April 21, 2025

Day 12: Shishikui - Ozaki Beach

Oof, a long, nearly flat walk alongside the Pacific, 98% on a very narrow shoulder on a two-lane public highway…

I’ll start with the good, which was Mitsuka, a lovely guesthouse in Shishikui. Last night’s dinner was one of the very best I’ve had in recent years, prepared with incredible care and attention to detail, with surprising touches like homemade smoked daikon and homemade marmalade (served with an exquisite piece of grilled fish). That is exactly the sort of experience I hope to have when I stay at a traditional Japanese guesthouse: amazing cooking served with true hospitality. After dinner, I retired to the lounge with a glass of whisky and stayed up a bit planning out the next few days.

In the morning, breakfast was equally delicious, with a fresh grilled piece of salmon, pickles, rice, soup - all of the usual things, but especially good. Plus, hoji-cha which I prefer to green tea. Best of all, the innkeeper graciously gave me a small gift upon parting: a rice ball and a banana to keep me nourished on today’s notoriously long, tiring walk to Ozaki Beach, about 27 km away from Shishikui. Mind you, I didn’t walk all of that - I wanted to ride the DMV again, so I walked over to Shishikui train station, which somehow was actually staffed (!) even though there are only a few DMVs a day and I was the only passenger using the station that morning. Most of the train tracks to the terminal station ran through a tunnel, but it was fun to experience the DMV changing to bus mode one last time, before making a quick trip to the coast to drop me off at Shirohama Beach. From there, I walked along the coast all day long. It was warm and sunny, I was wearing my pilgrim’s hat (surprisingly effective!), and I just kept going and going, stopping every 8 km or so for a snack (my packed lunch, and later a 7-Eleven fried fish with tartar sauce sandwich) and a rest before continuing onwards.

The central part of the walk is about as desolate as it gets on this densely populated island: no buildings, no people, no agriculture, no nothing, just endless roadway. On either end, there were small villages, seemingly mostly depopulated; in one, I think I walked past a mochi bakery of some kind, but it was hard to tell. In another, I walked past some monument that I wish I knew what it was:

And for most of the rest of the day, I just kept slogging onwards. The kilometer markers also had distances to both T23 and T24 with the traditional pointing hands, like this:

And so I watched those slowly, slowly tick down. My guesthouse tonight’s around 16 km or so to go and oh man, I was happy to see it - but not before I was getting so tired that I started to get The Fear just a little bit. Let me explain: sometimes, for no particular reason, I start wondering if there’s going to be some kind of issue when I get to where I’m going. Tonight, my concern was that I’d booked directly with the inn over Facebook Messenger, which just doesn’t feel trustworthy to me. I messaged them yesterday to confirm I’d be here today, but they didn’t reply; additionally, I walked past plenty of run-down, unappealing inns along the way today, some of which obviously long-closed, but it just didn’t put me in a great frame of mine. The whole while, I was making note of bus stops, available buses, and ways to detour to a big city instead of an isolated part of the Pacific coast in case something went wrong - but nope, nothing went wrong at all, the guesthouse is lovely and clean and the hosts are friendly and speak great English and oh dang, it’s almost 18h30 so I do need to get downstairs and find my supper. G’night!

Postscript: damn, supper was amazing! No idea why I was so worried about this place - that was one of the biggest spreads I’ve ever seen in a guesthouse, from straw-grilled bonito to a lovely fresh fish (yes, a whole one!), sashimi, rice, soup, and pickles and salad. Add one very big, very cold beer and I am one happy Bear. Heck, I can’t even remember feeling as low as I did just a couple of hours ago.

Interesting as well: a couple from Vancouver, BC was at dinner and they are the very serious through-hiking types, carrying a tent and probably doing 30+ km a day. Lovely people - and after dinner, one of them accidentally took my slippers (plastic Birkenstocks) because they were exactly the same as his (albeit a couple of sizes too big). Always nice to have one’s equipment choices validated by someone who’s actually good at long-distance hiking!

Random notes:

Wildlife sightings today included one (1) cat, but not super healthy as well as what David the Englishman confirmed at dinner as a badger. I had no idea what it was when it crossed the road; it looked vaguely like an aardvark or anteater or something, but nope: a badger. Very cool! And the Canadians saw a similar snake to mine a few days ago and we’re all in agreement that it was probably a rat snake.

Japanese TV had a bunch of Trump coverage on at dinner tonight; from what I can tell, they think he’s an idiot and were once again rolling their eyes at his assertion that Japan uses a so-called ‘bowling ball test’ to gauge the safety of imported automobiles. Uh… no, they don’t. If you ever wonder why Japan doesn’t import a lot of US automobiles, just take a look around at what people drive here and then have a look at what US auto makers produce: the two things are radically different. Japan loves small, boxy, tall things, cute things, efficient things. The US loves huge, enormous, inefficient things that have cameras in their front grilles so that you can see if you’re about to run over a child. If US automakers wanted to, I’m sure they could design something that’d sell here, but they just don’t. (As an aside, it’s a shame that Subaru decided to make their 2026 Outback look like just another SUV. I always loved my Outback because it was a station wagon, not a SUV - shame to throw away their existing customers in hopes of attracting customers who want a generic SUV.)

Tonight’s innkeeper offered to transport my backpack to the next lodge for about three bucks. As a result, I’m now thinking about doing a bunch of temples tomorrow in addition to the relatively short walk to the first one. No idea if that’s feasible, though! Time to send this newsletter off and do some research :)