Day 18: Zero (Kochi)
Dinner last night was at an extremely popular gyoza-and-ramen stand; it was a medium-long wait to get in and the Belgian cub and I had to eat standing up, but at least the food was mediocre, LOL. Strange gyoza, boring ramen, unsatisfying in basically every way, but so famous that it’s in all of the tourist material published by the city tourist office. The local straw-grilled bonito, on the other hand, is delicious and you can bet I’ll have more of that at breakfast, thank you,
I’d originally planned just one day off from walking and that was today, Sunday; it’s market day in Kochi, it’s the biggest market day in Japan, and it seemed like it’d be a good day to take a break. Given that there wasn’t much to do today other than laundry, repacking, and picking up yet another new pair of shoes from Amazon, I figured it’d be a straightforward day.
After breakfast, I headed for the okunoin of Temple 30, Anraku-ji, which is about a kilometer away from Kochi castle. The concept of an okunoin is somewhat opaque to me; as best I understand it, it’s usually translated as ‘inner sanctuary’ but might be better understood as a pointer (if you’re a C programmer) or the holiest place associated with a given temple. I think - but am not certain - that these are largely places associated with natural features (rocks, waterfalls, special trees, etc.) that had shrines built nearby - so for every temple on the pilgrimage there’s an okunoin out there somewhere, maybe at a natural feature, possibly close but also potentially far away.
In this case, it’s kind of a weird one. When Zenraku-ji (modern T30) was destroyed in the 19th century, the associated deity was moved to a different temple six or so kilometers way called Anraku-ji. Eventually, the original temple was rebuilt, which led to duplicate Temple 30s: not cool. Finally, on January 1, 1994, the issue was resolved by restoring Zenraku-ji to official T30 status and downgrading Anraku-ji to mere okunoin status. As it stands now, it’s a weirdly cluttered, cramped temple hemmed in on all sides by city streets, a neighboring Shinto shrine, modern construction on the temple grounds itself, and a neighboring structure that looks like a warehouse for rust. Kind of interesting - and it didn’t exactly feel super welcoming (there were lots of signs warning that the Kochi police monitored the site at night - I wonder if it had turned into a delinquent teenager hotspot or something?), so I made a quick visit to the Daishi-do and left.
It wasn’t far to Kochi castle from there; no surprise, it’s on top of a hill (and those are getting a lot easier for me to climb, woohoo!). It didn’t cost much to enter, so I did; as per usual, both of my shoes wouldn’t fit in a single shoe locker, so I had to use two of them! (Yes, big feet are a problem in this country.) Lots of steep staircases with minimal headroom in there and my head is still a bit swollen from hitting it on a signboard suspended from the ceiling of a train yesterday, so I took it slowly and did by best not to re-injure myself. It was sunny with clear skies today, so views out over the city were fantastic, but the view back up to the castle is I think a better picture:
The Sunday market started near the temple and snaked east towards the main street, so I followed that along for bit until I got tired of the crowds. There didn’t seem to be too much interesting there save for a taco stand (yes, really) and a couple of widely distributed food stalls with long lines in front of them. My God, how many stalls can there be that sell knives and citrus? Ah well, I was never much of a market guy…
Back at the main drag, I figured I’d keep walking to go back to Montbell and buy two more things: a white T-shirt (because it goes better with my white pilgrim’s vest) and a strap to keep my hat on when it’s windy. When they swiped my club card and it worked, I wondered why they seemed to have problems with it three days ago - and when they asked me if I wanted to use my points, I really started to wonder if they hadn’t screwed all of that up. When I got back to the hotel I checked my other receipt and yup, the other guy had mis-typed my customer number instead of swiping my card, so that means $15 or so in credit out the window.
Anyhow, you can bet I stopped to get more strawberries on the way home (and more snacks); my new shoes had made it to Kochi from Amazon Japan but hadn’t quite made it to the Lawson Station convenience store for pickup, so I figured I’d walk back to Montbell with the receipts and see if they could fix the problem. No, they said. Impossible! Huh. So much for famous Japanese customer service - so I just smiled, left, and spent some time with Google Translate to see if I could submit an enquiry on their website. Fun, ish?
Meanwhile, New Shoes v3.0 had arrived, I picked them up, and… wait a second, are they the right size? Answer: no. Close, but not quite: 32 centimeter (correct) but not wide (wrong). As it turns out, this is partially my fault and slightly Amazon’s search function in English on their Japanese website. I now know that although E means wide in the USA, 2E means standard in Japan - and 4E means wide. Whoops. I’d return the shoes to Amazon, but Amazon doesn’t show them as delivered, so… welp, looks like another $50 out the window. So, I’ve got one pair of shoes that are long enough but not wide enough, one pair of shoes that are wide enough but not long enough, and now a third pair of shoes that I’m not going to wear in hopes of returning them tomorrow. I’ve also ordered one final pair of $35, definitely wide, definitely 32 cm shoes to pick up this Wednesday. I can’t believe I’m spending so much time futzing with shoes, but this is what happens when you don’t break in new boots with a couple of long hikes before leaving on a hiking vacation. (I had hoped to, but was will with influenza for the month before I left, dang it.)
While I’m waiting for the laundry to finish, I’m enjoying some okay sake, writing a bit, double-checking all of my hotel reservations for the next six weeks, and getting ready to really get going. Tomorrow’s a very short day, only 10 km or so, but then I’ll finally get back in the rhythm of longer days.
By my count - OK, by my Apple Watch’s count - I’ve walked 345 km since arriving at Tokushima airport. According to the official guidebook, when I’m dropped off where I left off yesterday tomorrow, I’ll be at the approximate 350 km mark; this is good. Even though I skipped some bits here and there, I’m still on track to hit about 1,100 km total when I’m done. I have 15 full-on walking days behind me; there will be a total of about 53 walking days when I’m done (yes, a shout-out to Georges Perec). I’m feeling good; the blister on my left foot is getting a little bit better, and the long-but-not-wide shoes are okay enough to keep going even if the 4th and final pair doesn’t solve the problem this coming Wednesday.
That’s all for now - time to go put the laundry in the dryer and keep working on this (300 mL, I’m not a total lush) bottle of sake. :)