Day 15: Zero (Kochi)
Breakfast was very fine this morning; I went with the default option, seared bonito, and wasn’t disappointed. This is the first ‘real’ hotel I’ve stayed at since the hotel at Haneda airport and I’m digging it - a Western style bed, plenty of room to unpack everything and get organized, and that’s more or less what I spent my day doing.
I had bought an ULA Camino pack shortly before leaving home and to be frank I’m disappointed in the thing. Removing the hip belt scratched up the fabric something fierce; the cinch straps on the hip belt started fraying immediately, and now the thing appears to be also losing integrity on one of the seams near the zippered flap. It’s been somewhat uncomfortable, doesn’t fit as much as I’d like, and it’s of course my fault for not spending more time hiking with it before I left. (On previous long-distance hikes, I’d used a relatively big Osprey pack that I find to be really comfortable, just annoyingly large).
So, I figured I had a few objectives today:
If you can’t make the pack bigger, you can reduce the amount of crap you put in it or compress it somehow
A lighter pack is easier to carry than a heavy pack; time to rethink everything and send some stuff home
If possible, find a better pair of hiking shorts, find a hat to replace my busted Tilley hat, and try the 31-wise shoes that were shipped to my hotel
In short, this basically meant I’d spend the day researching how to send a package to California from Japan (not at all easy, but I do have the correct size box now and the required Japan Post account and address book set up to make that happen Monday morning) + going to a few stores (Montbell, Muji, Uniqlo) to replace a few things with lighter-weight options and replace stuff that had failed.
Kochi, well, what to say about Kochi? This is one of the oddest big cities I’ve ever visited; it really feels like it has zero character whatsoever, at least the parts I visited today. Endless generic streets, endless generic buildings, unremarkable weather, can’t see the oceans or (mostly) any green hills. I’m honestly not a fan, but I am holding out hope that the Sunday market will be good and that other parts of town will have some character. The first destination today was Montbell; if you’re unfamiliar, it’s kind of like the REI of Japan - the place you’d go for hiking gear, tents, boots, gel shots, just any kind of outdoor stuff in general. Being Japan, they do have some things that are perhaps a bit surprising such as a tea set - if you’re backpacking and need to whip up a bowl of matcha, well, they’ve got you covered. In my experience, their gear is better quality and costs less than US equivalents; the only issue is perhaps to do with sizing. I had no problem finding a hat and gloves (the Montbell gloves I’d brought are falling apart after 9 years of use), but shorts were out of the question (I’m still too big at around a 38” waist for Japanese sizes) and so were a smaller pair of pants (the Tokyo stores tend to stock bigger sizes than small, rural stores like the one here in Kochi). But I was able to find a new dry bag, a compression sack, a very cool T-shirt with a bear-henro on it (Montbell’s mascot is a bear), and an interesting selection of hiking snacks, such as energy yokan and some kind of red bean paste in a tube. Yum. I did forget to get a strap for the hat to keep it on my head when it’s windy, but I’ll get that in a few weeks at the Montbell in Matsuyama.
(As an aside, Montbell are extremely good at having one-off, limited edition things only available at one particular shop or in a limited region. This means I’ve accumulated things like a Mt Fuji insulated mug, a Boulder, Colorado water bottle, and a Shinjuku T-shirt with the Montbell bear climbing a tower there. They had a Kochi prefecture specific shirt that was okay, but it was the Shikoku specific henro bear that sold me.)
On the way back to the hotel, I wandered in something that looked like a supermarket and which turned out to kinda sorta be a Whole Foods type supermarket. Dear reader: I was hungry and I bought too many things. Fresh strawberries, a strawberry sandwich, an eel-rice bowl, a BLT sandwich for tomorrow, and even a Godzilla cream bun (don’t ask, it’s gross). Plus, they had all kinds of intriguing alcoholic things so I may have overbought those as well (local sake, a few canned highballs that I’d never seen before such as a Kavalan one from Taiwan, and some gin-soda thing that looks terrible, but what the heck). Finally, I swung by the main post office near my hotel to get a box to fill with stuff to send home.
Figuring out what to throw away (pants legs for my shorts, the busted Tilley hat, a bottle of melatonin and Tylenol PM, potentially a couple of pairs of ancient Duluth Trading Company underwear) and what to send home (a small electric toothbrush, various Eagle Creek organizing bags, the size 32-regular Salomon boots, my beard brush, a small towel) took some time, as expected. As of now, I’ve got everything carefully separated and ready to go; I just need to run two days’ of hiking experiments first to make sure that new boxer briefs from Uniqlo are okay for hiking (the ones I brought aren’t great as the fabric is saggy and there’s chafing) and that the new 31-wide shoes are more comfortable than the 32-regular ones (after today I’m cautiously optimistic, but they do seem a little bit shorter than I would like, even if the wide-ness is feeling pretty good).
I spent much of the rest of the afternoon just lounging around my hotel room doing nothing in particular, which felt like a damn luxury. Oh, and I booked a fancy restaurant for tomorrow night because, well, that’s something I like to do on occasion. Yes, I’m eating out of supermarkets and convenience stores for the most part this weekend, but one fine meal would do me good - and who knows, maybe local Kochi food is amazing and I’m about to discover something amazing. Either that or I’m about to blow $120 on stuff that sucks. I’m good either way.
Before retiring for the evening, I had to head out a second time, this time to the AEON Mall about a kilometer from the hotel. I needed a bigger mesh bag to carry medication/toothbrush/random crap/toothpaste that weighed less than my Eagle Creek one; Muji was great for that. And I needed new underwear, so hello Uniqlo. (They also had some pretty good hiking shorts, but I’m going to hold out for the Montbell ones because I like their style better. If I don’t lose any more weight, though, hello Uniqlo Takamatsu!). While I was at the mall I did check out their food court, where I had some distinctly mediocre takoyaki before heading back to my room.
It’s now just after 18h15 here. I’ve had a little bit of sake, and now it’s time for the eel-and-rice bowl, more sake, some Vietnamese spring rolls, and then I’ll call it a night. After breakfast tomorrow, I’m planning on taking the train back a ways and then walking back to Kochi via three more temples. Good night!