Working for the Pharoah: Upper Egypt

 

Trains heading out of major cities never show that city's best face. This train out of Cairo was no exception, paralleling a rubbish-strewn canal.  It wasn't long before rural scenes opened up, rear projection for the next ten hours. Fishermen resting under the palms. Donkeys, squatting farmers. Villages again and again, and the fellaheen in the spaces between.  Fellaheen, a word that always reminds me of Kerouac, but Jack's idea about the "fellaheen feeling about life, that timeless gayety of people not involved in great cultural and civilization issues," didn't necessarily jibe with the hard labors I saw from the window, tending to the endless green. I knew from the map that the Nile was on the left side of the train, but I only saw it for a brief few moments, as we pottered along this fertile strip that she had midwifed.  

 

 

Luxor Temple sat impressively on the banks of the Nile. Napoleon's theft of its obelisk gave birth to Europe's fascination with things Egyptian, was the initial catalyst for all of us coming to stand here and gawp. From this vantage point there was somewhat of a theme park feel, partly due to the fact that it was surrounded completely by the city.  But upon entry, the details began to wow you.  The whole place was a study in the history of architecture, as subsequent dynasties kept adding to the place, the ultimate DIY hand-me-down.  Though they never fail to impress me, I tend to find heiroglyphic art to be like the simple drawings of children, an innocent being coming into maturity.  But these parallel walls served as terrific example the contrast between the high level of carving that the Egyptians could do, with the less skilled Greeks of a millennium later. And it wasn't until later that I found that I'd missed Rimbaud's graffiti altogether, carved here during his rambles. Another problem with group tours, as I like to go beyond the schoolbooks to lateral history, how these places played out in music, literature, cinema.  A reminder to read ahead, seek those details on my own.

 

 

Had I been on my own I'd have been tempted to walk the boulevard flanked by sphinxes, which had recently been unearthed beneath centuries of habitation. But I know that in being over three kilometers long, it would grow rather tedious after a while. Yet Karnak at the far end would have proved sufficient reward.  I was taken with it immediately, for unlike Luxor, it stood alone at the edge of town, backed by the desert.  A place to stumble upon rather than being led to by coaches moving along tidy roads.  Pillar after pillar was ornately decorated, a delight to wander beneath as you explored the labyrinth of her pathways and open courtyards.  The softening of the evening light and the call to prayer completed the mise-en-scene. 

 

The Valley of the Kings across the Nile was of bucket list material, but luckily we got there before the full rush of crowd.  Tut's tomb was of course a must visit, but it was relatively spartan as most of its decorations now rested in the museum in Cairo.  Seti I was the real stunner, the wall paintings alive with color, the most beautiful I saw in Egypt.  We popped into a few other tombs,  including the Tomb of Merenptah, which was real Indiana Jones material.  Most tombs open into multiple side chambers, but this one bore steeply and diagonally toward the center of the earth, its length measure by the sweat and labored breathing of visitors coming back up.  

 

 

There were other visits on the West Bank.  Hatshepsut, whose 1997 massacre never left my mind.  The Valley of the Queens which I loved for its quiet, near absence of visitors.  This must be how the Victorians experienced things, empty but for a few others.  Nefertari's tomb is supposedly the best in Egypt, but has been sadly off-limits for a number of years.  And the Amenhotep III Sun Temple, looking like a film set at the edge of the desert.  

 

 

Sailing the Nile in a convoy of cruise ships.  It was comedic somewhat, like Wacky Racers, each ship honking and jockeying for position.  After things thinned out a bit, it was wonderful to sit and read under the canopy, riverside scenes pulling attention from the page again and again.   There was one lunch out on deck, and a pair of visits to riverside temples. Yet despite the impressiveness of Edfu and Kom Ombo,  I'd have preferred more time just to sit quietly with life on the Nile.   

 

 

Aswan and its Isis Temple island of Philae, her squared windows perfectly framing the adjacent islands, the small craft cutting the most upper waters of the Nile.  (Yet again my attention being pulled from the surroundings of man-made glory to the natural world outside.)  A shopping spree spontaneously opening up on our small water-craft, followed quickly by a slower Felucca cruise.  The design on our sail proved our teenage Nubian crew's affinity for Bob Marley.  But they were no sailors, skilled more in the art of tack.  Again and again we'd race toward the steel wall of a moored cruise ship, to zig away at the last moment. Two boys on surfboards latched themselves to our boat, offering a Frère Jacques serenade for tips.  Kichener Island wasn't much, and how I longed to climb the dunes up to the towering ruins across the water.  The ride back was better, the current pulling us steadily through a lesser cataract, upon whose banks grazed water fowl, under the haunting gaze of the Aga Khan Mausoleum.  The setting sun again perfecting the scene.       

 

 

As expected, Abu Simbel was the jewel of the Nile.  Its grandeur made it easy to forget that it had been relocated here, and I wondered why more Egyptians aren't set designers for films.  It must have been incredible to stumble across such places accidentally, from the back of a horse.  In that spirit, I wish we'd sailed here, jumping another ship the other side of the dam.  I'm glad we didn't undertake the monotonous four-hour drive like the pair of Australian guys I'd had beers with on board a couple of evenings, but there was something absurd about flying down for 20 minutes, visiting for an hour or so, then jetting back.  

 

 

The latter flight eventually led back to Cairo, tracing the green strip of land that marked the Nile.  This aero-technology was a direct result her life-giving waters, which shaped her people, her culture, her civilization, and by extension, Western civilization itself.  

 

On the turntable:  Bob Dylan, "Desire"

 

Working for the Pharoah: North Coast

 

The Corniche of Alexandria reminds one of seafront Havana, all those crumbling, weathered facades of past glory.  This must have been a beautiful city in the colonial days.  But now all I see is the scrum of traffic roaring at their bases, a constant pulse that makes a bane of our waterfront hotel, as it cuts us off from the inviting beaches, betraying our sleep.  The symphonic honk at white vans that slow and stop to add more to innards already swelling with passengers, then the swerve across lanes that serve as mere suggestion. A sticker of Bart Simpson stares at me from one window, mockingly.

Daytime takes us away from this, to the glory of the past, albeit occupied.  The Roman amphitheater is tucked into a small park between newish apartment blocks, shocking white under a flawless blue sky.  Roman heads of stone line one fence.  The catacombs are a short drive away, a cornucopia of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences. Its the first real Egyptian tomb I've seen, but it harkens back to past trips, connects me with familiar context.  A trio of sarcophagi, empty chambers with shelving where the bodies once were, but generally pretty bare.  The same can be said for Pompei's pillar nearby, rising from a patch of earth bare but for a pair of small sphinxes.  (To be fair, a major excavation appears to be going on.). I had wanted to walk between the two sites, figuring that feet would move more quickly than our big bus, but the streets look pretty beat up, a state of dereliction usually seen in war zones.     

 

I think that Alexandria's glory is in her British colonial past, as this city thrived a century ago, a city filled with artists and writers.  I would have loved to have seen Lawrence Durrell's house, where we wrote much of his Alexandria Quartet.  And an overnight, or at least a beer, at the Hotel Cecil, just across the water from the most recent incarnation of the Alexandria Lighthouse, and beside Saad Zaghloul Park, from where Cleopatra's Needles were liberated in order to serve the good people of London and New York.  We do drive past the hotel, which holds pride of place in a rather nice part of town filled with green spaces and cafes, a neighborhood ready-made for a walk. But our itinerary doesn't allow for it, and our noisy hotel is too far away for a stroll at dawn.   

 

 

One thing with organized trips is you don't really get a sense for a town. In Morocco, we made that happen, bailing out on the group midday in order to explore.  Ping-ponging between tourist sites doesn't allow one to feel a place. I never really get a sense of Alexandria; my feet never pace off the length of her city blocks, my nose never fills with her scent.  In our self-exploration, Lai Yong and I
 got some idea of Cairo, but that place seemed to sprawl, and sprawl makes it impossible to befriend a place in a short time.  The same can be said about cities like Seoul or Taipei.
  Where is their heart?

 

 

In the morning, the road toward El-Alamein bisects a massive marsh. Apparently, this is what the Nile did during its annual flood, nurturing crops and creating fishing grounds.  In that spirit, today I spy a number of white-capped fishermen in skiffs, testing the waters in the shadows of massive petroleum factories.

This stretch is known as the North Coast.  Development stretches for dozens of kilometers along the shores of the Mediterranean.  Much of this is already inhabited, but large sections are developing simultaneously, which reminds me of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, a city clean and tidy, but with little scenes of life or humanity. One billboard promises, "Summer season '26 planned here." Which, from the current state of development, is not very lightly. 

 

 

Being a British group, our purpose here is to visit the military cemetery.  I'm breathless at the sheer number of crosses here, a sensation I felt with all the names etched into the granite of the Vietnam memorial in DC.  So many men. And this is just the British.  Other allies are buried elsewhere. Identical crosses fill this narrow little valley, sunk in dry earth, though well-irrigated to bring color, life, into the flowering shrubs randomly spaced between the graves.  Backing the cemetery is a large rubbish tip. It seems an app metaphor for what old politicians and generals do with young men such as these.  We'll later pass the Italian cemetery a few miles out of town. Which got me wondering, of course, where are the Germans?

 

 

The drive back to Cairo cuts across a featureless landscape.  This is real desolation, unlike any desert I've ever seen, and I've traveled in many, lived in a few. With no mountains as waypoints, the emptiness feels infinite. And this is what they were all fighting for. Beside the highway is a scorched block of asphalt, rectangular, the size of a sedan.
 I hate to think of what would happen if you were stranded out here.

 

 

The world begins to take on a hint of green again, then all is pastoral. This is Wadi Natrum.  We detour to St. Macarius, a monastery fortified like a castle, with solid defensive structures 
and self-sufficent agriculture.  The earth-colored rounded structures remind one of Tatooine. I knew of Coptic Christianity, but wasn't aware that they make up 10 percent of Egypt's population.   The head priest leads us around, seemingly at ease with himself, but also quick to scold, a rebuke immediately followed by a warm smile.  I've encountered many such men in my travels, and their radiant calm tempts me into leading a similar self-reflective life spent surrounded by the natural world.   But the outside world inevitably calls me back.  In this particular case, it is in the form of Cairene traffic.   

  

On the turntable:  Kate Bush, "Never for Ever"

 

Working for the Pharaoh: Cairo

 

 

Jetting in through the dust, which I first take to be a sand storm, until realizing that it's Cairo smog.  Whatever the case, it robs me of a desired view of the Gizan pyramids from the air.  We've been on the move since dawn, but before long we come to a complete halt, sitting in horrendous traffic beneath a sign saying,  "Cairo in Motion."  But the humor quickly wears off, as each journey in the city is at triple the map time.  I don't know how the locals can handle it, how they can plan anything.

The traffic also invades my dreams, pouring in through the windows of my first two hotels.  On the third night, seeing that our room overlooks a busy roundabout by only four stories, I immediately request another.  The manager claims that rooms in the back are potentially noisy due to their overhanging an outdoor mall. In any case, the place is fully booked up.  With the white noise of the air con cranked, I do get a decent sleep for the first time in Egypt, plus an apology in the form of a basket of fruit and some cookies in a nice souvenir tin.    

 

 

The Sphinx is much smaller than expected, and surprisingly tamed in a stone pen.  I remember it as being out on its own, free-ranging amongst the sands.  There are relatively few people here at the early hour, as most beeline quickly for the pyramids.  One Korean tourist gets photographed over and over by her friend,  going through an array of Tik-Tok poses such as mimicking the Sphinx's drinking from a straw, or giving its pouty mouth a kiss. 

Amazing to see the pyramids from afar, but closer in they don't slay me in the way that the Taj Mahal did, or the way Nara's Tōdai-ji never fails to.  I look up at the apex of Cheops, wishing that climbing were still allowed, though the blocks are much more massive than I'd thought.  (A theme!). Rather than like the stair-master from hell, it would be all upper-body, a perpetual push-up contest.   An ample consolation prize is following the habitrail passages to the inner chamber, the angles at a slippery 45 degrees.  Back outside again, Lai Yong and I do one clockwise round the perimeter, as the tourist numbers build, most going through their own photographic poses which in timelapse would cumulatively resemble the heiroglyphic poses on the walls of the temples to come.  (There are no hieroglyphs in any of pyramids of Giza.)  The locals don't appear to find any of this offensive, but I do get told off by a guard for photographing a pair of workmen slaving away at the pyramid's base.   

 

The new GEM museum just up the road dazzles, opened just six weeks before.  I somehow wish they'd mocked the Louvre in putting a faux Arc de Triomphe beneath the hanging obelisk out front.  The towering statue of Ramses II in the annex welcomes me back, for it was his exhibition I'd seen at Vancouver Expo in 1986.  We of course immediately head to the top floors for the Tutankhamen exhibition, past large windows overlooking the pyramids out in the sand.  It gives the expected feeling one gets when confronted by a renowned work of art, and things inevitably appear smaller.  The death mask dazzles, and I spend a long moment simply looking, etching it onto memory.  From there we zig-zag down through the terraced exhibits, taken with their age and their beauty, but a personal lack of context and familiarity make things blend after awhile.  Incredible how the mind compresses history, as if ancient Egypt happened over a long weekend.  How to take in 5000 years?  Best to engage a museum in small doses, over multiple visits. All museums should offer lifetime passes.  

Another day, ten days later, we visit the Saqqara, which surprisingly is not spelled like the homonymic beer.  By now, the culture and history have grown more familiar, so I could resonate more with the mastaba tombs, and the symbols within.  Entry to Djoser's Step Pyramid isn't as dramatic as the Great Pyramid, but the sheer drop into the inner chamber was like the lair of a Bond villain.  The real Indiana Jones moment comes at the Mastaba of Ti, spiraling down through the entrance to a low tunnel extending within.  That tomb's real treasures are in a side chamber just below ground level, armies of heiroglyphs popping with color.  As we have a flight that evening, there is no time to visit the nearby Dahshur area, but I am happy to see the Bent Pyramid out in the haze, its pitch narrowing dramatically to resemble a Hersey's kiss.  

 

 A full day in Cairo, the morning cool spent in the labyrinthian old city, popping in and out of Coptic churches.  We reconnect again with the ancients in a plate of koshari, my main takeaway dish from the country.  We then visit the ancients themselves in the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, meandering through the basement maze to go eye-to eye with the twenty mummies there.  I lean in again and again to get a better look at the contours of their faces, the texture of their hair, feeling pity that their eternities are being spent far from where they'd anticipated.  At any moment I expect one to suddenly turn toward me, hissing angrily beneath the glass.  

Out front, we grab a passing taxi for the short ride over to Khan el-Khalili.  In his near incomprehensible English, our driver tells us that he lived a few years in Miami (Florida, not Egypt), and asks if we want to keep him for the day, which we do.  His sense of direction is about as bad as his linguistic skills, but he is nice and friendly and we admire his ambition.  He takes the latter a little too far in claiming we were a note short when paying him at the end.  Lai Yong had counted the bills twice before handing them over, so he possibly dropped one deftly to the floor as he counted them back.  No real harm, getting conned for three bucks. By by this, my last full day in Egypt, I'd come to discover that everyone had some kind of side-hustle.  Not to say that they were duplicitous or sneaky, but that people even in the most honest professions seemed to have some other adjacent means of making money.   

 

 

Khan el-Khalili is the old Muslim bazaar, and Naguib Mahfouz country.  His Cairo trilogy was set here, and we follow a walking course of its fictionalized locations, along narrow lanes crowded with stalls, and ruined lanes lined with debris, perhaps off the ruins of buildings molting above.  A mint tea at his El Fishawy Cafe is de rigueur, albeit growing touristy.  One final detour to Midaq Alley, the title of another of his books.  A shopkeeper at the corner of this little stub of an alley smiles at me as I pass, saying only, "Naguib Mahfouz."  This is one of my favorite memories of Cairo. 

 

 

Another terrific memory is smoking shisha on a terrace overlooking the river. As I partook of the fruit-flavored tobacco, I remember the last time I smoked anything, around a campfire on the banks of the Laotian Mekong on Christmas night in 2009, with a bottle of red taking the edge of the burn.  I hadn't smoked since, nor had any desire too,  and although shisha is more benign, I think I'll leave behind smoking altogether, here, on the backs of the river Nile.   

But the greatest memory is dinner with an old friend, with whom I'd shared dormitory space in pre-handover Hong Kong for a few months in 1997, before we both individually disappeared into China for the summer. In those pre-digital, guidebook as bible days, we kept leaving one another notes at various hostels and cafes across the country, constantly missing one another by days, constantly leap-frogging.  As such it was terrific to catch up on near 30 years of history, with many unasked questions remaining for next time.  His own history proved to be as rambling as my own, yet with more tethers, in the form of far-flung university degrees and extended postings as an expat.  He still gave good story, about being stuck in pandemic Yemen during warlike conditions, and sharing a western diplomat's quip on colonialism as being like a three day bender on rot-gut tequila, followed by a fortnight-long hangover.

 

 

There was a side trip to the north, and of course, a week on the Nile down south.  But for now, some hindsight.  With some countries, my explorations felt so thorough that I see no need to go back.  Egypt is one of these, and to be frank, Cairo traffic has forever curbed any desire to return to that bloated city.  If I were to return, I'd try to arrive by ship in Alexandria to spend a day walking its colonial past (see next post), then fly to Sinai to climb that peninsula's famous mountain.  Good enough for Moses, but I like to think I have a better sense of inner navigation.  And no burning of bushes, or anything else.

 

On the turntable:  The Cure, "Three Imaginary Boys"   

Sunday Papers: Shaun Grant

 

"In my experience, those relying on God's intervention, soon find themselves joining him."

 

On the turntable:  The Thompson Twins, "Here's to Future Days"

 

The origin of the Mackerel Road

 

 

My latest for The Japan Times... 

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2026/01/17/travel/obama-kyoto-travel-history-saba-kaido/

On the turntable: Talking Heads, "Talking Heads"

 

Walking the Iseji

 

A week on the Kumano Kodo Iseji, broken into four parts. Over at Heartland...

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-1%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-the-pilgrimage-begins-at-ise-jingu-shrine/

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-2%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-iconic-stone-steps-of-tsuzurato-magose-toge-passes/ 

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-3%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-owase-and-conquering-the-rugged-yakiyama-toge-pass/

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-4%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-seaside-beauty-from-matsumoto-toge-to-shingu/ 

 

On the turntable:  The Tubes, "Outside Inside"

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

A year in reads: 2025

 

On the turntable:  Toku, "Chemistry of Love"

 

 

Writing Fragments 2025

-A sense of entitlement stems from having unrealistic expectations.

-The real American dream is self determination.

-Some of the dullest moments in life I’ve had at the baggage carousel 

-To jump to such a conclusion, you would need a running start.

-Pizza is an edible conveyance

 

 -Like on a 70s airline, I start smokin’ when the light goes out

 

 

On the turntable:  Thin Lizzy, "Black Rose"

 

Sunday Papers: Robert Evans

 

'Luck is when opportunity meets preparation."

 

On the turntable: Todd Rundgren, "The Complete Bearsville Album Collection"   

 

Sunday Papers: Dalai Lama

 

"Don't try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are." 

 

On the turntable:   The Tubes, "The Best of The Tubes 1981-1987"

 

On the Great Eastern Road

 

 

Thank you to Writers in Kyoto for publishing my piece on walking one of the Tōkaidō's nicer sections... 

https://writersinkyoto.com/2025/11/04/nonfiction/on-the-great-eastern-road/ 

 

On the turntable:  Phish,  "Madison Square Garden, 1998-12-31"

Tracking the Unseen in the Old Capital

 

 

I am lucky to be working with an excellent editor at The Japan Times, but the usual spacial limitations of print often require a piece to be cut down.  Below is the original "director's cut" of my article from a year ago.  The print version can still be found here.

 

Japan has always been a place where the visible and the invisible

coexist.  In the Asian calendar, the middle of the seventh lunar month marks the time when the spirits of the ancestors return.  There always seem to be an abundance of dragonflies at that time, their flitting around suggesting to many the physical manifestation of the ghosts themselves. 

In Kyoto, dragonflies are particularly numerous, a reminder that although the ancient capital is renowned for its 12 centuries of noble dignity and cultural refinement, it was long the center of the Shogun and his warrior culture.   The 14th century Onin Ran was a decade of lawlessness and bloodshed, which ultimately spread to the rest of the country.  Four centuries later, Kyoto was the center of political intrigue and violence that accompanied the implosion of the samurai class, and the growing pains of this new nation now called Japan. 

Some of these spirits resonated more loudly than others.  Sugawara no Michizane was a scholar and politician in the mid-Heian period, before a conflict with the powerful Fujiwara clan got him banished to Kyushu in 901.  He died there two years later, of an allegorical broken heart.  Plague and drought quickly followed.  To appease his spirit, Sugawara was deified as Tenjin-sama, originally a god of sky and storms, before being repackaged into the more benevolent kami of scholarship.  The principle shrine dedicated to this kami is Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangū, which oversees 12,000 smaller affiliate shrines nationwide, at which students can often be seen in prayer.  Kitano Tenmangū also hosts a lively flea market the 25th of every month. 

Not all spirits can be so easily appeased. Shaded in a quiet pass over Mount Ỏe, on Kyoto’s far western outskirts, is a shrine consecrated to one of Japan's top three malevolent yōkai spirits.  Legend has it that in life he was known as Shuten-dōji, leader of a clan of oni ogres who terrorized either this area or around the similarly-named Mount Ỏe to the northwest (though in reality they were probably simply bandits). A large number of women went missing in the old capital, and the famous onmyōdō geomancer Abe no Seimei identified Shuten-dōji as responsible. After being incapacitated by his beloved sake, the oni king’s subsequently decapitated head continued to snap at the five warriors sent by the Emperor to subdue him.  Not wanting to bring the head back into Kyoto, it was buried here in 995, beneath a small mound of gravel at the back of the shrine. The pass was then dubbed Kubizuka, long considered a very haunted place.

A far more bustling pass on Kyoto’s eastern edge hums with the near constant traffic of the old Tōkaidō post road, now paved and called Sanjō-dori.  Historically it was known as Awataguchi, one of the seven gates to the old city.  The execution grounds that once stood here displayed dispatched bodies as a warning to those traveling past, including the corpse of Akechi Mitsuhide, the assassin of Oda Nobunaga. (The aforementioned Kubizuka no doubt served a similar purpose, intimidating travelers on the San-in Kaidō.)  During the Edo period, executions were carried out here three times a year, a large number of them Christians, a practice officially banned in 1612. An estimated 15,000 people were executed before the grounds were abolished in the Meiji period.  However a dissection laboratory was established here in 1872, with autopsies performed on executed men in a building glassed-in on four sides. This practice ceased a year later, leaving the quiet patch of land a cursed site. 

Another set of execution grounds was Rokujo-gawara, on the site of a former 1184 battlefield beside the Kamogawa river.  The executions of political prisoners began long before that, mainly those on the losing side of history.  Ishida Mitsunari was brought here after being found hiding in cave upon his defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and those generals who maintained loyalty to Toyotomi Hideyoshi were brought here after that clan’s ultimate collapse at Osaka Castle fifteen years later.  Perhaps the grounds are more interesting geographically than historically, as a massive collection of graves stretches up the adjacent hillside.  Atop stands both Kiyomizu-dera Temple and its neighbor Jisshu Shrine, where women betrayed by lovers curse them by nailing straw dolls to trees at the hour of the Ox.  Bizarrely, the Kamogawa’s riverside walking path disappears for a few blocks as it passes the old execution grounds, and one wonders if those who once worked at the original Nintendo headquarters above (now the trendy Marufukuro Hotel), were subconsciously supernaturally inspired as they crafted their artistic playing cards, and the fantastic video game characters to come.    

I suppose it is little surprise that the area’s bloody history gave rise to the belief that the well at Rokudo Chinno-ji Temple is a passageway to the underworld.  The temple is named for the six paths of reincarnation in Buddhism, each path representing a different realm.  In the Heian period, it was said that Ono no Takamura climbed down the well at night to judge the souls of the newly dead. His near contemporary, Murasaki Shikibu, supposedly descended to hell from here, as atonement for writing her lustful book, The Tale of Genji.   

A more benign legend was born around the corner at Minatoya Yurei Kosodate-Ame Honpo, Japan’s oldest candy shop. For seven consecutive nights, a pale woman came to the shop to buy one mon’s worth of millet jelly. Not having that sum, the woman traded her haori jacket, which was later recognized by a neighbor as that belonging to his recently deceased daughter.  Digging up her grave, they found a crying baby feeding on the candy.  The baby was allegedly adopted at Rokudō-Chin’nōji Temple and became a monk. The visitor can try this same candy, unchanged since the shop opened in 1599.  

Kyoto’s most popular spooky sites are surely the blood stained ceilings of a handful of temples, notably, Genko-an, Hosen-in, Yogen-in, and Shoden-ji.  The Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 stands as the most influential battle in Japanese history.  A narrow pass threads through the mountains between Sekigahara and Kyoto, and whoever controlled the capital controlled the Emperor.  Tokugawa Ieyasu placed 1800 men at Fushimi Momoyama Castle in order to slow Ishida Mitsunari’s approach from the west, buying time to establish better positions on the battlefield.  This small contingent had no hope of defeating Mitsunari’s army of 40,000, but they stalled them enough, until the castle was set ablaze, trapping 380 defenders.  The men committed seppuku ritual suicide, with the surviving blood-stained floorboards placed into the ceilings of these temples, to honor and appease their spirits. Shoden-ji is particularly notable, as the garden, and its borrowed scenery of Mount Hiei, was a favorite of David Bowie during his long stay in Kyoto.        

Above all these apocryphal stories, a more recent Kyoto site is considered one of the most haunted places in Japan. The 444 meter-long Kiyotaki Tunnel above Arashiyama was built for the rail line in 1928, the scene of a number of worker fatalities and suicides due to harsh working conditions.  Nighttime drivers claim to have seen ghostly figures in their mirrors, or have had the ghost of a woman jump onto the hood of their car.  Most often, the screams of this woman penetrate the dark of the surrounding forest. 

While the spirit days of August are now past, the popularity of Halloween in Japan presents an excellent opportunity to follow in the paths of the dragonflies.  But if put-off by the distaste of violent historic events, or the fear of the supernatural, one can find compromise in a visit to Toei Kyoto Studios, home of what they dub “the most terrifying Haunted House in history.”  


On the turntable:  Talking Heads, "Remain in Light"

 

October 14 Elegy

 

 

On the Great Eastern Road IX

  

Getting a jump start on the heat.  People on the way to work, popping into Mishima Taisha.  I wander the cool of the grounds, passing a man chanting not to the altar but to the waters of the pond. 

I stroll the high street, it too tidy and clean.  Mishima cares about itself, with its historical markers, ample green spaces, nice little lanes free from the bondage of power lines.  Not much of old history remains, but that could be a war casualty, as the city once hosted an artillery unit, and neighboring Numazu was bombed late in the war. 

A police car roars up to stop at a hotel I just passed.  Another cop comes running. At the train crossing is an overweight cop, not running.
 Something amiss, which I'll never discover.  

I know I am at the edge of the old post town when I see the joyato latern. There's a small strand of namiki here too, barely two meters high.  There's little on the landscape beyond to entertain me, so I put in the headphones and listen to a mix of Tom Waits cover tunes.  I discovered him just before moving to Japan, his Anthology being one of a mere ten cassettes I brought over.  His songs remind me of an old girlfriend, a refugee from the Kobe quake of 1995, and a rainy Sunday where we lay on the tatami and sang Tom's songs out into the darkened room. He also reminds me of Jordan, now dear departed, and memories of him, and lost others cause me to weep as I stroll on. No need to feel embarrassed for this, tears are liquid love.    

Things stay industrial awhile, then I enter Numazu.  I'd looked forward to seeing this, the former home of a good friend.  But the Tōkaidō keeps me away from the city's best face.  Instead I'm walking the strip mall look of her outskirts, before being dumped onto Route 163.  

Thus begins hell.  On the map, I thought I'd be on a quiet little suburban road, which it is, but one with the near constant hum of passing cars.  I'm forced to stay on the sidewalk, which breaks my stride with every dip of driveway and perpendicular lane. It is the worst of all worlds as there are no real shops or places to take a break. I will walk this hellish route for three full hours.     

In hindsight, I should have walked the parallel beach road instead, but worried I'd miss the history.  Yet my route has few traces.  There are the odd signs and markers, but nothing remains of what they once marked. 

Literally, the only real find of the day is Hakuin's birthplace, but it too is modern and concrete.  I look around for his grave, a half-hearted attempt because I want to get on with it. It remained unfound, though I do find the grave of his mother.  There are a few markers at Hara post town for old historical sites, but they stand before the usual dull suburban homes. There is not a single trace of anything on this road.


Have I mentioned the heat?   Thirty-seven degrees, and no shade for there are no trees.  Things leap out from my somnambulistic march. A greenhouse seemingly built solely for a ping-pong table.  An anti-aging salon, but even the sign is faded.  A closed izakaya, but the owner obviously lives up top, for I spy what must be his work apron dancing on the line.  It reminds me of the breeze and I feel cool for about four or five seconds. In one section stand a startling number of abandoned houses, one after another after another. Vegetation is starting to take hold again.

By some miracle I come across a cafe opening just on the stroke of 11.  A few other people have turned up as well, dressed in tidy clothes and waiting in tidy cars with the A/C on max.  A startling contrast, I pull off the reek of shoes and my forearms darken the handsome wooden counter before which I pour myself.  My ice coffee costs twice what it should, and is downed in half the time.  I wanted to rest longer in the cool, but my current condition soon has me ashamedly heading for the door.  

I have a second fish out of water experience at lunch.  I find a small eatery, yet when I enter I find it filled with rough workmen.  They take up both tables, but I'm invited to sit with the workers, who are welcoming.  As my buttocks is mere centimeters above a stool that looks more at home in an elementary school cafeteria, the guy across from me lights up a cigarette.  Like a marionette, I pop back up, saying a more polite equivalent of "Can't ya see I'm walking here? I'd rather not be around smoke."  I step back outside and walk a few meters, noting on the map that the next shop is a full hour onward, a ramen shop.  And it's not really ramen weather. 

I sheepishly reenter, to hear one of the workman say, "I knew it," under his breath.  And it's not really a day for okonomiyaki either, but that's all that this shop does.  The one I get is perhaps the worst I've ever had, basically an undercooked cabbage patty barely held together by batter.  The draft beer is a winner, and I feel a bit like Alan Booth when I order a second.  The workmen have left by now, but not after they've all had shaved ice.  I follow suit, my Blue Hawaii leaving me humming Elvis as I step back into the blazing sun.   

What else to report?  My busy road leading to an even busier road?  Relief in a final stretch along a quieter lane, but one devoid of any interest?  The clouds are coming over now, but bring little cool.  I pick up the pace in order to catch an earlier train, which will allow for a longer soak in the hotel bath before I meet friend and former Blockhead David for beer and lite bites at Baird Taproom back in Mishima.  Such is my reward for what was certainly the worst single day of walking I've ever had.  

 

On the turntable: Abbey Lincoln, "Abbey is Blue"  

 

On the Great Eastern Road VIII

 

 

Has it really been six years since I left off this walk in Hakone?  The weather is a far cry from what it had been on that December day, hot, the height of August, yet with a cooling breeze for which I am grateful. Even the earliest train wasn't going to get me up here till 11 and the bus that I'd needed was 15 minutes late, thanks to the usual unprepared cluelessness of foreign tourists when it comes to paying the fares. So it was that stepped out into the full heat of day.


There is a remarkable amount of ishitatami on this part of the Tōkaidō.  And it begins immediately out of town, up Kamaishi-zaka. Due to storms, the trail looks pretty beat up, many of the stones rolled out of place, and in certain depressions in the trail, the detritus has built up. Walkers have gone through, obvious from the fact that the tall grass of late summer has been pushed aside. But each cobweb I break with my face is an indicator that no one had been through recently.

I'll only have one true climb of the day. From the vantage point of town, Tōge-chaya looks pretty far up there. Before I know it I am up and over the pass, but coming down the other side will be the problem. I'd noted the day before that a section of trail was closed due to a landslide back in 2019. 
Photos on Google Maps seemed to suggest that you could make your way around the barricade, which is what I had initially intended to do.  But coming up on the bus, I saw the barricade on the lower side, and it looked pretty impenetrable. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought I'd stick with the detour route.  I know I've previously mentioned that I don't like to edit when it comes to historic road walks, but do I delude myself in thinking that this Tōkaidō has always been the exact same route as it is today, since its earliest origins? Contemporary weather systems are getting more intense, with more and more trails getting damaged, yet ancient weather too did happen. 
Not to mention political turmoil and other problems. Throughout history, all of these trail systems would have changed from time to time. It's been six years since the landslide and I'm not terribly optimistic that they're going to fix it after all this time. But I'd like to think it'll reopen again, and the easy access makes it easy to return to.  Perhaps if it were a few hours earlier, or the day five degrees cooler, I might jump the barricade and go for it.

The road walk keep me on the busy Route 1, which winds its way down toward Mishima. Luckily, the old route keeps me off it for the most part, but for this detour. 
It's almost a blessing that it's about 26 degrees up here, versus 31 down in the valley. And as I'm exposed walking the tarmac, I'm thankful for the layer of overcast and the wind that accompanies it.

Once past the blockage, I feel the familiar round of stonework under my feet, which continues for a full six kilometers, broken only when bisecting Route 1.  One of the good things about ishitatami is that due to the uneven footing of the path, walkers are forced focus on their walking and not on their phones.  The trees on both sides are majestic, the forest alive with sound at mid-summer.  Plentiful stone figures keep my company, as well as markers for old small temple halls that didn't survive the transition to the modern world.  The once grand Yamanaka Castle itself did not, and I plan to return another day to trace her sylvan contours.  

 

 

I pass the aerial labyrinth of Dragon Castle, the dizzying heights of the Sky Walk, but my own walk continues over earth and stone.  Stone becomes tarmac in a small hamlet, and the road descends at an insane angle down the steep hillside.  It would be impossible to drive this in the ice and snow, and I walk backward awhile, my shins unable to handle the strain of the pitch.  This slope has been given a name, as have many of the others, reminders that I've dropped over 800 meters since the pass of many hours back.  

Just outside Mishima, I encounter a large tow-truck casually propping up a tourist bus, the latter a victim of an engine fire, but later scanning the news I find nothing.  The entrance to town proper is marked by a large stone for the Hakone road, and suddenly the Tōkaidō joins Route 1.  I'm actually walking a surfaced trail just above it, the road below lined with namiki, extending a full five kilometers, the longest stretch I've ever seen.  The irony of course is that the Shogunate planted all these trees in order to provided shade and shelter for walkers, but here I am in full sun, the cars below getting all the benefit.  The walker has no place in modern Japan.  

Eventually I come to Mishima Taisha, and I leave the old road in order to angle toward my hotel.  Shirataki Park is a beautiful oasis, kids in full frolic in the waters of the pond, with gossiping mothers as lifeguards.  I find myself attracted to a certain type of city in Japan, one comfortable in its modest size.  An easy scale to protect the culture, the quirks.  I am immediately attracted to the tree-lined streets, the bookshop cafe, the variety of its small eateries, the certain absence of big chain shops.  Yes, here too I could make a life.

I chose my hotel for the hot baths on its top floor, sure remedy for achy legs and sore feet.  Here I soak awhile, as Fuji looms up for the first time all day.  Her cabaret act is a flirtatious baring of a single shoulder, and only for about five minutes.  A tease, but those climbing her today are surely getting some bad weather. Not me.  Here I soak.  

I backtrack a little to Slider House for its burgers and 24 taps.  I settle into a plush leather armchair that serve as bar stools.  One beer follows another, and another, as I find it hard to leave my comfy seat, and my book of letters by Hunter S. Thompson.  But tomorrow's walk eventually taps my shoulder, and I force heavy feet to lead me toward bed.       

 

On the turntable:  Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Pack Up the Plantation: Live!"