Day 30: Sukumo-T40
According to the canonical route guide published by Buyodo Co., Ltd., I am currently at km 593 of the pilgrimage route; the total distance is 1,137 km. This means that I’m more than halfway done. According to the Fitness app on my iPhone, my Apple Watch has recorded 588 kilometers walked so far, so I’m roughly in sync with the standard distance walked for this pilgrimage. That’s 365 miles for us Americans - my previous record was for the Moselsteig, a long-distance trail in Germany that I hiked in 2017. That trail is 365 kilometers long or about 227 miles; that felt easier, but probably because it’s more traditional (think proper hiking trails) than here. (It also didn’t hurt that I speak German; it’s very easy for me to get around in Germany.)
All in all, I think I’m doing pretty damn good if I’m being honest. Although I’d fallen out of shape over the past year or so, it feels wonderful to be back in a place where I feel like my body is performing well, especially given my age. (For example, I ran into the annoying, loud-talking Frenchmen sans the fiancée with white-girl dreadlocks today & handily overtook them on a steep uphill section over a mountain pass. Hey, small victories, right?) Even better, my belly is back to its usual size, which means bathing here is easy again (at the start of the trip, it was physically challenging to sit down on that tiny plastic stool and wash myself).
Anyhow! I did not sleep well last night and I blame tea. I just drank way, way too much of the stuff, ignoring the simple fact that there’s a lot of caffeine in there. For some reason, I kept running into convenience stores and vending machines with unsweetened iced tea - even better, iced Earl Grey - so I kept trying different brands. Bad idea, Pratt! (Also, the Family Mart house-brand version is by far the best for my money.) That meant I woke up after a whopping two or three hours’ sleep and couldn’t figure out how I could get back to sleep when it wasn’t even midnight…
Eventually, I stumbled awake after a fitful night, ate a red-bean bun, and readied myself for a long day walking in the rain. The day was off to a good start, though; as I looked out the hotel room window into the parking lot, a bona fide Japanese bear was putting on his riding gear and getting ready to take off on an enormous BMW bike, more-or-less the same one my partner Dan rides. Woof.
The thing for me about walking in the rain is simple: once you get started, it sucks stopping. Using your phone basically doesn’t work; trying to fish anything out of your pack is a hassle and you run the risk of getting other stuff wet, which sucks. My wet-weather gear is simple: a cheap pack cover from Montbell I bought years ago that barely fits my new pack, a rain kilt (looks odd, works well), long synthetic pants, gloves and waterproof (well, theoretically) covers for them, the usual pilgrim’s hat, but with something like a thick shower cap stretched over it, and dry bags inside my main pack as protection should the pack cover and the pack itself fail to keep stuff dry (most importantly, my passport, stamp book, and electronic equipment).
All of that stuff worked well today, albeit with a couple of notable exceptions: the waterproof over-gloves don’t appear to be anywhere near waterproof at this point (they’re hella old), so my gloves and hands were sopping wet within an hour or two. More annoyingly, using hiking poles means my forearms are angled upwards a bit, so rain (I think?) got in that way as well, meaning I had soggy elbows. On the bright side, though, everything in my pack stayed nicely dry, so yay.
Today’s walk was definitely one of the good ones for this trip: within a kilometer or so, I was already climbing out of the town of Sukumo and up into the mountains. The first hour or two were almost entirely in the forest, with occasional detours to small villages; if anything, today smelled extraordinarily good, as the citrus trees were all in bloom & the forest itself smelled, well, nicely foresty in the rain. I didn’t see any other pilgrims all day long, save for the Frenchmen.
Eventually, after a long, slow descent down the other side of the mountains, I stopped at a pilgrims’ rest hut and ate snacks (Muji matcha chocolate puffed wheat, not a good choice) and drank water. In doing so, I had my hands outside of my gloves long enough to get fairly cold, which wasn’t comfortable. Thankfully, when I got going again, I realized I was on the outskirts of a small town with a convenience store; on the way there, I saw one of the beardy dudes from the bus to Nakamura waiting for another bus (hm, is he a pilgrim or what? sure seems to be taking a lot of buses!) and then the Frenchmen leaving the convenience store. Dear reader: I am nominally not a coffee drinker, but I needed something warm to hold and coffee seemed ideal. (It was.) The friendly staff there helped me with what to order and how to use the machine - and whoa, the cafe latte there is amazing compared to the dreck I’ve had at 7-Eleven back home in the USA. (I should’ve guessed!) That felt amazing - within minutes my hands felt great and I celebrated with a two-pack of pancakes with maple syrup and butter (only $1!).
I had thought the remaining trail would be entirely on a paved road, but I was quickly proved wrong - and some of it was uphill to boot. It was a pleasant, diverting mix of on- and offroad, uphill and downhill, with helpful signage everywhere. It felt good to just give in and not be looking at my phone every few minutes to confirm I was on the right track (not that it would’ve worked in the rain!).
Eventually, the walk settled down into a lengthy walk along a broad river - once that started, it was just a matter of settling in to the last few kilometers before the ryokan I’d booked into. I almost made it, but saw an enormous supermarket on the other bank, so quickly changed my mind because I was hungry. There was a curry food truck out front, but I didn’t have enough change for that on hand (my wallet was safely in a totally inaccessible dry bag, so out of the question), so I settle for a $2 tray of cold gyoza which I ate on a bench in front of a demo TV near the checkout lines. I’m not sure that was the right place to do that, but the local homeless lady was sitting there the entire time before moving on to the bus stop outside, so I figure it was good enough. Although my feet were toasty warm and dry, the rest of me was wet and starting to get cold and uncomfortable, so I was very happy to get the final kilometer behind me and check into my room.
As luck would have it, this ryokan is pure, unadulterated, old-school 1950s Japan at its finest - there aren’t a lot of options these days to see what it would’ve been like to’ve traveled just after World War II. Kyoto has a number of exquisite ryokan that have been there for centuries and I’ve seen one or two that were built in recent times, but this is as old-school as it gets. It obviously has seen better days; it offers no meals at all (traditionally, ryokans should serve dinner and breakfast), but the owner was friendly, the bed linens are spotlessly clean, the pillow is fantastic and the futon is thick… and I am too tall to stand up almost anywhere in the entire building. Worse yet, the toilet is up a few steps, then down a flight of steps, all of which have low ceilings, and then down a long hallway that is not even 6’ tall. I hope to God I don’t have to take a leak tonight, which will be a minor miracle as I’m 55 and drank a humongous beer with dinner tonight…
I checked in at maybe 2 pm; I immediately hung up all of the wet stuff around the room and got the (fantastically dusty, eww) heat pump fired up in dehumidification mode. I hope that does something. And then I took a nap, or tried to; guests kept checking in as there’s almost nowhere else to stay in this small town. I heard German and Japanese for sure; I’m guessing the Frenchmen are staying at the business hotel on the other side of town because they allow smoking.
Eventually, it sounded like the rain let up at around 4 pm, so I quickly hopped out of bed, put on the pilgrim stuff (although I did forget the wagesa), and walked one block to Kanjizai-ji, temple 40. Given the weather, I had the place to myself again; it was a real challenge getting the candles and incense lit and to not blow everyone else’s out in the candle stand (there were still 2 candles burning from earlier in the day). It’s a pleasant temple, nothing special, and I enjoyed reflecting on things today…
Afterwards, the innkeeper let me know that the bath was ready - it was just enough to get me clean, but not somewhere I wanted to linger. And then I walked to a restaurant he’d recommended, an ancient Western-style restaurant that turned out to be indefinitely closed for vague reasons. Hm. I started walking to Joyfull, but decided that no, enough of that for now, I should eat somewhere local, so I wound up at a fish restaurant popular with the locals. That was totally okay; I had an order of fried squid (ehhh), an absolutely enormous beer (yum), and a set meal with sashimi and eel (okay, but truly miserly portions). Not amazing, but the michi-no-eki (roadside rest area) across the street was still open, so I bought some kind of bun labeled ‘apple’ but which turned out to essentially taste like a rotund Twinkie. Weird. And then back to my room, where I’m writing this now.
Random notes: Today’s wildlife sighting included one very cute marten, one very tiny land crab, and one adorable cat.
All of this wetness also meant it’s time for Chub Rub, Round 2: my inner thighs are an absolute horror at the moment. Thankfully, they’re dry now and I’m confident that the Japanese diaper rash ointment will do its thing again tomorrow and make this stop. Ouch.
For the first time on this trip, there was a distance marker labeled in not only kilometers, but miles! Of course, they got the abbreviation wrong, but whatever. It’s weird seeing “0.88 ml” when “1.4 km” would make a lot more sense. Overall, although I still don’t seem to be able to figure out temperatures in Celsius, distances in meters are no problem at all. On flat ground, I manage about 5 km per hour; it’s maybe 4 if it’s hilly, 3 if it’s steep.