Stuff from an Old Notebook #15

Notes from a lecture on Shugendo given by Quentin Durning, May 2009


-Mountains themselves were historically kami.  The Yayoi period  (300BCE - 300CE) created an agricultural base from which shrines rose gradually.

-Mountain deities were (are) female.

-Water brings energy from the mountain; the water god flows to fed the paddies.

-Kofun burial mounds are themselves mountains.  "Going to the mountain" a euphemism on death.  

-From 6th century, one got power from the mountains, an exercise with Taoist roots. Japanese Buddhism in contrast is still, grounded.    

-With the coming of Buddhism to Japan, Shinto gods were combined with Bodhisattvas.

The Heian period saw the entry of mandalas that Kukai and Saicho introduced from China.  Mandalas themselves are mountains.  

-In early history, people went alone to caves, rivers, etc.


On the turntable:  Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins, "Neck and Neck"

Tracking the Kamo

I'd been waiting for a hole in the weather, and being rainy season, I'd been waiting a week.  All the rain seemed fitting, as what I had in mind was tracing a river.  Due to that week of bad weather, the water I was now walking above was literally racing down toward sea level,  Yet the water I was after was in the next watershed.  I didn't expect to reach it until later in the day.  

Maps of the region show that the source of Kyoto's famous Kamogawa has its origins on the slopes of Sajiki-ga-take, a 895 meter peak just north of the city.  The river could be considered the origin of Kyoto itself, as its Imperial founding fathers found it fit ideally within the dictates of Chinese feng shui that dictated the preeminent architectural principles of the time.  And as feng shui can have varied interpretations, so too can maps.  I decided to seek a place furthest up the mountain, one I'd approach from above, following the tenets of gravity.  I'd loop around to approach the peak from the back, then follow the ridgeline down.  That was the way the rains would fall. 

For the first half an hour or so I walked up the logging road built on the bank of the Sofutani-gawa, which joins the Kamogawa lower down where I parked my car.  It proved to be a lovely walk, despite the tarmac beneath my feet.  The river in particular was ever rushing to my left.  On this day, the waters ran fast and white. 

Despite man's best efforts to maintain these forests, a large number of trees were down, fallen across the river, and crushing the guardrails at the side of the road.  I've wondered before at this, whether this is due to the increasing strength of summer storms, or to the trees being left to grow to such unweildly heights that they topple in high winds, while beneath them, their shallow roots are unable to cling to the sodden soil that slips away beneath.   There was a strange beauty to the crosshatch of trees down the hillside, an infinite number of geographic angles to be found in their corpses.  

This was a death sentence pure and simple, stemming from improper forestry practices.  After the war, extensive logging had been undertaken nationwide, in order to rebuild the bombed out cities.  They'd decided to replant with cryptomeria and cypress, "junk wood" that grows incredibly quickly, and therefore could be utilized for the rebuilding of the subsequent generation.  Somewhere along the line it was found to be cheaper to log the old growth forests of Indonesia, Australia, and British Columbia.  These coniferous forests (or more aptly, plantations), make up 40% of Japanese woodland, and have been essentially left to themselves.  Which has given rise to new problems.  The pollen they give off in spring now causes millions of dollars in absenteeism due to allergies.  And the overcrowding of the trees doesn't allow enough sunlight to penetrate to grow any vegetation at ground level for animals to feed upon.  (You hear very little birdsong or insects there.)  As a result, wildlife has begun to move closer to the neighboring villages for food, which has given rise to more and more bear encounters, and animal raids of gardens and fields.  I rarely saw electrical fences before about 15 years ago.  Now they are nearly everywhere.   

The forestry industry's approach to greater risk of storm damage appears based on the old Vietnam strategy of burning the village to save it.  About halfway into my ascent up the road, the forest nearly disappeared completely.  Enormous stretches had been razed.  (Online photos accompanying reports of recent hikes here show that this forest came down in late November last year.). This act of aggression went beyond a mere thinning before the return of typhoon season.   Like the high walls built along the Tohoku coastline after the 2011 tsunami, it had the feel of an act of revenge.  This was no trim; this was a complete buzzcut.  Where was the Lorax when you needed him?   
 

I passed the most commonly used route up Sajiki, marked by a hand-carved sigh tied to a stump, pointing up past hundreds of other stumps.  My own route was unmarked, which I would have missed without the GPS.  My 'trail' was now a dirt road hastily cut into the slope.  It led soon enough to an older track, which I followed to a large clearing called Saru-toge.  The trail all but disappeared down the far side, a creek bed with more water than earth.  Footing beneath was all a jumble of moss-covered fallen logs.  I made my way gingerly, taking care not to slip, and ever mindful of vipers who may be hungry and cranky after days hiding from the rain.  (In my concentration I didn't notice the leach that fastened itself to my shin.  It was only hours later at home that I noticed the blood flowing through a smaller forest of leg hair.

The rest of the day was relatively perfunctory: up and over Ishibutsu-toge (disappointingly missing the stone Buddhas of its namesake); along the ridge to Sofu-dani and its quartet of ancient trees (a place right out of a samurai film, the type of place for ambush); and further on to the summit.  The route down was a potpourri of Japanese trails: wide paths, broad forest roads, narrow animal tracks down steep hills. The ridge gradually led downward, and with a sharp left turn, began to level off.

This was the headwaters of the Kamogawa.  There were a handful of graves here, no doubt priests from the Iwaya Shimyō-in temple further on.  A half-dozen Roku Jizo stood watch from atop a stone wall, and another, standing alone, had luckily been missed by a toppled tree, its calm face beaming innocently from through the boughs.    

The trail now followed the Kamo, criss-crossing the stream a number of times.  The skeleton of a massive tree lay across the stream bed, from behind which a deer ran out, stopping uphill to look down at me as I passed by.  Beyond this was the new growth of an old clear cut.  While one quarter of the slope had been reclaimed by juvenile conifers, the rest had been allowed to grow wild, now a riot of varied shapes and shades of green.  It gave one some hope that those horribly decimated places could eventually reclaim themselves.  

Around the time when the temple roofs appeared, the temple priest himself popped up from the river, clad in heavy wellies and a mask in his breast pocket.  We chatted awhile, he worried about leeches, though assured by my long trousers.  I'd meet his wife a decade ago, finding we made mutual friends within the Kyoto Journal contingent, and as we talked about Gary Snyder and Royall Tyler, I thought that these must be interesting people indeed.  When I mentioned this conversation to the priest, he said, "Ah Snyder!  That brings back memories."       

And Shimei-in temple itself was quite memorable, with its rocky precipices behind, and the massive moss-coated boulders I'd been passing all the way down.  The temple was said to have been built by Kukai in 829, though the roots go back to 650 with En-no-Gyoja, founder of the yamabushi sect.  This went on to become a place of training, once so grand that by 1550, forty buildings filled the valley.  The principal figure of worship for the yamabushi is Fudo-myo, and his statue here is supposedly the oldest in Japan, carved by Kukai himself (that jack-of-all-trades).   More recently, renowned writer Shiba Ryotaro wrote an essay described an unusual night spent here, and a later conversation he had about it with Miyazaki Hayao served as inspiration for the latter's "Princess Mononoke."

Most relevant to this piece is that the water deity was enshrined in a cave here, which legend has it as the true source of the Kamogawa.  Perhaps symbolically, it was to this temple that the last of Japan's many demons was chased from the new capital of Kyoto. It was known as Chimimori, a spirit of nature, one beyond human knowledge.  The pure waters of the Kamo prevailed.  

I followed these waters along the temple's entrance road, lined with ancient Jizo under protective structures of wood and stone.  A trio of small inns surrounded a fork in the road, each with terraces that allowed one in summer to dine above the cool of the flowing waters.  And it is from here that I'd continue to follow the river toward the city another day.  For above came the gathering of rain clouds, ensuring that the Kamogawa will continue to flow on.  

  
On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Jazz Classics"
On the nighttable:  Max Boot, "The Road Not Taken" 

Haute Culture

Even at the early hour, there are plenty of cars in the car park, and I am lucky to have gotten one of the last spots.  I'd assumed as much on a national holiday, just not this early.  After I walk across the bridge I understand why.  Dozens of primary schools kids roughhouse as they wait to undertake an organized assault on Atago-san.  A handful of their teachers ignore them, looking unhappy to be stuck with this duty on a day when they should rightly still be in bed.

The hamlet of Kiyotaki itself still sleeps in shadow.  I move through them and up out of the steep canyon to where the sun is.  Before me is the long thin tunnel that seems more suited to the narrow gauge trains steam trains that ran through the hills nearby over a century ago.  It is still utilized by car traffic, though they are let through one direction at a time.  I've biked through this once, a harrowing ride where side mirrors missed clipping my handle bars by centimeters.  From my own car, I've seen hikers pinning themselves to the grey sooty walls.  There is no way I am going to walk through.      Luckily a little-used bypass road spirals up and over the pass above.  (It is a very unique case where the older road is the one that bores through the mountain.)  At the top, I see a sign pointing up toward a 'Fudo-in' further above.  Both the name and the location intrigue me, so I begin to climb a few hundred stairs to this small temple hidden within the absolute western limits of Kyoto. 

 In a clearing on what could be called the mountain's shoulder is the usual assortment of Kobo Daishi statues and a large open space under the steady gaze of En-no-Gyoja.   I myself see little besides a small goma hall made disappointingly of ferroconcrete.  Alongside is an octagonal path lined with 88-metallic stepping stones; beneath is sand from each of the corresponding temples on the Shikoku pilgrimage. And despite my initial disappointment, the Fudo-myō statue within the small hall is beautiful, holding the usual sword to cut through delusion, which in this case might be emanating from a pair of satellite dishes nearby.  

The path continues a short while more, leading me to a saddle that offers stunning views of Atago just above, and of Kyoto itself spreading away to the east.  The air is as clear as air can be, and it looks as if each peak of the Kitayama mountain range is stretching itself upward like the arched spine of a newly awakened cat.  I stay here for a good long time.  When I finally recede into shadow again, I feel the rush of wind as a crow swoops low over my right shoulder, coming to rest again atop the statue of En-no-gyoja.   This stops me quicker than the view had just previously. 

A three-legged crow know as yatagarasu was said to have lead the Emperor Jimmu to the sacred lands of Kumano, past and current home of aesthetic monks following in the footsteps of none other than En-no-Gyoja himself.  I smile at the symbolism, and don't move on again until I count the legs of this bird perched on the saint's stone head. 

At the bottom of the steps are a couple of dozen VW Beetles resting and rusting behind a structure that must house the priest here.  Further along is a monument to those who died in Siberian POW camps at the end of WWII, many of the survivors unable to return to Japan for a full decade after the peace treaty had been signed.  I offer a quick prayer to their tragedy, on this early November day that marks the birthday of the Emperor in whose reign the roots of that tragedy were born. 

Happier faces can be seen a short walk up the road at Otagi Nembutsu-ji, hundreds etched in stone slowly going green with moss. Beyond the temple grounds, raucous young baseball players race up the hill that I just descended.  Continuing in my own direction, I come to Otagi's somber counterpoint of Adashino Nembutsu-ji, where all the graves that once lined the old pilgimage path to Atago were collected in order to make room for the wider automobile road that replaced it.  I had planned to visit, but the temple is closed today for some unknown ceremony, as somber chants emanating from inside pass over the heads of the black-clad figures silently standing on the steep stone steps.    

The outside world holds greater appeal anyway.  This particular stretch before me is as nice as anything I've seen in Japan, all thatch roofs beneath a colorful zenith of maple.  It is exactly the type of landscape that I seek out on my longer walks, and it is a mere 20 minutes from home.  I slow my step to relish it, and the delight moves with me as I continue through the semi-rural suburbs of Sagano, past Daikaku-ji and to the shores of a Hirosawa pond, now filled with water as is normal for the season.

But the modern centuries eventually intrude as I follow a canal system due south to the built-up banks of the upper Katsura-gawa.  This is all familiar ground, so I see no reason to linger, though I do take a quick coffee at a new shop whose bright white box of an exterior stands somewhat at odds with the dark wood of the ryokan and tofu restaurants surrounding it.  Still, it is respectful in its simplicity.  More importantly, the quality of its product is quickly acquiring an international reputation, a fact made obvious by the dozen or so Asian tourists in the queue.

Thus fueled, I continue pushing south, over the bridge of Togetsukyo  and around the bend that traces the Arashiyama foothills.  Matsuo-Taisha marks the next directional change, east now, but not for long, as I quickly reach the quiet semi-urban shrine of Umenomiya.   That feels right for today.  Above, clouds have invaded what had earlier been an empty sky, and they now threaten rain.  Below, my feet tell me that my 12 km have been just enough, and are ready to mark off only a few more steps until the clock crosses noon. 


On the turntable:  "Maximum Rock 'n' Roll, Best of '83"
On the nighttable:  Micheal Scott Moore, "Sweetness and Blood"

Hang your Head no More...

On January 23, 1905,  three men entered an inn in what is now Higashi Yoshino-cho and sold the carcass of a male wolf to an American traveler.  It would prove to be the last animal of its kind.

I'd come across this tale in Brett L. Walker's The Lost Wolves of Japan.  I first read it two summers ago, as I led a group of Singaporeans through the snow covered high peaks of Hokkaido.  It was a fitting location for my reading, for it was there that a Ohio rancher offered his expertise on raising livestock, and one of his teachings was the importance of exterminating the local wolf population with extreme prejudice.   As I penetrated deeper into the Hokkaido hills I similarly penetrated into the heart of the book,  an exploration of how the Japanese went from a culture that saw the natural world as a sacred land of the gods (including most definitively the wolf), to a society who quickly and widely accepted the western view that this same natural world was a bountiful font ripe for exploitation.  Within a single generation the howls of the wolves were silenced forever.

I eventually passed the book on to my friend Wes, who readily agreed that we visit the site where the last wolf has been memorialized in a bronze statue alongside a narrow stretch of river.  But our mission wouldn't begin there.  In the vicinity were a pair of peaks that find themselves on the bucket list of many Japanese mountaineers, the Kinki 100 famous mountains.  There were a handful of other, more attractive mountains closer by, but as they were all over 1400 meters and covered in snow, we opted to approach two that were half that height.

So it was that we found ourselves walking up a steep pitch in a light rain.  The day was reasonably warm, the warmth increasing as we pressed back against the stubborn might of gravity.  The Dainichi Nyorai statue we passed midway betrayed no emotion as we went by; nor for that matter did the lone hiker we saw that day.  And that's about all we saw, as this Horizaka-san was socked in, and a metallic map on the top taunted us with its display of what we couldn't see, including Mt. Fuji far far to the east.  There were however a couple of corrugated tin lean-to's for those staying overnight.  Soft mats and bottles of water were provided either for those stuck on the mountain unintentionally, or for the yamabushi who saw this mount as a playground.   We descended along one of their trails, wild and slick as it shot us downward, now allied to that same gravity that had bullied us earlier. 

After a quick refuel at a roadside Chinese joint, we drove part way up the flank of Shirai-zan, bisecting rice paddies bordered in stone, until a gate prevented my car from going any further.   The mountain's name translates as 'White Boar,' which I'd love to believe refers to some mythological beast.  More likely it is simply the covering of snow during the winter months.  Not this day however, though it could have been a welcome method of covering up the evidence of man's abuse of the natural world which has spiraled out of control since that Ohioan stepped off a ship in Hokkaido over a century ago.   Whereas the peak earlier today had been for the holymen, this one was for the villagers.  And the condition in which they'd left it could only be described as blasphemous.  There had once been major forestry here, and though no recent cuts were to be seen, hundreds of trees spilled down the hillsides dead where they lay.  A concrete road had once brought the loggers in, passing a farm now similarly abandoned.  Ours wasn't the toughest of hikes, as the trail meandered in and out and above a few ravines.  Except for a trio of giants said to be a millennium old, all was new growth cedar, sodden pollen pouring from their trunks in the form of white foam, perhaps in biochemical confusion on a day far too warm for January.  We found the peak just beyond a junked scooter that had somehow made its way up to 800 meters.  The rain and the devastated landscape did little to inspire a long visit here.  It wasn't too long before we were back at my car.

Our drive to the wolf took longer than our two climbs had.  Along the way I kicked myself for not having prepared an appropriate soundtrack, which would have included the Dead's 'Dire Wolf,' Los Lobo's classic, "How will the Wolf Survive?,'  X's 'Hungry Wolf,' and of course the obligatory 'Hungry Like the Wolf.'   Plus copious amounts of that old bluesman.  But I was forced to settle for the criminally underrated Wolfgang Press, and a track or two by Herr Mozart. Along the way, Wes pointed out peaks he'd scaled, many climbing out of the smallest of hamlets.  These grew further and further apart until we found ourselves moving beside a valley quickly growing dark.

Then the wolf appeared.  It stood still and proud in the shadow of the hillside, its mouth eternally open in an expression of either defiance or surprise.  Wes looked around at the hills that these proud creatures had once proudly roamed.  Both he and I share in that spirit I suppose, having logged countless hours of our own moving along the same trails, though through what is now no longer the same landscape.  

If the nature of the wolf is perhaps within us, then so too is its curse.  And as if bewitched, we yet again took a series of wrong turns, though this time we were protected from the chill by the steel body of my car.   And now as the fog pressed in and the darkness thickened, the forest reminded us that, touched by the hand of man or no, it was still most definitely wild, and had teeth. 


On the turntable:  "Buddha Chillout Lounge"

Fuji Sea to Summit, Day 3: Stone

I could barely open my eyes, which was a surprise since they'd rarely closed all night.  I had slept in one of Japan's notoriously overcrowded mountain huts, forced to share a futon with a friendly man from Kyoto who had told me at dinner that he was a student of Sekishu-ryu, an old style of the tea ceremony usually reserved for the samurai.  The futon was wedged between a small area enclosed by 2x4's, which were about 5 cm too short for me.  I could extend my legs slightly into the next chamber, but as we were all sleeping head-to-foot, occasionally someone on the other side would give my feet a good kick.  So I was forced to curl on my side in the fetal position, but within ten minutes the sembe-buton (thin as a rice cracker) would bring about an ache in the hips.  I'd find relief by getting up and walking to the end of the corridor and looking down at the lights of Gotemba far far below.  The rains had finally cleared. 

And the early morning was gorgeous.  The sun was coming through a thin veil of fog that had gotten itself hung up on the sharp edge of the volcanic cone.  The sky went black to violet to blue in what felt like minutes, nothing between it and us at this altitude.  Low vegetation glowed gold in the new light, brilliant against the deep black of the wet volcanic rock from which it stubbornly burst.  There was a lot more vegetation here on the Fuji's southern slope, far more than I remembered from my previous clamber up the Yoshida trail on the opposite side.  

Our party moved upward, ever so slowly. Nishikawa-san told us that he wanted to keep the pace slow so as to keep us from sweating in the cold of morning.  From the 6th Station it normally takes 3 1/2 hours to the top, but our group took ninety minutes longer.  As it was, I never once felt out of breath, never felt like I was laboring at all.  The physical difficulties of the previous day had vanished with the rains. A few people mentioned symptoms of a mild altitude sickness, but as for me,  I was simply out for a stroll, up Japan's highest mountain. 

We were instructed to greet other hikers with a hearty, "Yo Mairi!"  or "Happy pilgrimage".  Most who were greeted this way seemed puzzled, and after they heard the words come from my mouth, they'd mistakenly repeat what they'd heard as "Good Morning!"   Due to the early hour, most we encountered were returning from a night spent in one of the huts.  All looked exhausted and had no doubt faced worse weather than we had.  But the reward was in the views, stretching from the glittering glass of Yokohama and Tokyo to the north, and well past Shizuoka to the south.  The entire length of the Izu peninsula was visible below, pointing its knobby finger out toward the land of my birth. Around the peninsula, the sea was a slightly different color, due to the extreme depth of Suruga Bay, one of the deepest in the world.  At each hut we'd stop awhile to take in the view growing ever more panoramic.  One of my companions joked that a climber usually looks for views of Fuji while hiking, but today, Fuji offered views of everything else.  

We also made a few of the usual stops at some of the spiritually important sites on the mountain -- little clefts in the rocks stuffed with coins or other offerings, or the odd statue tucked into a fold in the lava.  At the Ninth Station we stopped to offer kaji to the staff there, one a woman who looked almost Tibetan with her tanned face and long unkept hair.   Beyond this, the horagai began to bellow, and Shunken-Sensei started us in a round of "Sange sange" which we kept up all the way to the summit.  Looking up, I could see a number of heads looking down, wondering at this wave of sound rolling up toward them.  

Fujinomiya Shrine was under major reconstruction, so we walked further around the crater for our goma ceremony.   Before a small gathering of decapitated stone statues, the yamabushi sat in a row, while Shunken-Sensei led the chants as he did a variety of things with his hands, before tossing items into the fire burning before him.  The chanting sounded almost Tibetan to me, and it was at that moment that I realized that I was sitting atop a landmass not only incredibly high, but one incredibly old.  The atmosphere was timeless, a sense of being on the top of the world here.  No vegetation, no life, but a feeling of place very very ancient.  Just as the chanting finished a plane flew over, a bird of war, bringing with it a bit of irony since we'd just been chanting for world peace.

Nowhere to go but up.  A handful of us pushed up the pile of ash that had built up to form the true summit.  In the shadow of the abandoned weather station was a tall man-made stele that marked the peak.  We walked past a group of young climbers flashing peace signs for photographs to climb up a crest of volcanic rock that stood a few meters higher.  Above this was nothing more. 

Nowhere to go but down.  We descended via the Gotemba route, following in my own footsteps from 1995.  This is one of the least used of Fuji's paths and it showed.  Most of the huts we passed were mere ruins of weathered wood, though they had probably been in use on my previous descent.  Tall piles of rocks had been piled before their front doors, a defiant means of preventing free accommodation.  No real surprise here as the majority of the staff of mountain huts in Japan are blatantly mean-spirited.  Shinier new huts composed of a stronger building material stood not far off in the dust.  In front of one, a young woman clad in fleece threw wood and paper upon a fire in some sort of goma of her own.

Below the Seventh Station, the trail became a straight track of loose earth,  of a steepness that pulled the body forward.  Some of the older members of our group had an uncomfortable look on their faces, but the majority of us laughed as our footfalls increased in tempo and were soon in full cantor.  I did a few small jumps as if I were skiing moguls, my feet sliding sideways across the ashen powder.  

Our trail continued past the pimple on Fuji's eastern flank: Hōei-zan, a volcanic vent that had blown open in the mountain's most recent eruption in 1707.  My nose was running slightly from all the ash being kicked up, and as the clouds closed in on us, the world became dim and grey.  

Then, just above us at a junction came the fuzzy outline of a yamabushi, dully silhouetted against the mist, hands clasped in prayer before her.  It was the calm woman who had showed up yesterday, yet had opted out of the ascent itself.  I felt relieved, knowing that just beyond her was the ephemeral world of buses and beers and baths.  But the sight of this figure standing on the edge of the slope was a vision of timelessness, of mountains waltzing across the eons, and the sense of awe that continues to pull us into the dance.


On the turntable:  Freddie Hubbard, "The Blue Note Years"
On the nighttable:  Jordan Sand, "Tokyo Vernacular"

Fuji Sea to Summit, Day 2: Soil

Nishikawa-san looked exhausted.  He had only gotten four hours of sleep over the last two nights, busy in wearing two hats, that of the organizer and guide of this event, and as a local yamabushi.  The true leader today was supposed to have been Hatakehori-sensei, whose study of this Murayama Kōdō and subsequent book had led to this event being organized three years before.  While Sensei was ostensibly the leader of this Fuji Mine Iri Shūgyō climb, his back had been acting up so he had been forced to bow out.  This left poor Nishikawa-san to do the heavy lifting. 

But he knew the route well, having worked quite hard to restore signage and explanatory signs in order to resuscitate this, the oldest of Fuji's hiking paths, with roots going back to the Heian period.  And his efforts seemed to be paying off.  With Hatakehori as the brains, and Nishikawa as the muscle, Shogo-in's Shunken-Sensei was the heart.  A surprisingly young man for such a high position, he felt that it was important to restore the yamabushi to their rightful relationship with the mountain, as the yamabushi were the only ones who had climbed the peak in the old days.  Fuji's recent addition to the World Heritage list had been awarded for the mountain's cultural importance, and it was the yamabushi who had crafted that culture in the first place.  This particular event appeared to be effective PR, as the crowds who came out to be blessed increased year to year.

Unlike Nishikawa-san, I had slept quite well, a surprise since I was sharing a large open room with close to twenty snoring men.  Upon arrival the previous evening, I smiled when I found myself back at Jumbo, in whose courtyard I had taken a brief catnap last November.  When the lights came on at 4 a.m., I snuck down to a lukewarm bath for a quick dip, then grabbed a restorative coffee from the machine out front.  This would have to keep me until breakfast four hours further on. 

Our numbers were half what they had been the day before, as most had taken the one-day option. Headlamps attached, we remaining twenty immediately entered the forest, leaving behind the camera toting passersby who the previous day had been quick to snap a photo of our procession with their phones, a device that serves as physical manifestation of the old proverb "ichigo ichie." These days, not a single moment of life is beyond capture.

Due to the early hour the great horagai conches were silent, and the only sounds to be heard was the crackling of the tall electrical towers at the edge of the village. As the land sloped upward, we moved into the gullies carved out by a thousand years of human feet.  As this trail had been somewhat dormant over the last century, the more recent carving had been undertaken by water, eventually making for a rougher,  more difficult passage. To avoid this, a newer trail had been tramped into the berm above, and as we walked it I looked down into the black earth of the gully, hearing the voice of Sting in my head repeating again and again that we "work the black seam together."

This new trail was well kept, and Nishikawa-san continually stopped to point out sections of more recent work that he had been personally involved in, most of these for the prevention of erosion.  The Japanese are fantastic at building trails, but not always so good at their upkeep, the result being that they are left alone to erode and wash away.  Nishikawa also spent a good deal of time pointing at certain rocks and strata.  Any discussion of Fuji inevitably involves geology.  

There was an obvious absence of fauna, but the flora was magnificent: great swatches of ferns erupting upward as one; the bright green of moss softening the tone of the black, hard, volcanic rock.  In a demonstration of the irony of nature, the most fertile stretches of moss were found just above the Nyonindō women's hall, which had once served as the upper limits that that gender could proceed.  All that was left here now was a small clearing where the hall had once stood, the trees before it purposefully kept low so as to offer a view of the sacred peak.  

Somewhere around lunchtime, the rains began, which didn't cease until the following morning. This dense forest offered some respite, but after an hour or so my energy began to wane.  We were attempting a 2000 meter elevation gain, which Hatakehori-san had claimed is the most possible in any single day climb anywhere in Japan.  (Though I silently and respectfully disagreed, as I had ascended over 2300 meters when I had hiked Fuji back in 1995.)  But more than the climb, it was the conditions that were taxing.  When given the option, nine of our group had opted to quit early and walk up a perpendicular road to a bus stop.  One of these was a yamabushi would had been suffering terrible blisters due to attempting the ascent in waraji sandals bound in plastic string rather than the traditional straw.  How foolish, I thought, not to look after yourself and allow a macho sense of pride to overshadow self-preservation.  As someone who guides in the mountains, I am quite unforgiving of this type of folly, which puts not only oneself but others at risk.

The rest of us carried on.  One man came around and offered us sweets, an act that is almost a Japanese cultural trait by now:  When the going gets tough, the candy comes out.  Perhaps the sugar had fueled a certain giddiness amongst the yamabushi, who would happily clamored up ropes, or run up the steeper embankments.  If one of them performed an act in a particularly cool and dexterous manner, he'd be told by the others that he "looks like En," refering to En-no-Gyoja, founder of the Shugendō sect in the 7th Century.     

The rest of us weren't feeling so spry.  To spur us on, Shunken-sensei started up the call-and-response chant familiar to all sects of Shungendō.  His voice was powerful, touched with a resonance that hinted at a beautiful singing voice.  But his melodic calls of "Sange sange!" began eventually to sound like "Sunday, Sunday,"  and coupled with the rain became to me "Gloomy Sunday,"  and we all know what that leads to.   My mood bottomed out during one steep section of trail that had been partially blocked by dozens of fallen trees, which required a lot of physically-taxing over and under, my backpack often snagging these trunks to bring down a sudden cascade of rain.  As I looked at the Montbell pack of the guy in front of me, with its brand name of "Zero Point," I thought, "Yep, there is no real point in this, is there?" 

But the wet fecund forest itself offered resurrection, as did the broad meadow filled with wildflowers.  Here and there too were little Jizo statues poking their heads out from the undergrowth to spur us on.  At the height of the early Meiji period anti-Buddhist backlash, all of the little figures on the mountain had been decapitated.  Nishikawa-san told us that written records gave the numbers of statues that had once been along the trail, and he personally had spent many an afternoon poking through the brush, trying to find their little bodies.  Many still remain missing.  He also told us a humorous anecdote about how one- and ten-yen offerings tend to stay in front of the statues, but that one-hundred yen coins are usually carried off.  

After twelve full hours, we finally arrived at the 6th Station Hōei mountain hut, our digs for the night.  Wet layers thus removed, the beer began to flow, and soon a party-like atmosphere overtook the hut.  A couple of new yamabushi turned up, including one middle-aged woman who carried a demeanor of calm solidity.  The monks all drank and dined together, but one of them came over to our small table of four, and talked a great deal about the sect.  It was a pleasant night, and despite the 10 km and 2000 meters of constant up, my legs felt fine enough to sit cross-legged at the table.  But bedtime came quite soon...


On the turntable:  "The Rough Guide to Nigeria and Ghana"

Fuji Sea to Summit, Day 1: Asphalt

Left leg bent at the knee, I leaned out over the abyss.  Beneath, all was calm and cold, but should the dry rocks begin to heat up and liquify, more was at stake than my mere toppling forward and down.  It would mean the evacuation of the 750,000 people who live and work at the foot of this colossal mountain. 

The road here began two days before.  I had met an assembled group of 40 souls at Fuji City's Kinomoto Shrine, who would follow nine yamabushi up to the summit from the shores of nearby Suruga Bay.   The leader led us to those waters on horseback, beneath the shade of pines bent from decades of winters, then up and over a concrete embankment and onto the stone-laden beach of Tago-no-ura.  Here the yamabushi stripped down to their fundoshi and immersed themselves to their waists, hands clasped before them in prayer.  I was playfully invited to join them, but merely rolled my pant-legs as high as they would go and walked into the sea.  The water wasn't very cold, but as each wave struck my legs it would splash upward, until I found myself quite wet anyway.  The chanting finished, the yamabushi lowered themselves up to their necks in the water, as a passing fishing boat rolled its wake toward them.  Peering up from over the strand of pines behind, the great mountain made no comment.  

Before leaving the beach, I picked up a smooth stone and put it into my pack, intending to place it atop Fuji's peak.  We moved along the concrete embankment, sections of which were being shored up in order to protect the homes here from future tsunamis. We weaved between these homes, arriving eventually at a Fujizuka that mimicked the mountain rising directly behind this man-made summit.  

The yamabushi chanted to both, before turning to bless the locals standing nearby.  Known as kaji, these rituals involved the head yamabushi stepping over children who were sprawled atop a tarp covering the ground.  (Ironic how they were not allowed to lie directly atop the dirt beneath, considering that the entire belief system of the yamabushi and the Shugendō sect is about finding mindfulness and enlightenment within nature.) The kids looked at the yamabushi with a mixture of fascination and horror, and I could imagine that in the old days, parents had threatened naughty children with being snatched by these mountain monks if they misbehaved. The adults lined up next, and to the collective accompanying chants, the head priest rubbed his staff twice down their backs before laying it along the length of the spine and giving it a gentle push. 

As we made our way through the city, the kaji was repeated at least a half dozen more times, occasionally at shrines, but more often along one of the city's main streets.  Traditionally, the yamabushi have come from the ranks of the ordinary folk in Japan, and in these rituals, this connection was still apparent.  As the monks went through their routine, the rest of us chanted the Heart Sutra along with them, or received tea and snacks as settai.  As I was the only foreign participant, I received only slightly less attention than the sight of a yamabushi proudly riding through town on horseback.  At every stop, someone would come over to get my story.  

If I had been honest, I would have mentioned sore feet and a restless mind.  When I do my own 'road work' I will rely on the iPod to get me through all the monotonous industry and traffic pushing in too closely.  Today, I heard only the rhythm of feet, the jingling of bells.  The pace of the group was much slower than what I would have done, and my knees ached from a stride half of what it should be, which meant of course that I took twice the number of steps.  Alone, I probably would have covered the 20km by 1 pm.  As a group, we finished after 6. 

We spent the better part of the morning weaving our way through Fuji City.  If you've ever taken the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, you know Fuji City.  It's the place that ruins any decent photographs of the mountain itself, a place filled with ugly apartment blocks and tall smokestacks striped red and white. At some point we crossed the Tokaidō again, turning right and directing ourselves straight toward the mountain, a trajectory that we'd hold for the next two days.  Along the way, we made a short stop at a lesser Sengen shrine on the edge of town (Sengen shrines being dedicated to the Goddess of Fuji). Here I stood in the heat of midday, listening to the prayers harmonize with the voices of late season cicada, chanted by a very old priest with a very limber back.

As the day wore on, we moved beyond the suburbs and into a series of smaller villages surrounded by wide tea plantations, walking single file, our party being a few legs shy of being a centipede.  Our last prayer stop for the day was at Jirocho-cho, named for the famous late Edo period yakuza Shimizu no Jirocho, who had been active in this area.  The subject of over 100 films, this Japanese Robin Hood eventually went on to become a police officer for the new Meiji government, and allegedly served as a bodyguard for the equally legendary Yamaoka Tesshū.

Full up on watermelon and boiled peanuts, we climbed through patches of forest that served as the borders of rice fields.  At the corner of one field, was a small shrine that looked like a thatch cabin, above which hung tall poles of bamboo, the lair of the water god, greatly honored in this landscape of steep lava-carved slopes which pose tricky challenges to irrigation.  

And finally then to Maruyama Sengen Jinja, as both the sun and the rain began to fall.  I had visited this shrine during my circumambulation of Fuji last autumn, and had been awed by its proud trees and beautiful old statues.  There were a handful in a lesser hall that I hadn't seen, exposed now to hear the final chants of the day... 


On the turntable:  "Only 2 Degrees of Separation"
On the nighttable:  Stephen Mansfield, "Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History"

Shikoku... Four Years (and a day) Later

...I awake with the headache I expected.  It never fails with these smoking rooms.  I'm out the door quickly, the sun not yet above the high mountain walls.  Heading south I find a lone convenience store, beside a Montbell shop, the latter a testament to how lucrative the rafting is in this area.  I buy my coffee, listening to a young know-it-all with an earring tell a story to impress the young girl who hands me back my change.  A third woman, in her 50's moves her mop as if she's heard this kind of thing countless times.

A bit later in the morning now, I stop for a second coffee at a michi-no-eki.  A man talks through a bullhorn to a group of bicyclists who are kitted out in spandex.  I pass more of their machines over the next ten minutes, happy that I'll be gone before the race begins.  Miles and miles earlier, I'd passed a lone bicycle pilgrim, racing only against whatever he's brought on pilgrimage with him.  That's where I'd put my money. 

A valley or two later, I begin to recognize certain things, and at one bend in the river, I find the village where I helped Yayoi and Seiichi work on their house five years before.  I park beside the school where I had once slept and walk up the hill toward their house.  I can't find it immediately, and as the houses here are built pretty close, I decide not to panic the locals with the sight of a lone foreigner wandering around.

Not ten minutes later I arrive at my destination, the home of my friend Blaine.  He and I have been in contact for a number of years via our respective blogs, but this was the first time we'd met in the flesh.  We chat for a while, gather some supplies, then drive further west.  He drives these twisty, narrow mountains roads with a special ease, and I, a bit cautious, have trouble keeping up.  I shouldn't be surprised at this familiarity, considering the remote and unknown places he's introduced me to on his blog.

We wind up at the trailhead for Ishizuchi-san, where I'll leave my car for the night.  We've left his own below, near where we will stay.  Earlier in the day, I was telling him that I'd never been troubled by horseflies, but as we transfer gear to my car, we were swarmed by a plague of the little bastards, one of which bites me on the head nearly immediately.  Consider myself acquainted.  I have a further moment of frustration when I realize that I've left my socks down the mountain.  Luckily, the hut had some for sale.  Off we go.

 I've heard enough things over the years to be somewhat wary of Ishizuchi-san, but the trail to the peak is surprisingly mild considering.  I might have changed my tune had we taken the infamous chain route on the final stretch, but the recent rains and damp conditions call for prudence.  Along that safer trail, we meet with a trio of yamabushi, leading a group of schoolkids to the summit.  One yamabushi has brought his own son, the pair of them dressed identically in their shugendo garb.  I'm saddened slightly by the fact that this too is something I can never share with my daughter.

The peak is busy, but we find some quiet behind the shrine.  The rain breaks out hard now, having threatened through the day.  We move over to the hut for lunch.  Another thing I knew about Blaine from his blog was his love of cooking, and it is to my delight that he has brought along some of the pork that he'd smoked for 11 hours the previous day. 

Thus sated, we move onward the final few dozen meters over to Tengu-dake, the true summit of Ishizuchi-san.  It is a knife-edge ridge, with a sheer and high drop just to our left.  Blaine strides confidently across, but I've pressed myself as far to the right as I can, moving slowly over the wet rocks.  We sit on the summit awhile, as the clouds part and offer glimpses of a view.  When they close in again, we figure we've gotten all that we're gonna get.  Midway back, it begins to pour.  This route is frightening enough in the best conditions, but the heavy rain makes the footing unsure, and I hug certain rocks, using my arms to pull myself upward.  Back to the safety of the hut, we wait out the rain.

When it clears, we head downward , along a different route toward where we'd left Blaine's car.  It is a gentle, lateral traverse along the face of the mountain, the sasa grass brushing our legs as we go.  Blaine is in front, and startles a couple times at snakes on the path.  We cross a few waterfalls, the trail falling away at our feet as we do.  Wooden bridges have been built here and there, but most are in pretty bad shape.  This trail is obviously not used much.  At its halfway point, we sit at a well-stocked mountain hut, listening to the thunder playing over the peak upon which we'd just sat not a hour before.  We've chosen out timing well. 

The trail begins to descend quickly now as it enters forest.  There are obstacles aplenty, in the form of rock slides and massive fallen trees.  Finally we arrive at the river, and the Omogo Valley.  I like the name, like a place named after an Indian tribe in the American South.  We follow the river north, along a series of wooden ladders built where the land has fallen away.  It brings us to a boulder the size of a three story house, which offers the perfect perch from which to launch one's self into the perfect swimming hole below.  If only it were an hour earlier.

But it isn't.  The flies too are getting to be a bother, biting often and leaving itchy welts that'll last a week.  So we walk back downstream until coming to our inn.  I wonder how much business they do as the valley looks like it doesn't get much traffic anymore.  It is a basic, but comfortable place.  The beer, baths, and dinner work their usual post-hike magic.  Then the sound of the river outside my window quickly brings sleep...

...we leave early, having breakfast back at the mountain hut near my car.  We drive the short way to the trailhead, passing along the way a runner absolutely besieged by flies.  We're luckier, out of the trees, moving along the sasa-lined trails to the twin peaks of Kamegamori.  The day is relatively clear, but the views are closer in.  Somehow it is enough.  I'd like to see the sea from here, but that can wait for next time.  Perhaps I'll come back and walk the ridges along all the high peaks of Shikoku.  Perhaps.

The drive out is a long one, alongside an elongated lake.  I marvel at what life must be like out here in the few small hamlets we pass.  Finally, we find the highway, and drive off in opposite directions, waving each other into our respective futures. 

I head due north, toward the sea.  My eyes seek out and find places that bring memory from my pilgrimage, memories good and bad.  I hope to eat lunch at the small seaside shop with the cute owner and the TV that played "Baghdad Cafe."  But I can't find it.  Probably further west.

For the next hour, I cross the necklace of bridges leading to Onomichi, then turn left.  A thunderstorm washes the dust of Shikoku off my car as it crosses into Hiroshima...   


 On the turntable: "Unwired From Around the World"

'Round Shikoku Day 29

I awoke in a pissy mood for some reason. This wasn’t helped when, stepping down from ringing Temple 57’s bell, I was nearly run down by a car henro who insisted on pulling right up to the nokyo-jo, rather than park in the designated lot just below.

The climb up to Temple 58 helped to improve my mood, walking through the trees on a clear morning. We found a small gazebo beside a pond where we could stash our bags, grateful not to have to lug them the last 500m up a narrow flight of stairs. It was quite atmospheric, with a few old buildings around a shady courtyard. The Hondo itself was gorgeous, with a curved multi-level roof. Beside it, just out of view, was a massive box that looked like a 70’s film conception of a futuristic house, all right angles with obligatory glassed-in room hanging over into space. There was a sign nearby with a picture of the same structure, along with some pithy expression about living the spiritual life. I agreed with them all, but still found it a justification for spending temple donations on someone’s personal folly. The monk in the nokyo-jo was friendly, and addressed me in English. Beside him was a poster announcing temple events—children’s karate classes, Buddhist symposiums. This place seems closely connected to its danka and looks like it has an eye on the future indeed.

I was looking forward to the next temple, Kokubunji, since the previous two had been among my favorites. I was let down by the squat concrete structure in the treeless gravel yard. When I made a joke to the nokyo woman, she looked as if I just slapped her. The bus henro arriving at that point chose to ignore my greeting, and my mood slid downhill yet again. Not even the sight of a shop selling a puzzling combo of bagels and handmade guitars could resuscitate it.

The rest of the afternoon was through a landscape of blurry features, the same scenes of narrow streets with cars driving too fast. Schoolkids biking home greeted me not with the usual, “Harro!,” that foreigners are so accustomed to, but with the puzzling, “Goodbye!” as if they wanted me the hell out of town. The Henro path followed the expressway over a series of hills that served no apparent purpose but to get that extra little bit of concrete onto the ground.

The scenery at sunset did inspire, of high mountains fading away for the day. One of these was the mysterious Ishizuchi, and another hid the next temple, #60. We arrived at Ikiki Jizo, which supposedly had Tsuyado. I got there first and rang the bell. I asked the priest about it, and he merely crossed his arms and said ‘No!” in English. I followed up with a couple of questions about alternatives, but he continued with the crossed arm gesture, continued with the ‘No.” I finally said, “Look, I’m talking to you in Japanese, please speak Japanese.” And he did, saying nothing more than “Nai,” without any trace of explanations or politeness. I finally lost my temper, shooting him an incredibly angry look and a “Thanks for your indelible kindness.” Miki came up just then, trying in her usual calm, mild way. Though his language softened, his stubborn resolve didn’t. I went away furious. The animosity and hostility I’d sensed in the locals had been put directly out there by this man, a priest in charge of one of the temples associated with the pilgrimage. For weeks I’d been chewing on the idea of the Henro being dead, and this man had blood on his hands.

It turned out to be for the best. Well after dark, we eventually found lodging between Temple 63 and 63, to which we’d hitch. They’d mind our bags as we went over the mountain to temple 60, which we’d then pick up the next day. The universe certainly is interesting in the way it spins. It took only a few minutes to get a lift with a man who raced motorcycles for a living. In courting death, he’d gotten an association with it. Before races, he claimed he could tell which rider would die by the look on his face. He also told a story about his trip up Ishizuchi. He’d met three figures in white, and assuming they were henro, took a photo with them. Later, the only thing he saw in the photo besides himself was three glowing orbs. A shaman later told him that it was the god of the mountain.

I was interested in hearing more, but we soon arrived at our inn. They were full, but we were given a small apartment over a butcher’s shop just around the corner. Certainly ironic, considering the traditional Henro prohibition against meat. I went to bed still smarting over my encounter with the priest. It was a shame to both start and end a day in a foul mood. Besides which, this was probably the most exhausted I’d felt on any given day. Sleep came easily…

On the turntable: Dead Can Dance, Memento"
On the nighttable: Gary Snyder and Tom Killion, "The High Sierra of California"

'Round Shikoku Day 3

I awoke sometime before six and went outside to sit and look east to where the sun was pulling itself over the pull-up bar that is the horizon. It had been a long night, a siege against cockroaches and mosquitoes. I sat in the peace of morning, the sky a clash of blue and gray that foretold rain. 50CC Henro came out and as the first act of the day, lit one up. A severe bout of coughing followed, guaranteed to awaken anyone still sleeping in the huts behind him. Yep, that first one always tastes best. Judging on last night's performance, he'll go through a dozen more before setting off on his little scooter. He was a good guy, good-natured but for the perpetual butt in his mouth and his little transistor radio, constantly switched on. This latter habit, in conjunction with the high back rest he'd welded on his bike, reminded me of 'Quadrophenia.' A Real Who-nro.

His roommate was a soft-spoken young guy who was doing the 88 Temple in reverse order by bicycle. We all separated at 7am, by our various modes of transportation. It was a half hour on foot to Temple 11. This beautiful little zen temple was tucked away in the corner of the valley, just below where the trail leads up toward Temple Twelve. It had the quiet, forlorn feel that Miki and I love so much, until a group of car pilgrims came and chose to destroy the quiet with a noisy argument about nokyo, as usual. The priest on the other side of the counter wasn't much better, processing us all with a curt, "Next! Next!" Despite this, his calligraphy was the most beautiful so far.

The trail started steep and got worse. The first section was lined with Jizo, whose form repeated nearly ceaselessly for the next five and a half hours. Apparently many people didn't survive this stretch. Approaching the top of the the first crest, I spotted a young Henro sitting and admiring the scenery. I held up my hand in greeting but didn't speak to him since he was wearing what I thought were earbuds. It dawned on me an hour later that he was deaf. The view from this height was of the valley we'd spent the last two days traversing, now covered by a layer of mist due to the coolness of the air and from the smoke of burning rice husks rising from a dozen farms. The smoke hid the view of the highway, and some of the bigger buildings, creating a view that was almost softly Himalayan.

We spent most of the day on this trail, making our way toward Twelve, along a path that wound up and down as if testing our resolve. Besides the ever-present Jizo, there were also plenty of small signs tied to the branches of trees that offered pithy expressions as a means of urging us on. Like Burma Shave ads for the Buddhistic set. A few small temple halls showed up here and there, eroding slowly into forest. We broke for lunch at one of these, and were soon joined by Shibui Henro, dressed in the full kit. He was an interesting guy, doing the full 88, joined by his father for this first Awa section. I hope we run into him again.

The day took us over three passes, each of them a challenge. After the second tough ascent, the pilgrim turns a corner to see the large figure of Taishi atop a flight of stairs. Very encouraging. From here we dropped and dropped and dropped into the valley, past farms with their stone walls and steps, also looking very Himalayan. The valleys in Shikoku have long held secrets of people looking not to be found. Their villages cling to the hillsides, rarely containing more than a dozen homes.

The trail bottomed out at the base of this valley, where a stream was rushing between boulders. Above it was a sign saying that the next climb was the steepest on the entire pilgrimage, and would take 50 minutes. A woman of around 70 hobbled up then, supported by a pair of walking staffs. When she saw the sign, she literally plopped down in frustration, announcing loudly that she'd eat lunch. She began to talk with us, but after a couple of minutes, began to get strangely aggressive, then abruptly walked off, saying she'd eat lunch elsewhere. We found her awhile later, squatting and eating onigiri in the middle of the trail.

The final ascent was as tough as advertised. My heavy bag and I rested three times along the way. Once, I heard the jingle of a bell and clack of a staff and assumed a henro was on the trail just above me. Reaching the next clearing, I saw merely a lone Jizo on an altar, with a bell above him and a staff at his feet. There was no one else around. It was strange, but then again, I'd already hallucinated three times already today. This happens to me sometimes when I'm fatigued, and the straps of my pack are pressing into the optic nerves in my shoulders. One thing I didn't imagine were all the vipers I saw on the climb, including one that darted across the trail right in front of me, in pursuit of lunch.

We finally reached the temple. Even with our bags, we were two hours quicker than average. I was really feeling this weight for the past two days, but seemed to have found my groove. Walking the final set of stairs, a guy began chatting up Miki, and I heard him complaining to her about how curvy the road had been, the drive taking over an hour. Jesus.

Sitting beside the gate was a woman from Flagstaff. Now living in Himeji, she was doing the Henro after having previously done pilgrimages in Italy and Spain. We also saw the two henro who'd been our comrades in yesterday's parade. We did our rounds, then went up the last 30 minutes to Okuno-in. Not many walk this trail and it showed. It was dark and wildly overgrown, with narrow sections leading over high drops, and large swaths taken out by landslides. Mountain sacred to the Yamabushi always have the same look as this one. A place where dimensions overlap. Halfway up is a large rock face where Taishi beat the giant snake. On the peak itself is a large altar. We sat behind it and drank in the view of the peaks before us. We were at 938m, but these were much higher, including Tsurugi which dwarfed them all. In nearly every valley was a small cluster of homes hanging to the steep mountain faces. They were humbled by the large slabs of rock on their slopes. I had never realized that Shikoku was this wild.

Back again at the temple, we grabbed our gear and moved slowly off the mountain. Miki was using a staff now for the first time, a thick cherry branch that she'd found up at Okuno-in. Despite our quick speed of the morning, we'd lingered through most of the afternoon, and hoped to get down to a rumored campsite before dark. If it was full, we'd have a long, dark walk before meeting road again. Entering a village, a man offered us four mikan. At the far end of his village was Joshin-an, where Emon finally caught up to Taishi. His staff had grown into a tree of unbelievable height. Beyond it, we dropped into an orchard, then down into a small village beside a small river. It was a peaceful place, maybe eight houses, three of them empty. There was also an elementary school. We asked at the lone village store if we could camp there, and the young woman working there told us that we were welcome to sleep across the road at a small covered space that they sometime use for their market. This woman had herself been a henro, but had liked this valley so much that she'd stayed on to help out at the store. Twenty-two, she'd given up on life in the city and is looking for a life of farming. When we first saw her, she was cutting the stems off fresh mikan while listening to sumo on the radio. She offered us sweet potatoes and barley tea as settai, which we enjoyed as much as the conversation.

We eventually set up camp, then went to eat at a pilgrim's rest hut that we'd noticed on our way into the village. It had electricity, allowing us to read and write in our journals. Yet after about an hour, an old man came up out of the dark and grumpily told us that the hut was only for daytime us. Go to bed! At 7:30. It definitely diminished the warmth here. If you make a hospitality area beside your house, and show no hospitality, what was your motivation in the first place?


On the turntable: Supertramp, "Retrospectacle"