Day 28: Nakamura-Sukumo
I did not expect to be sleeping in Sukumo tonight.
But first: let’s go back a little bit. I don’t have a picture of it, but it helps to understand that I’m currently in the least-populated part of the least-populated prefecture on the least-populated main island of Japan - & the local tourist cooperative has a brochure with a great picture that illustrates that by the numbers. Nakamura’s still a reasonably big town, with a beautiful performing arts space and all mod. cons. as they say, but once you’ve left Nakamura, well, you’re really in the middle of nowhere.
Historically, when pilgrims would leave the Nakamura area, they’d be stuck going an awfully long way to the tip of Cape Ashizuri and than half to double-back most of the way towards Nakamura before heading west to follow a track to the next temple, Enko-ji, T39. By the late 1600s, a pilgrim named Shinnen published the first preserved guidebook to the pilgrimage; he was quite the industrious fellow and built something like a luggage storage facility at the three-way junction near the east coast here; on the way down to T38, you could drop your pack, get to T38 and back in three days or so, and then pick up with where you left off without having to’ve carried everything for the long trip down to T38. Very recently, local volunteers have carefully restored some of the original tracks that Shinnen built, used, or described; additionally, they’ve built a shrine called Shinnan-an at the spot where his 1700s coin lockers used to be (so to speak). It was my goal today to walk from where I left off two days ago, follow the old trail he’d built to Luggage Hut, head west a couple of hours, stay the night at a farmhouse with great food and doburoku sake, and continue the next day along to T39 and then to the medium-sized town to Sukumo. That… kind of happened, but also not.
I woke up, packed, had a Western-style breakfast (toast, jam, coffee, eggs), and walked a k or so to the bus stop where I’d boarded the bus for T38 exactly 48 hours ago. It was another fine day here, blue skies, warm, but not hot, and not humid. Awesome. I completely filled my 1.5 liter water bag, brought snacks, and had an extra bottle of water from the hotel. The first hour or so was another road walk, so not that interesting, but also not too bad. Eventually, as the main road neared a 1.5 km long tunnel, the old road veered off to the right and started uphill; apparently, you were to follow that road all of the way, there’d be a tunnel from the early 20th century that has been backfilled on both ends to prevent use. It’s from near there that the old Shinnen henro trail starts; it felt like a relatively short, steep, slippery climb to the pass, followed by a long, leisurely trip downwards. In other words: actual hiking, which is a rarity on this trip. It made me happy. The high point of the trail was this thing:
I’m not great with taking pictures of plants, alas, so that’s all you’re going to get for now - maybe my husband Dan can fix the ones I did take, but I’m guessing nah, they’re sadly not great! That thing was a stunner. The trail itself was in reasonably good shape and thankfully very well signed; it was nearly impossible to get lost, so I didn’t. Yay.
Eventually the trail met up with the other end of the old paved road to the now-shut tunnel; from there it wasn’t too far to Shinnen-an, which was a fine spot to take a break and eat the bean-bun thing I’d brought with me. I also drank a lot of water because dang, it’s heavy carrying 1.5 kg of the stuff!
It was probably only going to take two or three hours to get to tonight’s lodgings, so I dawdled as best I could, hoping not to arrive too early. I passed The Most Frustrating Vending Machine In Japan - it was warm, I was thirsty, and they were sold out of almost everything but plain water - who wants to drink that? Yuck. But there was a nice if stuffy hut for pilgrims there, so I took another break before heading up one more small pass along an old henro trail, again skipping the (almost completely untraveled) paved road in favor of a lovely walk through the forest.
This was shaping up to be a very fine day indeed. And then eventually I made it to the place where I was to stay tonight… and thought hm. Okay. This looks kind of shitty. I hear the food’s amazing and they brew their own sake in an unusual style that’s hard to find anywhere else, but… is there anyone here at all? Eventually the neighbor (I think) came over to say something in Japanese I didn’t understand other than ‘soon’ - and then he opened the door to the guesthouse and, well, ugh. I hate dirty floors. That tiny space was a dining room crammed with stuff and it just didn’t look clean. But hey, a kitty!
So… what to do? I got my phone charging off my battery and considered my options. There was a bus leaving in about two hours, but I didn’t want to skip the final Shinnen trail down to the valley to the west. I also didn’t want to wait longer than an hour or so because the place didn’t look that great - and although I’d emailed the day before to confirm my reservation, no one responded - and frankly, that dirty floor didn’t inspect confidence. So, after waiting what felt like long enough to save face, I went inside, put a 5,000 yen note under a paperweight where it’d be obvious, and found a receipt to leave a note on the back of: “Sorry I missed you. Chris Pratt, 5/7/2025.” I figured that would cover any expenses incurred for food and would be the minimally decent thing to do. But what next?
Well, it was getting to be close to 3 pm, which meant maybe 2 hours of good daylight left. If I waited for the bus, it’d take me as long to get to the train station as it would to walk the shorter, more modern trail - but damn it, I came here to walk the Shinnen trail, so walk it I did. I figured it couldn’t be more than 7 km to the paved road on the other side of the mountains & then maybe another 3 km to a train station from there; I felt like I had plenty of gas left in the tank, I had snacks and water, and I figured, you know, might as well.
The first four plus k were a gradual uphill on a paved road with absolutely zero traffic; it was easy walking, moderately interesting, and given the sun’s positioning, vaguely eerie as well. It felt a lot darker then I expected - and once the road hit the pass summit, the trail took off straight ahead, leaving paved roads in every direction but the one I was taking. It wasn’t a fast or a comfortable trail, but it was thankfully well-signed; there were a number of narrow, slippery bits with steep falls, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The only truly scary thing was startling some kind of enormous bird into flight - I kept thinking ptarmigan but I’m guessing those things don’t even exist here! No idea what that was. But eventually, the trail made it back down the mountain, where there was to my surprise and delight a fully functional Coca-Cola machine with an ice cold Coke available. Damn that was tasty! So only another two or three k to what I thought was a train station, but eventually realized was a bus stop (when I couldn’t see any kind of platform on the elevated train tracks nearby). It didn’t take long for the bus to come; I booked a 2nd night at the Hotel Avan in Sukumo for only thirty bucks to guarantee somewhere to sleep once I got off the bus, and before you know it I’d checked in, got on the wi-fi, got my laundry going, enjoyed a free welcome ice cream bar, and headed next door to a totally adequate if uninspiring restaurant where I had a piece of meat with cabbage, a whisky highball, and a mini bowl of udon. Total mileage today: just shy of 19 miles, which is a lot longer than I had wanted to go, but on the bright side I’m very happy that I’m capable of walking that far; there are no issues with pain, blisters, or anything like that & I’m now in bed with a canned highball from the Family Mart down the black and reasonably happy.
Tomorrow’s going to be one of those days where I’m largely waiting for the next day, but there’s one temple only a short bus ride away - the last one in Kochi prefecture! - and there’s a magnificent seaside onsen an hour’s walk away that might just be a magnificent idea.
Random notes: Ever wondered what to do with those old AV cables that you used in the late 1990s to hook up your S-VHS VCR? Why not repurpose them to prevent people from using trails they shouldn’t?
My Apple Watch battery died before the end of the 2nd, shorter hike I did today; I wonder: does that meant iPhone was able to count those missing steps? Or am I underestimating the amount I walked today?
Unusually, there was a roadside produce stand that was selling rosemary for 100 yen. I’ve never seen that used in Japanese cooking; Google Translate suggested the sign mostly tried to explain what to do with the stuff. I didn’t need any, but I did enjoy smelling it (there’s a rosemary bush in our back yard), so I left a coin there just for the privilege of that.
Eventually, I did receive an email from the tourist board that’d booked the farmhouse asking where I was; that led to a polite exchange of emails. They were mortified, I was cordial, they offered to leave a boxed lunch for me tomorrow morning, I declined. I think we’re all good now; this could’ve been avoided with some basic rules such as ‘please be here at this time for check-in’ and ‘please call or text this number if I’m not here’ but alas, none of that happened.
I’m glad I hiked all of the old trails in this part of the island today - and also happy, I suppose, that I skipped the 55 km down to the cape and back up the other side. From what I saw from the bus, that just didn’t look fun. I’m curious what the next week or so is going to be like.