Day 24: T37-Ariigawa
One of the most brain-chewingly confusing things when planning this trip was trying to get place names correct - it’s only over the last couple of days that things are starting to make a bit more sense. Here’s the prime example in this, the western half of Kochi prefecture: there are two places called Shimanto: Shimanto Town and Shimanto City - and neither of them have a train station called Shimanto anything. Instead, the biggest place in Shimanto Town appears to be called Kubokawa and the biggest place in Shimanto City appears to be called Nakamura. Why? Well, as far as I can tell, both the town and the city appear to be artificial place names that arose when a lot of smaller towns merged together to become one political entity. Long story short, it’s weird when you’re looking at railway maps and don’t see anywhere called Shimanto even though there are two of them on highway signs. Similarly, the guesthouse I’m staying at tonight is in Kuroshio, but Kuroshio’s another weird town-construct that covers two towns as well as a number of villages; the train stop here is called Ariigawa, so I’m going to call it that.
Anyhow! Last night was a disappointment. The sake brewery experience was decidedly meh; although one of their sakes was really good, even though I was the only customer in the restaurant, it took forever to get the flight of sake I ordered (c’mon, two employees in a shop, how hard can it be to pour four tiny cups of sake?) and the food I ordered was no substitute for actual dinner: there was a piece of cooked pork, a bowl of rice, the “pickles” weren’t tsukemono but something Western-style pickled carrots (not as good as your average taqueria!) and the “peppers” with meat-miso sauce were raw green bell peppers, not grilled shishito peppers or anything delicious. Even worse, portions were absolutely miniscule, so I was very fucking hungry when I left. On the way back to the temple, I saw a huge drugstore/grocery so thought I might get something more to eat, but nope, it was looking really sad that late in the day so I contented myself with a red bean bun. That was probably the first night I went to bed hungry, waaaaah.
Walls were decidedly thin in the temple’s dorm; I could hear some dude either next door or hall snoring like crazy all night long - and even worse, it was a snore that sounded like someone was about to cum, which was extra creepy because it was in a fucking temple. And then some idiot next door set an iPhone alarm to go off repeatedly starting at 04h30 - who does that? Why? Did they think they were going to be doing anything at all that early other than waiting for the rest of Japan to wake up? I have no idea.
Unusually, the temple more or less required guests to attend a morning service before breakfast, so I got to the temple’s main hall right before they started at 06h00 sharp. It was a fascinating experience; a monk not only read the usual sutras, but he accompanied himself on a humongous taiko-style drum while chanting the Heart Sutra. This of course got me thinking a bit - I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around that sutra, as even in translation it contains a number of references to things that I don’t understand. But the experience of hearing it chanted to drumming, amplified, almost reminded me of (don’t laugh) at being at Day for Night: The Pleasure Arc in Sydney in 2023. There are spaces where language doesn’t mean, it feels somehow; that’s always been true of a lot of music I love (both Severed Heads and Melvins, for example, tend to write lyrics that sound more than they mean. Pavement, too, probably.) And when that experience really gets going, especially if it’s a communal experience, if there’s incense, alcohol, what have you, it’s a powerful thing. So why wouldn’t part of the appeal of a service like that one be being in that luminous space, with other worshipers, chanting along, being a part of that?
Breakfast was fine; it got the job done. As I sat down, a fellow guest kindly offered me a bowl of soup; I ate quickly and left, stopping to clean up the rice I’d clumsily chopsticked onto the floor (don’t know why, gonna blame lack of sleep on that one). I’d decided the night before to cut today’s walking from about 28 km to 18 instead by taking a train two stations further along; it was a short walk to the station, which was somewhat confusing as it was a four-platform station with two separate ticket halls, one for Japan Railways and the other for the Tosa Kuroshio Railway, a small local operator that runs a 43 km line that heads west to Nakamura; I’ll be walking to Nakamura the day after tomorrow & it always kind of blows my mind that what takes less than an hour on the train takes two full days to walk.
The train ride was unusual in that there was a long tunnel that had the sense of sloping downwards - it was a bit like being in a drain - and then what I presume was a giant loop to lose more elevation didn’t feel like much of anything at all. I’d chosen to skip the first 10 km of the walk as it appeared to be a road walk on the shoulder of the main road to Nakamura; that seemed like a fine idea as the first 10 k of today’s walk were relatively fine. The high point was an interesting stretch that kept passing signboards that only said ROAD CLOSED in English, but which contained a lot of Japanese text explaining that pilgrims were welcome as they’d managed to create a detour as of April 1. As it turns out, the ROAD quite literally meant the old road, which went through this tunnel…
… but the road is missing once you get to the other end of the tunnel as it’s been intentionally destroyed to make room an enormous, newer tunnel that’s been constructed for the not-yet-opened Kochi Expressway segment that starts a few k north. Sure enough, they’d built an enormous workaround for pilgrims only - and it was extra cool to be able to see the new expressway long before it’ll open.
From there, the walking experience started to fall apart a bit; there’s a big-ish town called Saga on the coast that I was excited to get to as there’s apparently an amazing seared bonito restaurant there, but nope, it’s Golden Week here in Japan, so the line was a definite skip, so I had a couple of rice balls from Lawson instead. And then the walking really went downhill; there was an alternate route that led off around the coast and about a kilometer and a half in… there was a small rope tied across the path, a huge amount of obvious weather damage, and a steep staircase going up with the handrail collapsed across it and a ton of leaf litter, but… passable? Yes, as long as you don’t mind going around the ‘don’t use these stairs’ rope at the top of the stairs. Whoops. Yeah, they can’t all be winners! And from there it was going to be another eight kilometers or so along that same busy highway, with not much of a shoulder. Yecch. So I found a train station that wasn’t even signed - it was way up a hill and I have to wonder if anyone ever gets on or off of the train there - and considered waiting 90 minutes for the train…
Pros: no road walking. Cons: about US $1.50 - and I did come to Shikoku to walk the pilgrimage, right? Plus I could probably stand another hour or two of walking to work off the red bean doughnut from Lawson - and who knows, maybe I’d see more cool things? So I headed back down to the main road. The trail got slightly better for about 3 k - finally, some room to avoid traffic - but then got significantly worse; the last 3 k weren’t fun at all, especially the bit where you walked on a very narrow ledge in a very long tunnel for 300 plus meters. Yuck. But I saw a vintage VW campervan with a 19-67 license plate, a deserted okonomiyaki stand, a whole lot of trash on a very unsightly shoreline, and yet another cat apparently too weak to meow (seriously, why so many of those here? You’d think they’d be feasting on fish daily!)
But hey, I made it to my guesthouse intact. The enormous blister on my left foot is finally to the point where it’s just hardened skin, so easier to walk on today than before. The Salomon shoes have broken in nicely, my pack isn’t too heavy, the innkeeper is friendly, I’ve finally had a shower, and I’m resting comfortably. Tomorrow is another 18 km walk to a luxury spa hotel - the spendiest night of the trip - and after that I’ve got a couple of nearos (i.e., days with the potential for near-zero walking), which will come in handy if the weather turns rainy as it’s expected to. There are still a couple of minor details I need to sort - reconfirm a rural inn for Wednesday night, try to cancel a fancy inn for Thursday night and stay at an inexpensive business hotel instead - but that’s it for now! Only 30 minutes until supper. Hooray!
Random notes: One of today’s two rice balls was from the same amazing place as the two days before. Score!
Found not one, but two critters hanging out between my back and my backpack today, yikes. One of them made it out safely - go, spider, go! - but the caterpillar didn’t. Lots of those things about at the moment!
I gave up and ordered a tiny inflatable pillow from Amazon. I’m tired of not having anything bigger than a single slice of Wonder bread available to prop my neck up while I type these emails. Waaah! Which reminds me, I should cancel my free trial of Amazon Japan soon…