  The B&B is only an hour or so from my home by car, and I promise to return. 

My GPS shows a parallel path on the other side of the river.  I'm not sure whether it is the old path, but I've many time traveled Route 367 by car, and it looks a pleasant alternative.  As I cross the river, I somehow find myself in the middle of a large tribe of monkeys, who scatter in the three directions at my approach.  There are bear warning signs on the far bank, and despite the winter feel of the day, I am reminded that mother nature is rousing herself.  She is all I have to accompany me, as there aren;t many houses or hamlets.  I am convinced that this couldn't be the Wakasa, until I find the ruins of three teahouses, their wells obvious upon the forest floor.  There is also a broad open spring which looks more at home in a high Alpen meadow.  A sign tells me that the spring has been here since the Kamakura period.   Perhaps I'm on the road after all.       

The sky spits at me a few times, but mercifully isn't too serious about it.  I cross the river again and move into my last hamlet, a mere cluster of log homes that are probably used by vacationers.  Beside one is a long unused stand-up paddle board, and on the other, a handful of children's bicycles.  How profound the death of hobbies when children appear.  But even the kids have moved on, the rusty swings in the wind as quiet witnesses.  I come to a cluster of small eateries, one advertising duck, another boar stew.  I catch a whiff of hamburger for some reason, then see some men having a barbeque beside the river.  Beyond them across the water,  I see what might be an old overgrown trail, which would link the section with the teahouses with the road on the same bank further up.  As I cross over yet again, from a closer vantage point atop the bridge I decide that it has been wishful thinking, and that my eyes have simply followed natural lines in the terrain. 

Back on the west bank, I gradually enter the village of Kutsuki.  High to the east is snowy Jyatani-dake, which nearly killed me four years ago.  The fields below are wide and open and bare.  But the day has warmed to promise spring and new beginnings, as I too have come full circle to where I departed in 2009, and my own walk upon this old road comes to a close.  


On the turntable:  Cowboy Junkies,  "Black Eyed Man"
On the nighttable:  Peter Frankopan, "The Silk Roads"

Wakasa Kaidō I

It wasn't how I'd pictured the morning going.  I had envisioned scenes of walking through the dark predawn streets of eastern Kyoto, watching the world awake and scurry off to work and school.  

Instead, I got rain, buckets of it.  The weather forecast had shown a dry window from midnight to lunchtime, and I'd been a fool to believe it.    In fact it was the rain that had woken me, not long before the five o'clock alarm.  I debated going back to sleep, but trusting that the skies would clear, I hopped on my bicycle and headed south to Demachiyanagi.  The steady drizzle that I rode through turned to downpour with my first few steps, but I thought I'd carry on anyway, weather be damned...    

Until 15 minutes or so later when I remembered the words I use when I tell my walking clients that I was calling a day off:  "If it isn't enjoyable, what's the point?"  And it wasn't.  The scenes of life I'd hoped to see were non-existant, my world view shrunk to that which fit beneath my umbrella.   I decided to go as far as Yase station and if it were still raining, I'd head home.  

I pushed on toward Kitaoji.  A row of low-income housing formed a canyon on my right, while to my left were some newly-built luxury flats. Typical Japanese incongruous zoning.  I like the idea of these two economic classes coming together in the middle for a street party, but I knew that that was an illusion, one enhanced by the Billy Bragg songs I was listening to to help me forget the rain.  

And before long, the weather lifted.  While the skies didn't exactly clear to a brilliant blue, the rain did stop.  And a certain beauty appeared, a beauty of imperfection.  Clouds teased the hilltops, caressing their flanks. Shadows brought definition to every shape and form.  Japan is best seen in lower light anyway.   

I rounded Yase and followed along Route 367, ducking down the quieter parallel roads when I found them.  I had very little go on map-wise, just a single web link that claimed the Wakasa Kaidō was the busier highway.  I've driven this road at least 50 times, so opted to follow the side routes, partly as exploration, partly as reprieve.  Mainly suburban commuter communities, but at least they had the mountains and rivers at their backs.  Up on the main road much was in decay, abandoned and forlorn.  

The valley was getting higher, or perhaps the clouds were lifting, but at any rate, the humidity was coming on strong, to the point that it fogged my glasses.  The road lost its shoulder as I had feared, but I faced down the traffic racing toward me on the curves.  My early start was meant to have gotten me through this bottleneck before rush hour started.  I was afraid to take my eyes off the lane ahead, but I quickly glanced down at my watch.  Seven-forty.  Shit.   

The shoulder returned in front of a tsukemono pickle factory.  A worker came out clad head to toe in a white outfit like a Hazmat suit.   Seemed appropriate, for when they put in the radioactive dye in order to get all those weird colors.  I don't believe that shade of yellow even exists in the natural world.   

The broad valley of Ohara spread out before me.  Higanbana sprouted just about everywhere, beside the shorn stubble of harvested rice fields.  I'd walked this stretch a number of times, so I turned my brain off and listened to some early ballads by Bob Dylan.  Well beyond the turn off to Jakko-in and Kirin Cafe was a small sports center whose owner had a few years ago been gracious enough to let my daughter use their toilets.  Needing a pee break, I crossed their carpark toward the facilities.  Midway across a woman called out "Moshi moshi," which also sounds much more aggressive than the usual "Sumimasen."  I explained what I wanted, which she reluctantly allowed.  While inside, I heard a man join her, and upon my return I found the two of them standing there, waiting.  The man was interested in what I was doing, and at least verified for me that I actually was on the Wakasa Kaidō.  Though sharing the name, the busy Route 367 was the newer route.  I thanked them again for the use of the facilities, to which he said that in future I should use the toilets at the bus station.  I turned then and began to walk off, peeved at this sort of attitude, with which previous kindness is instantly revoked.  Why offer it in the first place?   For some reason he asked my receding figure its name, to which I gave my usual "code name:"  Larry Rullelo.

A good thirty minutes on I met 367 again, which lifted me gradually toward the pass.  Midway up, a trio of cops were tagging speeders with their radar gun.  Passing by I asked one of them, "Catch anything?"  which got a laugh.  A small trail took me off the main road and over the pass.  Just over the other side was the Yamazaki Geo Clean Park (Geo being the latest Japanese recent buzz word for nature).  Its motto ought to be, "Cleaning up nature for its own good."

The hamlet over the pass was called Tochū, which can be literally translated as "In the middle of."  It takes every strength of your being not to add, "Absolute f-ing nowhere."  Due to its name alone, it seemed a fitting place to stop.  It wasn't raining at the moment, and with  only about 15 minutes until my bus I thought that I'd sit somewhere, crack open my book, and through Gary Snyder's Great Clod I would begin to plod.  

The Wakasa Kaidō carries on out of this town and immediately over the next pass.  Route 367 undergoes a series of S-curves in order to climb it, something I truly hoped to avoid.  The old trail must still exist.  Unfortunately the community center was closed, and a man out front had little idea, figuring the path would be hard to find anyway. (Anyway, as that climb will wait until next time, I had time to find out.)  

I moved toward the bus stop in a drizzle just beginning to fall.  To my surprise I found out that my bus (one of only two a day), only ran on weekends, a detail the bus company forgot to put on their website.  This could be bad, as hitching became my only option.  But I was standing in the rain on a road that had no shoulder.  The odds were pretty bad.  To my surprise the third car did pull over, and with less than a minute's wait, I was inside and dry.    

A couple returning from a wet morning fishing dropped me back in Kyoto at my bicycle.  I detoured over to the stone marker that marks the start of the Ohara Kaidō, which I hadn't known existed.    (The Saba Kaidō marker is at the west end of the Demachiyanagi bridge.)  The rain began in earnest now, so I pointed my bicycle north, racing the forecast as summer fell in pieces all around me.

http://kaidoaruki.com/area_kinki/saba/wakasakaido01.html


On the turntable: Bonobo, "One Offs Remixes & B-Sides"

Wakasa-kaido IV

The problem with walking westward in the early morning is that your calves tend to get sunburned.  It had happened yesterday, and I could feel it again now, and from behind, it must have looked like my legs had brake lights.  

But I was all go, having woken just after the sun.  A new guide book featured a walk that picked up the May 2009 walk that I'd finished at Kumagawa, so it was to that old post town that I duly returned, pulling into the Michi-no-eki carpark close to 7 am.  There was little life here due to the early hour, but for a couple of dogwalkers, and an old woman or two pottering in the garden.  The feudal period barrier gate was gone but my passage was still watched over by cats.  The flow of water escorted me down a broad street flanked by low two story houses, all in keeping with that period look.  The town wasn't as well kept as some of the others that I'd seen along the greater trafficked and better known Nakasendō or Tokaidō, but it still beat the look of 90 percent of the towns in Japan.   

It was funny to reread my earlier 2009 post (prior to writing this), as therein I had mentioned that this Wakasa-kaido was a separate route from the Saba-kaido, even though they sometimes share the latter name. It was a fact I'd since forgotten.  A few months ago, my friend Nils asked me about the Wakasa route (questions I couldn't answer), and since then I have been curious. The road appeared on maps as Route 367, and didn't look too appealing to the walker.   The drive up at the early hour had allowed me to visually scan the route, and to follow with my eyes all the divergent small roads which lolled in and out of the hamlets hidden just off the busier route.  It looked more appealing than I had thought.   Although I had recently sworn off walking the more minor of the old roads, being so close to home I thought it could make for a pleasant couple of days.  

At the far end of Kumagawa a sign pointed to an Inari shrine out of sight up the hill. The path extending in that direction was overgrown and straddled by some small torii that looked on the verge of collapse.  I usually enjoy exploring these kinds of things, but some inner voice told me to hold back.  So my steps continued as they had, on up the road.

It was an enjoyable morning, my route thankfully keeping me off the busier highway, and through a valley along which a number of villages were strung.  None of them were as well-maintained as Kumagawa, but they weren't terribly built up either.  There was the occasional shrine, or an old hold out structure from the Edo period.  There were also a few non-survivors, including an abandoned love hotel, but I'd leave any further exploration to another friend whose own journeys are taken with such decay.  

And there were things too of a far greater age.  The Wakasa-kaido here passed a series of Kofun burial mounds, one of which was said to have been constructed with technology from the Asian mainland.  It was interesting to think of the town of Obama as being an international port, especially one dating back in the mid-6th Century.  That of course marked the time when Buddhism first came in, being itself a form of Asian technology.  We think of early mainland contact of having occurred in Kyushu, or around Izumo, but any parties landing here would simply have had to follow a single straight line due south through the latter day capitals of Kyoto and Nara, directly into the heart of the imperial court of Asuka.     

Their journey would have been far longer than my own.  I reached my goal after only a few hours, at the point where the trail intersected with the Saba-kaido.  There was no need for me to continue to Obama on foot from here, as I already had seven years ago.   I had a reward of sorts in mind, so I hitched back to my parked car, and drove the remainder of the Saba-kaido to the sea which gave the old road a reason to exist.  I threw myself into its waters then floated awhile, watching the clouds of summer rise upward into the blue.  No need to go any further than this today.   


On the turntable:  Ben Sidran, "Life's A Lesson"
On the nighttable:  Eleanor Clark, "Rome and a Villa"


 

Road of the Hungry Ghosts (Wakasa-kaido III )

I had planned to climb Ibuki-san today, but apparently my legs didn't agree. After the 30-some kilometers of yesterday, they were like heavy cord wood in my bed. I turned off the alarm and awoke a few hours later. Needed that I suppose.

The train pulls out at the luxurious hour of 10 a.m. It runs quickly up Biwa's western waist, beneath high mountains looking majestic and boastful against the brilliant clear sky. To counter some of this bravado, a team of workers lays concrete in a crease of Hira-san's flank, for no apparent reason other than "Deru kui wa utareru." Some other protruding nails ride their motorcycles up a nearby highway. They all have jackets proclaiming themselves as the "Yellow Corn Magnum Highway Pack." Closet Simpsons fans perhaps?

I take a bus out to Kutsuki, which is where I'll walk a section of the old Saba Kaido. It's a different branch than what Miki and I hope to walk this summer. This one starts down in Ohara and finishes up in Obama. Near the bus stop are a row old homes against the ubiquitous rice fields, now flooded and cacophonous with frog. In the middle stands a home that looks like a cross between a 1760s farm house and 1960s Brady architecture; a hybrid that somehow works. A temple stands up on a hill above them. It is a quiet wooded space, upon which a Kannon statue sits and watches.

I move out of town and into the hills. I've been at it only an hour but its already lunchtime! The Loft is a welcome sight at a bend in the river. The proprietress is very friendly, though I don't get a laugh when I offer to give her a photo of my shoes to hang alongside the hundreds of pictures of customer's cars which cover all the walls. The ample shelves are filled with knick-knacks and doo-dads, over which an '80's soundtrack allows me to mine my college-age memories for annoyingly catchy tunes to hum for the rest of the day. I like this place and my good hearty lunch, which satisfies far more than the riceballs in my pack.

I climb into a lovely cedar forest, which is pollen free and filled with bird song. There is something else that I can't figure out for awhile, then get it: There's no trash strewn down the hillsides here. I do come upon a ripped up valley, the trees looking as if massacred. Angers starts to rise, until I see a sign saying that this is where local school kids come to learn some of this region's forestry legacy. I come to one hill where the temperature reads 22 degrees, then a 100 meters later it is somehow only 19. There's an 'environmental' center out here, which in Japan translates to "a place that comes up with creative ways to incinerate trash." Atop the highest pass I'm surprised to see a small crab. I drop down to a busier road, but decide to stay on the old highway that runs just above. Unused for decades, it's now strewn with moss, with trees and shrubs that overhang the trail lower and lower to eventually become a mere deertrail. When it peters out, I make my way down an embankment and find the distinctive print of a bear's foot.

I come to a small village with a particular haunted look, of kayabuki and demon masks, decaying buildings and an unkept shrine with slippery steps. Above a clean, fast river is a kiln built of cinder blocks. Still off the busy new road, I rejoin the old highway, which becomes more and more post-apocalyptic. One section hangs and crumbles into the river far below, swept clean by a recent landslide. I carefully pick my way across, near a car that has been pummeled by vandals. Another small row of buildings comes up soon. Ahead of me, I see the figure of an old bowlegged man moving along with his cane. We exchange greetings. He is against a background of rock graves overgrown with weeds that literally explode with white flowers. I'm moved by the simultaneous literal and metaphoric beauty of it. As I walk away I catch a quiet melody under his breath.

The name of the next village, Kumagawa, has already been given clarity by the bear print of an hour ago. It is a one lane film set, basically. This has to be one of the best preserved towns I've ever seen. Seriously, it belongs more to cinema than to reality. It is pure joy to walk through. The only accommodation to the calendar are the political posters that hang in front of the town hall. This being just outside Obama city limits, they show a group of politicos shaking hands under the slogan, "Yes, We Are!" I allow them to continue their search for the proper grammatical object as I thumb a ride back to where the trains are.

All aboard, I look across the lake at Ibuki-san, which has an accusing look that says, "Hey! Where were you?"

On the turntable: Jimmy Smith, "Organ Grinder Swing"

On the nighttable: Robert Twigger, "Angry White Pyjamas"

On the reel table: "Samurai Rebellion" (Kobayashi, 1967)