Tracking the Kamo II

I waited three days for the rains to subside.  And once again, the rivers were scaturient.  I removed my mask and sat a moment to enjoy the strong scent of wet moss, of damp.  Then I turned my feet toward town. 

Moving back toward the city seemed a fitting metaphor.  During the time of Corona, I'd spent a large percentage of my time in the mountains, climbing two or three peaks a week, taking advantage of the good weather of spring, and partly to stave off the ennui of staying home. And with things appearing to calm somewhat, I was making my way out of the hills, and back to a peopled land. 

The bus, the first public transit I'd used in over three months, dropped me where I finished my last hike, at Iwayabashi.  Aside from the tidy inn, it was a pretty ramshackle hamlet up here, and an single glimpse was not enough to tell whether or not some of the houses had occupants.  A few of the homes were tidy, with neat little gardens girded against animal raids. Atop a hillock at the bend in the Kamagawa stood a small temple, and the number of graves out back hinted that this area had once been more prosperous. 

The river, which had been concreted beneath the hamlet, now began to again run wild.  It began to pick up speed as it dropped considerably into a deepening gorge.  The valley was cut deep here, and the road, hardly wider than a single vehicle, hung to the eastern edge of the hills. In places where the valley broadened stood the inevitable house, or two.  A few people were out in their gardens, well tended and as lush as the surrounding vegetation and trees.  The largest and most well-kept house was home to a cafe that offered simple lodging, which would make a pleasant place to watch fireflies on a clear summer night.  

At Hakubai-bashi, the Kamogawa made an almost 90 degree turn to the east.  In this nook, someone had built an archery range, utilized by the university clubs in town.  The surrounding houses were almost fortress-like, taking advantage of the breadth of the valley.  Among them was a stone marker that claimed this as the headwaters of the Kamogawa. I knew different.  

This attractive little hamlet seemed well-looked after by the gods of the nearby Itsukushima Jinja. The roots of the shrine went back to the mid Heian period, when it bore the impossibly Hawaiian-sounding name of Amastuiwatowakewakahime Shrine.   These villages, then and now, supplied the old capital with lumber.  With the downsizing of local gods during the Meiji period, many ancient shrines and gods were consolidated here, and the shrine's name had been changed in order to hide the Buddhist connections, at a time when that religion was being suppressed by the new regime.

But Buddhism went on to survive, as attested by Koun-ji, a zen temple just up the road.  As I was climbing the steep flight of moss-covered stone steps I realized I had been here before.  This village of Kumo-ga-hata holds it own fire festival in late August, when the adjacent hillside is set blaze to reveal a Chinese character, in a mini-version of Kyoto's famous okuribi.  I visited this in 2007, as written in the first half of this post.  And this village might have taken on a greater role in my life, as we nearly moved here upon our return to Japan in early 2012 (as detailed in the last paragraph here).  I'd thought at that time that I would try to study here at this temple. Today I saw no evidence of a priest, though the temple building looked sound, and a brief chat with a friendly woman in the house below assured me that the festival is still held.        

I descended to where I remembered that old house as being, and was shocked to find that while it still stood, it was currently being used as a dumping ground of sorts, with rubbish stacked high all around the grounds.  I remember the house as being beautiful, with the character of age.  As I walked away, shocked, I began to play, as I do, the game of alternative existences.  I imagined that training in Zen.  I imagined helping carry the old Omikoshi that I'd seen inside the shrine. I imagined my daughter going to school just up the road.  But at the time it had been impossible, as I would be traveling a lot for work, and the little Mokumoku bus that wended its way along this narrow road only ran twice a day.  My daughter's mother would have felt terribly isolated, particularly with an infant in the house.  It's a bit sad really, thinking that we could have brought more life to the place. And I wonder what impact it would have had on our marriage itself.  For that, much like the house itself, didn't survive either.         

In the next hamlet I spied a young family, perhaps living in the house with the large banner that faced the road, admonishing us all to protect the beleaguered Article 9 Peace Clause in the Japanese Constitution.  The government has just as aggressively been going after the forest here too, as right at the edge of the houses here is the first of the clear-cuts I'll come to today.

The dotted hamlets of Kumogahata were behind me.  The road curved and bent to follow the twists of the river.  It was well below me now, its white form easily seen through the dark green, rain-sodden ceders.  Along the way, the Kamogawa made a complete elbow bend. A sign here warned of bears.  Little wonder, as the forest above was now gone.   Even without the bears, I was rarely alone. Bicyclists and runners had been sliding past all morning, one of the later stopping to soak his head under a pipe extending from a small rivulet that flowed into the Kamo.

The road dropped steadily as I drew closer to town, eventually reaching a certain equilibrium with the river.  All along here were small shacks piled with bags of salt.  And the third cut was the deepest.  Most of this may have come down in a storm, as higher up were the tell-tale cross hatching trunks.  Below this though all had been shorn, even those bedecked with tape, which are usually designated as those to be left standing.  But there was comfort in the fact that the new growth was coming in lush and varied.

The clear cut remained above me for a good twenty minutes as I carried on.  Some men were working on replacing the electrical lines.  Another group was either widening or shoring up the road,  liberally pouring concrete.  There was more lining the riverbed, perhaps in conjunction with a structure that looked to be a small hydroelectric plant.

Where the forest began again, the Tokai Shizen Hōdō dropped in from the left, descending from Yonaki-goe Pass.  So apparently I'd walked the stretch before, as the TSH went all the way down to the city.  There was a bit more traffic now, though from where I couldn't say.  Not long afterward, the Kyoto Isshu Trail joined us.  There was a small party of hikers here trying to make out the route, but they quickly disappeared into the trees again.   

The road from Iwakura similarly came in, then turned to follow the Kamogawa into town.  Here too, the river dictated where the road would go, its swollen waters running nearly as fast as the cars above.  Finally the broad Kyoto river valley opened up before me.  The Kamo and I had reached the city proper.    

On opposite banks, schoolboys were playing a game of baseball.  Here the river suddenly slows and becomes a popular place for families to take a cool dip in summer. It was humid but not too hot today, so there weren't that many people in the water.  During my first hot summer in Kyoto, I too enjoyed the waters here.  A friend and I had biked upriver, under the assumption that to get as far north as we could, we would be above any pollutants.  But I hadn't liked the smell on me when I toweled off, and it was only later that I learnt of the euphemistic "Clean Center" rubbish incinerator hidden in the hills just above.      

Just below this calm stretch of river, the waters dropped over a set of double falls. This Hiragino Dam was erected in 1941 to control sediment build-up, after a flood a decade earlier had washed away thirty-two of Kyoto's forty-one bridges.  Occasionally you'll see older boys daringly playing in the foam between.   Some of them probably live in the dense tangle of suburban homes that begin here.  Many homes facing the river were made up to resemble cozy Western cottages.  But no matter how nice the domicile, it would be impossible to ignore the ugly factory across the water.  This seemed a double insult in that the pair of hills behind stands the Okunokiya, or inner sanctum of Kyoto's important Kamigamo shrine.

On the far banks I saw the familiar training grounds for what they call "Cinematic Horses," which never fails to bring to mind the ending of the film, Kagemusha.   Nearby stood a pair of rice polishing machines, probably to service the odd rice fields that still exists between the new-fab homes.  Thirty, perhaps even twenty, years ago, this would have all been rice fields.  One industrious person kept in touch with their inner farmer, selling tomatoes in little coin lockers in front one their house.  

The riverfront trails now began, one on either side.  Life was beginning to appear.  A pair of old men sat on benches in the shade.  A woman plucked a shamisen.  A middle aged man lay sunbathing on one of those wooden decks that appear from time to time.  I came to the first of the Kamogawa's many bridges, the Nishikamogawa-bashi, which looked somewhat French in its design.  A number of people crossing above wore black, heading to a similarly faux-French wedding hall behind the trees on the east bank. 

The river moved fast through its now concrete bed.  The frequent sets of waterfalls served as brakes, but still the usually towering reeds now lay flat, as they often do during rainy season.   One set of benches had Auduban type drawings of the river fowl, though conspicuously missing was the grey heron, which, besides the Kamogawa namesake duck, is the bird most often seen here.  And all along, the river was lined with the spikily lush deutzia bushes that bloom a eye-catching bridal veil white in May.

A black lab scooted down an embankment to fetch a bobbing ball that someone had lost in an eddy.  He shook himself, spraying water across the first of the Kamogawa's many distance markers.  Sixteen kilometers until the end at the Katsuragawa.  I still had a good ways to go.  

The grand trees of Kamigamo Jinja appeared to the east.  The city has been widening the bridge that leads to the shrine, probably to accommodate the coaches that serve as a sort of pulse of the tourist boom in the city.  I was always puzzled as to why they'd widen this bridge to four lanes, when the road immediately narrows again to two on either end, hemmed in by the businesses that line those sections.  It felt to me that this will simply lead to more congestion.  I wondered if even the shrine's eight myriad gods could comprehend Japanese bureaucracy.  

What I did know is that I would stop here today.  I'd already walked the next stretch two years ago with Chris.  More precisely, while my feet would continue to carry me home, it was here that I'd stop my brush, to paraphrase Basho.  I'd pick things up again down at the confluence with the Takano-gawa, at Demachiyanagi.      


On the turntable:  The Moody Blues, "This is The Moody Blues"

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" 

Sunday Papers: Cid Corman

"We are the nuts of the money tree."


On the turntable:  Charles Trenet, "L'Essential"

(untitled)

Wild grasses

Grow from cold moss

On Iwabune’s stone lantern.

On the turntable:  Melanie, "Candles in the Rain"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #10

-Hearing the announcements form the adjacent train station through the ceiling fan in the toilet of my hotel room…

-Sound of cutting bamboo just like shinai.

-A park bench amidst rice fields, concrete chunks still stuck to legs

-The government pours concrete as liberally as its citizens pour soy sauce.

-Minis don't look so mini in Japan.


-Past the dirt walls with tiled grooves run small streams, crossed by narrow concrete bridges. And above, the peaks with shapes more often seen in South American jungles


On the turntable:  Tino, "Tino's Breaks, Volume 5"

Sunday Papers: Bernardo Bertolucci

"I have learnt to distrust whatever I read about China in the western press but I have an even greater suspicion of what the Chinese write about themselves in their own newspapers."


On the turntable: Mahavishnu Orchestra, "Between Nothingness and Eternity"

(untitled)

Saigyō Idō.

Cobwebs mimic

The water’s still surface.

On the turntable: Marty Robbins, "In the Wild West"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #9

PASSAGE TO BANGKOK, 2006

From the air, the mountains of Laos are like little gumdrops.  On approach to Bangkok, you pass over hundreds of flooded paddy fields, and if the sun is right, they light up with a great burst of pyrotechnics.  Light folds around towering storm clouds, bouncing back up off a layer of smog below.

On the turntable: Modern Jazz Quartet,  "Music from Odds Against Tomorrow"

Sunday papers: Robert Twigger

"The Culture- call it the global hive- has one aim- to get as big and fat as possible. Doesn't matter how many drones and workers die in the process. That's why average health is now DECLINING in the west. In the past an increase in health meant increased productivity and growth of human activity. Now ill health only generates money and goods from rich people. Poor people no longer contribute much to productivity (productivity in the past was increased by volume of workers, now it is increased by cleverness of manufacturing system)." 


On the turntable:  Johnny Winter, "Anthology"
 

(untitled)

Black and white and silent films;

Visions of a world 

Where people live under water.

On the turntable:  Micheal Franti, "2004-05-07, Issap Baobab"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #8

There's a point in playing music where you stop concentrating and "it" clicks. It's as if the music finds you, shuts off your mind and starts to whirl you around like a waltz.  Everything else stops.


On the turntable:  Naked City w/ Mike Patton, "Live Torture Garden Tour"

Sunday Papers: Toby Green

"It has become a dogma of recent times that only something that is scientifically proven or verifiable is justifiable as a channel of enquiry.  But this, like most dogmas, is a cultural fact and not an actual fact.  Scientific observation tells us what is happening to the tattered fabric of the world's environment, but not why it is happening.  In order to understand this, we must return to a study of culture, since culture has replaced selection as the defining force of evolution."

 --Saddled With Darwin: A Journey Through South America


On the turntable:  Madness, "Nutty Sounds"

(untitled)

Towering bamboo branches

Hang their

Depressed, sodden heads.

On the turntable:  Marty Robbins,"Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #7

FIRST VISIT LONDON, WINTER 2005


-From the air, the Mongolian landscape can only be described as raw.  Low ridges look braided, like an Irish fisherman's sweater.

-On the bus, the song Henry the Eighth in my ears.  As soon as my feet hit pavement, I blare London Calling. 

-Sitting before St Martin-in-the-Fields, the sound of Mozart blending with traffic.  

-Playing dead poet hopscotch in Westminster Abbey.   The graves of lesser poets are less polished.  Other tombstones like graham crackers.  One reads, "Be of one mind.  Go in peace." In that spirit, someone leads a prayer for peace in Iraq. 

-Battersea Bridge people-watching; androgynous Euros, voices swapping consonants, buff camouflaged guy walking terrier, straight-laced looking girls with pierced noses.

-The Tube; quiet locals, noisy tourists;  sitting shelf at end of carriage; hot girl with an eye-patch; punk with a Scissor Sisters T-shirt reading Virginia Woolf.  


On the turntable:  Tino, "Tino's Breaks, Volume 5"

Sunday Papers: John M. Barry

"In 1918 fear moved ahead of the virus like the bow wave before a ship. Fear drove the people, and the government and the press could not control it. They could not control it because every true report had been diluted with lies. And the more the officials and newspapers reassured, the more they said, 'There is no cause for alarm if proper precautions are taken,' ... the more people believed themselves cast adrift, adrift with no one to trust, adrift on an ocean of death."

--"The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History"


On the turntable:  Medeski Martin and Wood, "Tonic"
 

(untitled)

The bus this morning

Smells of

Unbrushed teeth.

On the turntable:  Spearhead, "Home"
 

Peeks on Danger

While this website is littered with writings about walks of the old roads, I don’t write about my hikes very often. Mainly because a good number of my friends with links over there in the left column do it very well and are far better sources of information than I.  But I will make an exception for Minagoyama.

As the coronavirus has relieved me of the ability to work, I decided to drive out of town and do two hikes a week, on days with the best weather.  It felt like the right time to hike peaks listed on the Kansai Hyakumeizan, and the Kinki Hyakumeizan.  As there is a fair bit of overlap between the two, some friends have come to calling it the Kinkan 132.  Minagoyama is on both lists.

Like with many other peaks, I chose a circuitous route, parking near the end and walking up the road to the adjacent trailhead.  This usually adds a 20-30 minute slog up a road, so I try to get that out of the way first.  At any rate, traffic is pretty light these days.  

On this day,  I followed the same stretch of Route 367 as when I walked the Saba (Wakasa) Kaido, weaving along the older route to avoid tunnels.  Luckily this time was without slushy snow.  One family had set up a day camp beside the river, and a number of fisherman had staked for themselves large sections of water.  

When I reached the trailhead, I found it barricaded and closed off.  I just presumed as I usually do that's it's a bit of overreaction on the part of the local township, in response to one of the many storms we've had the past few years. Besides, an online resource showed that someone had done this exact route a few weeks before. It wasn't hard to get over the barrier, and up the old forestry road I went.    

But I should have taken a hint from all the tumbled hillsides, or from all the fallen trees.  The road eventually ended, and my path became a series of rock hops across slick boulders in lieu of where bridges once stood.   More serious were the land slips.  Where repaired trails have added ropes or alternate routes around these hazards, here I had little choice but to scramble around, grabbing footholds where I could.  Most of the time I wasn't that high above the river, but a few sections were pretty dicey.  Worst was the lack of trail markers, save for the odd piece of tape here and there.  Many of these were on the ground tied to a fallen tree, so I found myself facing a pop quiz on navigation skills.  

As I went, I pondered why there were so many fallen trees.  Through history, has this always been the case?  I don't recall this many alterations in hiking routes during the first twenty years of living in Japan.  Was it due to increasingly powerful storms?  Or perhaps that this neglected cedar monoculture had been allowed to grow to such a height that the soil could no longer support their weight, causing them to topple by the dozen in high winds.  

Not long after coming to a large Japanese horse chestnut tree, my path made an abrupt right angle  This trail is notoriously difficult, mainly because the final approach to the peak is literally straight up the gully at stream's end.  I grew weary of scrambling from rock to rock, and from treading over debris patches that would have made sound little nests for the vipers no doubt enjoying the same sunshine as I.  The slope to the left looked a bit kinder, so I diverted along what looked like the most user-friendly path.  This would subtley shift every dozen steps or so, as my eyes got a better sense of the lay-out.  Before long, I was literally hurling myself upward from tree to tree, in order to arrest gravity's pull back into the ravine.  

Then I was on the top.   For a few minutes, I was the highest thing in Kyoto prefecture.  Then I sat with my lunch and my guidebook, and rolled my eyes when I noted that today's hike was rated the most dangerous out of the 52 within.  And that was when the trail had been open.  

I began the descent, finding some relief in the fact that I was now on well-used trails.  But this mountain must be one of the most poorly marked in Japan.  I had a choice of three trails down, one of which I wanted to avoid since the map showed hazard marks.  It took some doing, but I found my intended trail, a steep drop that required me to use my trekking poles.

At some point the Yamap app that I was using showed that I had to make another 90 degree turn down into the next watershed.  There was no trail at all, and the pitch was so steep I could no longer remain on my feet.  I slid like a baseball player from tree to tree, leg extended in order to brake on the trunks.  

Finally I hit the stream, and in my growing fatigue was slightly annoyed that I'd have to rock hop again.  Here too storms had left sections in shambles, where I'd have to navigate over big drops down into the ravine.  At one point, I stopped cold.  Partly buried in the brush of a landslip were a pair of trekking poles with points facing up the hill, beside a hat and a half empty bottle of tea.  Somebody had taken a very hard fall here.  It looked like it had happened long before, but I called out, "Oi, Oi!" a few times just in case someone was still around.  I tried to peer down into the stream below, but I couldn't see too well from where I was precariously perched, and to get any closer would put myself at risk.  

I pushed on.  At some point the trail leveled off, near an old shack that was half collapsed back into the forest.  Finally, I reached the end of my descent, beside a wide, fast-moving river.  The bridge I had expected was gone, but I had one final water-crossing to make, moving through waters that pulled strongly at my calves.  

Climbing up the far bank, I sat awhile beside the logging road that would lead me easily back to my car.  There was joy in this final half hour, having come through what I considered an ordeal.  

But the hike was not finsihed with me.  Later that day I discussed with Wes my next intended hike of Minetoko-yama, who cautioned me about its beautiful meadow that was notorious for bears.  And as such, the night before going, I slept poorly, bullied by fear.  The high winds of morning gave me the excuse to put off the hike, which brought relief.  Then a week later, the same situation.  I'd awoken at 4:30, and while I'd decided not to go on this day either, over breakfast I essentially said, "Screw it," and just went.  And had an excellent day.

But I often ponder why I left Minagoyama feeling as I did.  I believe that the tracing of two watersheds, not to mention the tree scrambling on the slopes themselves, had triggered a PTSD of sorts, resuscitating the muscle memory of that near-fatal night on Jyatani-dake.  For the last decade, I've grown more and more afraid of the backcountry, with the ever-present possibility of peril.  I don't know if this is part of aging, or a subconscious concern about orphaning my daughter, or (most likely), a larger case of PTSD from the death of my son in the mountains.   But the fear is with me much more than before.  

So it is that I'll leave the house in the morning, with a furrowed brow.  Yet I inevitably seem to return with a broad smile.  

On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux 1973-1991"    

Stuff from an Old Notebook #6

THOUGHTS ON A KYOTO-BOUND BUS

- The operatic swelling at the end of Damien Rice's "Eskimo Friend" are the shrieks of Valkyries swirling amidst the clouds lingering from last night's storm.

- The way the Japanese close curtains on trains, on the bus, seems a metaphor for hiding, ala tatemae, sakoku... 


On the turntable: Moby, "Go (Remixes)"

Sunday papers: Friedrich Nietzsche

“Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule.”

On the turntable: Miles Davis, "Milestones"
 

(untitled)

Discussing the film “Babel” 

To the echoes of a funk band,

On the banks of the Kamogawa.

On the turntable:  My Morning Jacket, "Chapter 1: The Sandworm Cometh"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #5

ULPOLTHA, SRI LANKA,  2004

Birds with the zigzag coloring of Charlie Brown's T-shirt.  Along the temple walk: centipedes, ants, butterflies.  Elephant shrine built at edge of village, on the spot where a herd of marauding elephants stopped suddenly and turned back.  Breathing beneath the banyan trees, as monkeys chatter overhead. Startled by a large monitor lizard while swimming in the tank, thinking it a crocodile.  The fear at night, of large cats, snakes;  five species of deadly snakes live in the surrounding jungles, which has me in constant fear for the first few days until I realize that millions of people have live beside deadly snakes for thousands of years.  By the end of my time here, I'm walking barefoot at night.  

(Photo courtesy Upoltha website.)


On the turntable:  Mark Lanegan, "Whiskey for the Holy Ghost"

Sunday Papers: Paul Valéry

"We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.” 


On the turntable:  Gene Loves Jezebel, "Desire" (EP)

Random Travel Shorts

KLM flight to Amsterdam. Midwest summer clouds throw great shadows on the plains, intercut by the grey blotches of Russian cities.  Spoken Dutch sounds like a record played backwards.  Europeans tend to stand up and look around a lot while in flight.  The veritable forest of wind turbines in the North Sea, both onshore and off…

Belize City.  Hurricane bars on the windows.  Armed guards.  Politically British but Catholic schools.  Lots of Chinese food.  "Home is where the food is..." 

Aix en Provence.  A mime in white never stops moving.  A busker playing The Godfather theme on his accordion.  Cappucino served up in a 18th century cafe by a waiter with a 19th century moustache.

Myanmar.  The pecking order on begging rounds, monks up front, then the child monklets.  I'd like to see their bowls on conveyor belts, like in sushi chain shops.  The roads lined with bougainvillea, wide and open  and traversed more by bicycles an motorbikes than cars. The Buddhist University in Yangon, with an unusual blend of Gothic and spiky temple architecture.  Ubiquitous banana and mango trees.  The Jade Temple has a single donor, all the jewels controlled now by China, as are 75% of businesses in Myanmar. A cameraman hangs off the back of a jeep, snapping pics.  I pee under a waterfall, beneath the gaze of a green gecko...  


On the turntable, Howlin' Wolf, "Muddy and the Wolf"

(untitled)

Darkened rooms

Lit by the glow of joints,

In the days before MTV.

 
On the turntable:  Mason Williams, "Mason Williams Phonograph Record"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #4

Watching a kite circling over a river, looking for fish.  A group of others was a little further off, whistling.  These whistles seemed to draw the single kite back to the group.   

On the turntable:  Maria Callas, "The Legend"

Sunday Papers: George Orwell

"All our food springs ultimately from dung and dead bodies, the two things which of all others seem to us the most horrible.”

On the turntable:  Dire Straits, "Sultans of Swing"

(untitled)

Heading toward a typhoon

Of which I see no sign,

Be it rain or wind.

On the turntable:  Meat Beat Manifesto, "Live at Camden Palace"

On the Set

 Notes from the set of the 2008 Swiss/Japanese co-production of Tengu:

Filming one of the flashback scenes at Temple 36 on the course behind Ninnaji, which corresponds to Shoryu-ji in Tosa.  The sky changes from sunny to hail and back again, repeatedly.  The skyline of Kyoto in waning sunlight looks like a mouth full of broken teeth. Due to the rapidly changing light, there are many takes, and I eat pork until I nearly puke, knock back one half a bottle of red wine.  

Werner Herzog writes that 'acting is physical.'  My memories will be of running and running through the reeds, the lakeside, the Kurama forest.  I go through kata with a tree branch as a bo, and somewhere along the line I cut my finger badly on a nail, and worry about tetanus. The blood flows heavily. 

Laying in the waters of Biwa in February.   The crew offers me towels between takes, but I don't want to go from warm to cold too often. I choose to stay wet, but at least the sun is out.  It was fun to set dress the trees and hide signage, amusing to attract gawkers. 

During the shoot at the rural Shiga train station, I forget to tuck my shirt in.  In checking my watch, I lift the arm that is carrying my suitcase, making it obvious it is empty.  I must look suspicious, wandering around with this empty case, in terror-stricken Japan. 

The ridiculousness of filming the love scene.  I block how I'm going to kiss the leading lady, going from seated at a low table to reclining on the floor, all while kissing and keeping our faces in the frame.  After the actual love scene, I look up to see the gaffer leaning over us, a big grin on his face.    

The DP sitting on the floor cross-legged, his knees about an inch off the floor.  A testament to a career spent shooting at Ozu's camera level.  

Learning to pace myself during the many meal scenes.  I feel heavy and full too quickly, so simple sip lukewarm tea as the retakes grind on.  I'm playing a newbie in Japan, and find it difficult to misuse chopsticks

The problems:  
-The argument between the director who wants to avoid the tedious process of getting permission from the railway company and film guerrilla-style on the train.  The DP is nationally famous and doesn't want to put his career at risk.  Shooting is held up as they argue it out;  
-The inevitable trouble with microphones;  I belch and fart and forget to turn off when I pee;
-A few weeks after the shoot wraps and the crew leaves, the director wants to get a shot of me silhouetted against the mountains.  The woman selling tickets at Kuramadera somehow notes the camera in the handbag and refuses us entry.  We instead film up on Hieizan.

I'm exhausted at the end of each day, but sleep is odd, filled with dreams.  Perhaps acting brings the subconscious closer to the surface.   These psychological states take form in many ways:  seeing the shapes of foxes everywhere; getting a slight crush on the female lead with whom I have love scenes; conning myself into feeling I'm special since I am the lead in this thing.     

But it was the scenes with the Geiko who put it all back into perspective.  It didn't matter if I were the most famous actor in the world, or the Prime Minister, or a clerk from the Lawson's around the corner.  If I were paying the bill, I'd be one thing: the customer.  There is ultimately nothing special about simply being a prop, and taking up space.  


On the turntable: "Avalon Blues: A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt (Various)" 

Stuff from an Old Notebook #3

Africa's immensity dwarfs the individual, therefore co-operation is crucial.  The Ashanti greeting is big and boisterous, a symbol of bonding against the elements, a humanizing gesture.  Perhaps the High-five is an offshoot?


On the turntable:  The Mission UK, "God's Own Medicine"

Sunday Papers: David Lebedoff

"1984 foretold what it would be like if Russia won the cold war; Brave New World described the future if the West did."


On the turntable:  Joe Jackson, "Afterlife"

(untitled)

Parasol hat and long sleeves;

Like watching a jellyfish

Waving in slow motion.

 On the Mount Eerie: "Dawn"

Buddy Dharma, Reincarnated...

I recently came across a series of notes I made during a Buddhist lecture I attended back in 2007: 


Self-awareness doesn’t mean to be aware of our thoughts etc. It means that experience comes moment to moment. What is in your mind at the present moment equals awareness. If we don’t notice something, then we can’t say we truly experienced it. Thoughts are created by me, but the ability to have thoughts is beyond me and can’t be destroyed. Thoughts are based on ego and self-centeredness. If we aren’t aware of our thoughts, they can follow the conditioning of our past lives.   

Attachment is instinct. When threatened, our natural instinct is to act hostile. (Isn’t the volition to change conditioning also driven by ego?)  There’s no peace or happiness without a developed mind. Negative emotions are symptoms of the disease of self-centeredness.

Bodaishin/ Bodhicitta:
Putting all sentiment beings at the center is lovingkindness. Suffering is caused by excessive self protection., which leads to a sort of paranoia. We create artificial joy out of pride: feeling proud of positive qualities leads to feeling of uniqueness. These days, most people focus on this type of happiness. Practice of equanimity: making the happiness of all sentiment beings your own.

Buddhist Contemplative Psychology identifies the root cause of suffering and clarifies symptoms of that cause. Explains Dukha and the cause of Dukha.

In our confusion, we can’t see our potential. Without thought of enlightenment, you cannot 'be.' The wish for enlightenment is altruistic, you want to bring everyone else over. The Bodhisattva vow is not as a means of gathering all the pieces of the puzzle. It is more the recognition that the puzzle's completion requires the proper placement of the first piece, to which all others relate.

One cannot be enlightened through karmic good deeds; only in the recognition of one's true nature.


On the turntable:  Moby,  "Mobility"  

Stuff from an Old Notebook #2

Hawaii Notes 2003

-Pearl Harbor memorial --- security man quiet and respectful, the exhibits low-key. On the recording, "contemplation" is repeated twice.   But the boat speakers are a bit much, and detract from the serenity and contemplation. The Missouri is docked along Battleship Row.   Beautiful homes beyond the trees.  Fish and coral are life arising from death.  Remember Pearl Harbor-- what about remember peace?  Sailors checking out girls.  Overwhelmed by emotion as a lei is tossed into the water.   

Oil rises up like thought balloons from beyond, 

floating away like purple jellyfish, 

morphing with the waves.  

-Upulo ---  streams flow through this rock structure, overlooking the fields.  A grove of banyan trees and discarded rubbish.  Meiko with a flower behind her ear.  Rain falls soft then hard. A well filled with crayfish.  

-Why are the highways in Oahu called interstates?

-The heavy rains of winter make one feel claustrophobic. 

-Aloha Aina --  Cheerful, lots of green, under a large banana tree mural, with great coffee and ceiling fans, sitting on the big lanai, watching the rain fall.  Flotilla of leaves like boats approaching Troy.  


On the turntable:  Jack Dangers, "Variaciones Espectrales"

Sunday Papers: Ai Chaobang

"Pandemics are political."


 On the turntable: Art Taylor, "Taylor's Wailers"

(untitled)

Bamboo grounded;

Sound of wind in upper reaches,

Its base unfazed.

On the turntable:  Micheal Franti, "Stay Human"

Imbibling Bibliophile #100

Moving Zen by C.W. Nicol

Sabre-Toothed Squirrel Amber Ale, Smog City Brewing

On the turntable: Muddy Waters,  "Folk Singer" 

 

Kumano Kōdō XXIV: : Shirahama & Yuasa

I step out of the taxi and enter my hotel.  Their webpage said they serve dinner until 9 pm, but upon check-in I'm told it's actually at 8:30, forty-five minutes from now.  I rush to my room, gather a few things and head down to the baths.  I enter the dining room just after 8 and attack the buffet, trying not to think about surface-based contagions.  I order my usually on-the-road dinner drinks, a draft beer and a bottle of local sake, and have them brought at the same time.  A few minutes later one of the cooking crew brings me a glass of the local beer, also on draft.  I'm grateful, for I'd wanted to check out their brewery which is a few minutes up the street, but of course there wasn't time.  So I tear into the four plates before me, piled with one of each item from the expansive buffet.  Within half an hour, I've finished, plus the three drinks.  I drift with bloated belly up to my room, where sleep doesn't come too easily. 

The morning too is a similar dash.  I get to the outdoor baths just before they open at six, but at this hotel they actually lock the doors.  A guy comes a few minutes later with the key, and I have a soak, overlooking the surf crashing into the cliffs just below me.  I pay my bill on the way to breakfast (amazed that the young guy at the front shrugs off the fact that they'd forgotten to charge for any of my drinks last night, a rarity in Japan), gulp down a few plates from the buffet, then am out the door within fifteen minutes.  

I have a taxi pickup arranged for me in 90 minutes at Minakata Kumagusu Museum and I predict I'll need every minute to cover the 5 km to get there.  It's a quiet morning, no one about.  I find a small temple hall and small pilgrimage course above Sandanbeki cliff, a series of tall rock spires that fall away into the sea.  The top of these cliffs are composed of overlapping plates that suggest a former seabed.  A trail follows them, with occasional openings that allows one to get closer to the edge.  Near one entrance a local church has erected a sign pleading with possible suicides to reconsider.  One section of trail is closed until 9 am, but I skirt through a small traditional rock garden to continue on my way.  I do eventually leave the shore-hugging trail to move onto the narrow streets above, most lined with hotels, some closed, others abandoned.  I love beach towns out of season.  For me, this pathos is the most profound expression on mono no aware.

An array of washing machines stands covered near the entrance to the wonderfully named Grampus Inn. (And I continued to think of it as just a name, until it popped up again in the book Nan'yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945, revealing the true meaning.)  I'm stuck on the main road for a while, detouring briefly to Senjojiki cliffs that lie closer to the sea, offering fisherman a perfect perch.  I climb a small rise to examine a historical marker, and see the crescent of Shirahama beach arcing away before me, which I arrive at not long after.  A long couple plays a game of rambunctious tag near the shore, away from a bulldozer that pushes the snow-like sand into some kind of unseen order.  

Beyond the beach I cut through Kumano-sansho Jinja, a shrine not old but spread across a set of lovely shaded grounds.  A pair of temples further on aren't quite as charming.  I'm really picking up my pace now as I tread the last kilometer under high rocky cliffs, and past fisherman casting lines from concrete embankments.  I can see my driver in the distance, staring off to sea, channeling the occupation of his ancestors.

The train ride takes only an hour, but I wash my hands twice.  The mess of construction at Yuasa Station makes it tough to get my bearings at first, but before long I cross beneath the train line into a quiet rural landscape.  I'd passed through in 2009, but today the town is better known to me as one of the first cluster outbreaks of the virus.  I find myself backtracking on my footsteps of a decade ago, moving along for about ten minutes before arriving at Shoraku-ji temple dwarfed by a pair of ancient trees at whose base stands a huddle of Jizo statues.  Then I turn and retrace my steps once again into town proper. 

This walk seems themed around a mid-19th century tsunami. In 1854, a local man named Hamaguchi Goryo had lit fires to guide people to high ground and thus safety from the wave.  In its aftermath, he called for the erection of a high berm that proved effective against another tsunami in 1946.  The town holds an annual festival in his honor on the anniversary of that later date, as a way to give thanks.  

I walk along the wall, beneath the array of tall pine trees that stand shoulder to shoulder.  Where roads break the berm stand massive steel gates intended to close in times of disaster.  Beyond these I cross a tall bridge, looking eastward to the hillsides shorn for their mikan and yuzu orchards.  A few of these have been encroached upon by the shiny black plantations of solar panels.  

Going up the town's main street, I pass an ancient woman easily 100 years old, old enough to remember both the 1946 wave and tales from those who'd ran toward Goryo's signal fires nearly a century before.  I turn down a lane not long afterward, where a handful of soy sauce factories still stand, an array of lovely Meiji period wooden structures.  Yuasa claims that it was here that Japan's first soy sauce was produced, 750 years before.  It is a pleasant stroll through time, where I pop my head in to a museum packed with artifacts of traditional production.  A young boy accompanies me for part of it as he goes to mail a letter, surprising me in his use of English to answer my questions in Japanese.  

My map takes me along a zigzag course along some temples, and back to the town's older high street.  This is part of the Kumano Kodo, so again I've met myself of a decade ago.  I've allowed myself an easy stroll as my train isn't until much later in the day.  But around this point I realize that I can catch an earlier one, so pick up my pace.  The walk is nearly finished anyway and I like the idea of getting home by mid-afternoon.  I walk briskly out of town again, up to the shadow of a castle that multitasks as an onsen.  As I'm not planning to bathe here today, so turn and move back toward town, intending to return here for a soak in the summer, having already decided to take my daughter down to Shirahama for a beach holiday.  

I pass through some fields and reservoirs, and arrive back at the train station.  The old structure is a nice presentation of historic wood, in the process of being replaced by a concrete beast.  Contrarily a very attractive junior high school is being put up next door.  Upon entering, I beeline immediately to wash my hands.  No soap.  A station employee has the misfortune to be standing just outside, and though I preface things with an understanding that it isn't necessarily his fault, I berate his superiors for not stocking soap this late in the health crisis, when the national government seems days away from calling a state of emergency, especially here in the town that had the first outbreak.  He doesn't reply, doesn't look at me.  Oh well, I guess sticking your head in the sand is more effective than face masks anyway.  

My train pulls in, and I move off to self-isolate awhile.


On the turntable:  Blood, Sweat & Tears, "Child is Father to the Man"