May 8, 2025

Day 29: Sukumo (T39)

Given yesterday’s events, I woke up in the same hotel I’d meant to check into later on the day, which made today’s walking extra easy as I could just leave my pack in my hotel room. I didn’t even pack my day bag, just my pilgrim’s bag, which is a simple cotton (tiny) messenger-style bag with room for the basics: stamp book, name slips, incense, candles, a lighter, a pen, a sutra book, and a Buddhist stole. Of course, turns out there’s also room for earbuds and a red bean bud if you’re me…

I woke up way too early this morning, but lost track of time in bed reading before suddenly lurching into action just before 8 am. There’s a train that was leaving in 10 minutes not too far away; trains are half the price of buses + faster as well, so that made the most sense for me, to take the train back to more-or-less where I stopped walking yesterday. I ate the red bean bun while walking as quickly as possible to the station; the train ride was uninteresting as the train entered a tunnel almost immediately and stayed there almost all the way to the next station. Rats.

From the station, it was fairly quick to get to Enko-ji, the last temple in Kochi prefecture; there wasn’t much to say about the walk other than it was pleasant. Another warm, sunny day, with clear skies and no one about. At the temple, I stopped to enjoy a cold cafe latte from their vending machine before bowing at the gate and entering - to my amusement, there was yet another monk with a gas leaf blower tidying things up, so it wasn’t exactly peaceful! I purified myself (i.e, washed my hands and mouth), rang the temple bell, and realized that there was absolutely no one else there. The gas blower went away, I sat on a bench for a moment to fill out two name slips, and realizing my good fortune, I took the time to actually pull out the English-language sutra book for the first time on this trip. Somewhat frustratingly, it translates everything but the Heart Sutra, but even so, it was nice to silently reënact what a devout pilgrim would do, going through the various texts that you would recite. It’s such an odd thing to me; I grew up attending a Presbyterian church & Scripture readings were tortuous; I think they must’ve used the King James version or something similar, because almost none of it made sense. It’s oddly easier reading these texts because the translations are clear, even if the texts themselves are unfamiliar. I still don’t really understand them either, so I’m sticking with the last few lines of the Heart Sutra that I do understand for now, but hey. Am I really here in any kind of a spiritual way? I really don’t think so; it’s more interesting to me in kind of a Gen X ironic/disaffected way in the sense that I’m experiencing all of this at a remove. I’m trying to understand how all of this religious technology (for lack of a better word) came to be; it was imported from India via China, and why has it worked well for so long? Is there anything inherently better or special about reciting sutras as opposed to reading the Bible or the Qu’ran? For me, I do prefer the short, direct, simplicity of sutras (and also their opaqueness - they’re hard to ‘read’ in that sense), but I digress…

I must have had the temple to myself for twenty minutes or so, so I used that time as best I could, to sit there quietly for a while and reflect on things. What did it mean for Kukai, a son from a noble family, to more-or-less turn his back on that world, travel to China, and return as a patriarch of esoteric Buddhism? Would he have been as effective if he hadn’t also been a standout calligrapher? He was also apparently very good at civil engineering projects - I kind of get the sense he must’ve been extremely charming and had enough exposure to the world outside Japan to have been successful at opening up Japanese lives to the possibility of a bigger world, albeit in this case essentially spiritually speaking. There’s also a fascinating misattribution of the Iroha to Kukai - it sounds very much like an OuLiPo type thing as it contains every kana only once (I mean seriously, if French were written that way, I can definitely imagine Perec having written something similar). And then ultimately I found myself thinking about something that’s eluded me for a while now; I don’t think I read the texts correctly, so what’s true in my mind is that Shingon Buddhism asks one to meditate on what the world would be like if the letter A didn’t exist - that is, what there is without human language, and that’s a fun one for me. Although the physical world exists separately from humans and our collective thoughts, I do believe that we’ve also collectively constructed something else, something not exactly natural, through language; for me, losing that language, or being able to exist in a space without language or thought, is the key to enlightenment or satisfaction.

Off to the stamp office, the first visitors began to arrive, time to move on with my day. Getting back to my hotel didn’t take more than two hours; I was plenty tired, though, so I just straight up took a nap. Yay naps. Afterwards, I figured I’d keep the day simple, so I took a bus to the local onsen, enjoyed a fine view of the Pacific while soaking my wearing bones, took a bus back to the train station, walked to Joyfull (think Denny’s, kind of, a chain restaurant that’s pretty good but which more importantly lets you order by scanning a QR code, making it easy to order without being able to read or speak Japanese), walked back to my hotel, and wrote this newsletter.

It’s supposed to start raining tomorrow morning; it’s about 20 km to the next temple, but I’ve got my rain gear ready & the inn there supposedly allows check-in starting at noon, so I think I’ll try to get as much walking done as I can before the rain really kicks in & then spend the afternoon relaxing. Oh, and I’ll cross the halfway mark of the pilgrimage at some point early tomorrow morning. I haven’t done it yet, but I plan on updating my planning spreadsheet with ‘actual kilometers walked’ to see where I’m at so far.

Random notes:

I totally want this sign as a T-shirt:

The best thing about Japanese people being incredibly polite is that no one has said a thing about the faintly ridiculous getup I’m wearing when I’m off to do temple stuff. Today I was wearing a white Montbell T-shirt with a cartoon bear dressed as a pilgrim along with my pilgrim’s vest, which has the text in gold thread on the back & not as a black screenprint. I haven’t seen any Japanese wearing anything like that except for I think one tour group leader. For all I know, it probably isn’t something you’re supposed to wear unless you’ve done the pilgrimage twenty times before. Oops.

It would appear that the local love motel is called the Pink Whale. Its billboard was… something. Thanks to the Internet, I also now know where to find a database of all of the love hotels in Japan. I’ve still never been to one, but who knows… someday? maybe? Seems kinda hetero, though.