Day 13: Ozaki Beach - Cape Muroto
So, I did some research after dinner last night - and I’m pleased to say that things went surprisingly well today. After yet another delicious, filling breakfast, I bade adieu to the Canadians and the Englishman and slowly started heading further down the coast to the Muroto Abandoned School Aquarium; I knew I was going to get there a little bit before it opened, but I wanted to mix up the walking today with Actually Interesting Stuff. As much as I ‘get’ the reason behind the ‘ascetic training’ of the 78 kilometers between these two temples, I feel it does a disservice to all of the other wonderful things to experience here to just blow past it all on a single-minded mission just to get to the next temple…
So few remaining residents, mostly elderly, in this part of the world. And so, so many abandoned, decaying buildings… and of course a number of schools as well. They’re all over the pilgrim map: abandoned high schools, abandoned elementary schools… One of them was turned into an aquarium of sorts, and I very much enjoyed my half an hour there, from the small birds nest above the entrance sign to the fascination of seeing a rural Japanese school, except with aquariums installed in many of the spaces. (Extra kudos to whoever thought it’d be funny to modify the AED case to house a single goldfish.) Even the old swimming pool behind the school had sea creatures in it - and oh man, so many amazing things indoors. Seahorses! Eels! Rays! It was fantastic.
And once I was out of the front door, I saw a bus stop and thought, you know, might as well save a few kilometers, might as well use this day as best as I can, so I took it about three kilometers to the Muroto Geopark headquarters and looked around the museum there for a while, learning a bit about the local flora and so on. It really feels like the government is doing its best to bring some kind of economic life back to this sleepy backwater - will it have any success? No idea, but at least they’re trying.
At the Geopark HQ, I tried a Soyjoy strawberry bar (meh), and decided okay, it’s time to walk. No real sense in waiting for another bus; time to get on with the ascetic training and do some damage, so I just kept going all the way to Hotsumaki-ji, T24, watching those same damn highway markers slowly count down the km. Along the way, I did the best I could to make the most of the day, stopping at the cave that Kukai spent time in as a young man, gawking at a weird tourist trap of another Kukai statue that was closed for repairs, and deciding that no, I didn’t need to visit the deep sea water baths because dang it, I was here to get some pilgrimaging going today, not to just spend the entire day doing “fun” things.
The last couple of km felt like they were practically straight up the hill; T24 is perched right at the end of Cape Muroto on top of a mountain. It was a beautiful spot; the descent back down was on a road, not a trail, and it seemingly took forever - it’s funny how a straightforward forest path feels short even though it’s physically taxing because it’s hundreds of steps uphill, but a long, gentle descent somehow feels worse because it’s just mindless repetition without much of a physical challenge. If anything, it was starting to become clear that today’s shoe configuration (no insoles, but orthotics) was good for my toes, but bad for the ridge behind them; it was becoming painfully clear that something was brewing back there, blister-wise, but I didn’t have anything I could really do about it other than to just keep going, so I did.
The next stretch to Shinso-ji, T25, was along a residential street for what felt like five kilometers or so. Just endless, again with a wild mix of decrepit, abandoned, burned, or otherwise unusable buildings with ones that were obviously still very much lived in, thank you very much.
Eventually, T25 hove into view, and God damn it, it was perched way up on a tiny, but very steep mountain-thing right in the middle of town. Fun! Two more rounds of reflection, one more stamp, one temple left to go.
At this point, I happened across some incredible luck. Google Maps suggested that there was a bus straight to the next temple, so I walked to the bus stop to confirm and… yes, correct, but it only runs on Tuesdays. That’s just lucky. And even better? There was a Lawson Station (convenience store) across from the bus stop, so I got a hamburger and some maple-flavored iced coffee for lunch while I waited for that bus to come.
Well, I thought it was going to be a bus, but it was more like a city minivan with no other passengers in it. It stopped, the driver opened the door, took one look at me, and said Kongocho-ji? Why yes, thank you, so I took a seat and enjoyed a private chauffeured minivan up to T26, the final temple of the day for me. We passed a bunch of pilgrims at another bus stop, but they didn’t seem to be waiting for the bus, so we kept going. The bus only cost 200 yen, but I didn’t have change, so I just gave him a 500 yen coin when disembarking, and he smiled and said thank you. Now that’s a win: still enough walking to feel like I did something physically challenging, but enough bus time so that I could get everything done that I wanted to without running out of time.
At T26, I ran into the Canadians from last night, who were looking chipper and said they were likely going to walk another couple of hours (ouch) until they found a place to stay for the night. I had a quick look at bus schedules, said my goodbyes quickly, and took the henro trail back down the mountain to a bus stop. About an hour later, I pulled up at my lodgings for the night, a minshuku all the way back down at the tip of Cape Muroto, at the base of the mountain T24 is on. Not very convenient, granted, but the only thing I could book online in the area. And hoo doggy, it’s not exactly the Ritz. It all has the feel of a place built decades ago, minimally maintained, run by some very old women, but which is of course clean enough and with decent food because this is Japan and not the Days Inn in Needles, California or whatever. Sure, my room smells funny and the tatami mats are uneven and the futon is about as thick as your average American maxi-pad, but whatever: it’s only for a night. Dinner was fine, but also weird in that you apparently had to ask for rice or miso soup (I didn’t, there was enough food without that); they short-changed me 1,000 yen when paying for the room and my beer, but again, whatever, I didn’t want to try to explain the problem and figured that $7 is no big deal. (Thankfully, it’s not to me at this point in my life.) The bathroom wasn’t great - really no room for more than 1 guest at a time, and there was already someone else in there, so I showered and left without the traditional soak, but at least the toilets were apparently brand new and exceptionally clean. So, that’s it for the night: a long day, three more temples completed, a few tourist spots visited, one hamburger consumed, and a few new blisters.
Tomorrow, I’m taking the bus to Kochi, but stopping in Nahari to visit the Monet gardens and the one temple near there - but I’m intentionally skipping about 50 km worth of walking as it’s road walking, it’s alongside the coast, and I need to get to Kochi to get my new shoes and see if they work any better. If I’m feeling, I can certainly double back and walk some of those 50 km - but I don’t think it’ll do much for me at all. Better to use my time here to see other things than that.
Random notes:
On the way back down from T26, I ran into the European pilgrims I’d seen earlier at the bus stop below. They were using some kind of video camera to document everything - man, I hope I’m not in that footage because I was uncharacteristically enjoying a can of Chill Out. Drinking while walking isn’t something you really should do in Japan, but I figured ehh no one will see me on this trail… whoops.
Saw another one of those weird monuments today - again, no signage or explanation as to what it might be…
Given how different they look from temples, are these war memorials or something? Google Translate didn’t work with the three glyphs on the column either.
It started raining about 15 minutes after checking in to my room, which just added to the overall feeling of good luck today. Plus, all that sun yesterday didn’t result in a sunburn, just a groovy wristwatch tan. Yay.