Day 4: T6 to Kamojima
Dear reader: I made a mistake. I thought it would be fine to switch backpacks and boots from my good, time-tested, reliable standbys (Osprey pack, Oboz boots) and go with newer, lighter gear that I’ve heard amazing things about from long-distance hikers: a ULA pack and Hoka boots. This… was not wise. As it turns out, the Hokas have a weirdly narrow toe box, so I have gnarly, painful blisters on three toes. Even worse, there’s something odd about the heel or overall cut of the shoe, so for the first time in my life I also have a blister on one heel that is extraordinarily painful. I spent some time trying to figure out how to buy size 14 boots in Japan after getting to tonight’s hostel and the answer is “no” - so I’m stuck with these boots for the next 58 days. Bummer. With any luck, the blisters will eventually harden into callouses and the problem won’t get worse.
The pack is also annoying: yes, it’s lightweight, but it’s barely padded and I can’t seem to adjust the straps in any way that works for me. It’s awkward to wear - and at the end of the day, it’s excruciating trying to lie down. I’m currently hopped up on ibuprofen and Suntory Highballs, though, and things are less dramatic after a couple of hours. Even so: I don’t think I’d buy or use this pack again, an ULA Camino. Great idea, but annoying in reality. Womp womp.
First, some housekeeping: I misnumbered yesterday’s email! That should have been Day 3 - I’ll fix that when this is eventually a blog, but until then? Hope you like confusion!
Last night’s temple ceremony was good. What can I say? Amazing production values - if you work in themed entertainment, you’d be impressed. After a brief orientation session, the large group of attendees moved to the main temple hall, which is ordinarily barely visible by worshipers, who are corralled at the front edge of it in a gift shop of sorts-cum-temple hall. Two priests chanted; I recognized bits of the Heart Sutra, but not much more. And then things got interesting; they had a beautiful back garden, softly illuminated at night, with a sort of miniature lazy river into which participants deposited small floating cups with lit candles. Magical! And then we handed over our memorial slips, tied to camphor branches, to wish our ancestors peace. Lovely. Once more around the Daishi hall (temples here have two halls, a main hall and one dedicated to Kobo Daishi, the monk who founded the Shingon Buddhist sect), which again wasn’t visible during the day; that felt like a truly special experience.
In the morning, the temple lodgings felt a bit like summer camp with loudspeakers ordering campers (er, pilgrims) to breakfast at 06h55. No problem - I was fairly hungry as the previous evening’s dinner was pescetarian and not particularly lavish. Breakfast was adequate, but not much more; a second bowl of rice helped a little bit, but it’s hard to walk 25 km on such a low number of calories. I was seated with an Englishman for both meals; he’d hiked the PCT previously and was looking for something different, which he was definitely in for. He’d only been to Japan once before and was struggling with some of the menu items (tofu, pumpkin, fish) - I mean, to me, that’s just normal stuff having grown up in a part of California with a large number of Japanese Americans, but I can see how that would be a little challenging for someone used to old school British cooking instead.
I taped up my blisters as best I could and then hit the trail. It was another beautiful day, with temperatures in the high 60s and lots of sunshine; mostly, I was just in awe of all of the beautiful flowers that the locals had planted in their yards. Living in the desert, I just don’t see that at all, so it was a delight to see sparaxis, daffodils, freesia, and all kinds of fleurs all day long.
Today’s temples were mostly unexceptional; the real treat for the day was going to be Temple 10, for two reasons: one, I was headed to Sumotori-ya, a small pilgrim goods shop nearby that had designed the stamp book I’ve been using (seriously lovely, with watercolors of all the temples opposite their stamps) and which appeared to have relatively fancy stuff on offer (yeah, I know it’s a little snobby, but I didn’t want to wear the default, inexpensive pilgrim outfit if I could trade up to something a touch more interesting). Sure enough, the shop owner and his wife were incredibly welcoming - and they even went to the trouble of customizing a traditional hat to fit my oversized head. Amazing! So now I’ve got the traditional getup on hand - what I don’t have, though, is a picture of all of it. (There’s some of it on Instagram, but sans hat which wasn’t ready at the time.) It might well be the silliest I’ve felt in ages, but I’m trying to go with the flow and look the part I’m playing.
The second reason for looking forward to Temple 10 is the kind of highly improbable thing that seems to happen to me on occasion: a handsome young Belgian cub chatted me up on Scruff and was interested in walking part of the pilgrimage with me (he’d done the first 9 temples, but was currently sidelined with an injury in Tokushima). When you’re handed an opportunity like that, you say yes (of course after also explaining that you’re celibate for the duration of the pilgrimage, as is the case for me). Even stranger: after walking up the hill from Sumotori-ya to the temple, local volunteers had set up a couple of tables and chairs as well as shade structures - this is something they only do one day a year, turns out, and I happened to be there at just the right time. To my extremely mild mortification, the local TV news had also sent a cameraman and interviewer to, uh, create content - so they happened to talk to me for some time. I did my best to be cheerful, complimentary of the locals, and say the kind of things that might be useful for tourist promotion. And in the middle of that interview, the Belgian arrived, sat down next to me, and hung in there for the interview while the locals gave us water, tea, energy drinks, cookies, and amazake - it was quite a spread! So yeah: if you have a better Scruff hookup story than ‘met at a volunteer canteen on a Shingon Buddhist pilgrimage while being interviewed by the local TV news’ I’d love to hear it.
We visited T10 together and then headed for lunch at a giant udon restaurant about a mile away on the route to T11. I had tempura with fresh udon - I don’t think I’d ever had noodles like that before - and he had some kind of beef udon. Plus, quelle surprise, beer for the both of us. I greatly enjoyed his company, hoped I wasn’t disappointing him too much what with the whole celibacy thing, and was grateful for the company.
We struck out for T11 after lunch; at this point, my heel was fairly painful, so I suggested I’d accompany him as far as the train station and then perhaps we could meet up for dinner after he got back from the temple. I showed up right on time for the train, checked in to my hostel, and quickly got to the business of seeing what the hell was going on with my feet. Gnarly stuff: three blisters, looking far worse than the day before, and that was followed by a few minutes’ worrying too much that I was going to have to figure out a workaround. Eventually, I calmed down a bit, thought of ways to improvise bandages that might help while walking tomorrow, and made peace with my situation.
The Belgian arrived afterwards and I decided that I was in enough pain to just call it a night - so he caught the train back to his room in Tokushima and I bandaged my feet again and walked over to 7-Eleven to lay in some supplies for the next two days and get myself some supper (and a highball). I’m now lying in bed mostly comfortably - it hurt a lot getting in this position, frustratingly - and have plowed through a char siu bao, egg salad sandwich, tuna sandwich, a strawberries and cream sandwich, and also a Hokkaido cream waffle thing because fuck it, I’m on vacation.
So: that’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll wake up without an aching back! Tomorrow’s different than most days because the next hostel has agreed to transport my pack up the mountain, so I’ll just have a small day pack with me; I hope that’ll help me heal up a bit. It’s also likely going to be very rainy, so it’s time to bust out the rain kilt and hope for the best.
Random notes:
I’m feeling better about the religious aspects of all of this now that I’ve seen many Japanese do pretty much the bare minimum just to get the stamps and no one seems to bat an eye. Similarly, I’m no longer annoyed by the American ladies with $250 haircuts and French manicures who keep their chic baseball hats on at all times while waiting to get stamps. It’s clear that it’s more or less acceptable if you’re here not to chant sutras or pray or reflect, just to get cool swag (no matter how much T4 staff might have yelled at you). After all, this is a business to a certain extent as well…
No cats today. Lots of dogs. So disappointing!
Oh crap, I just remember that some lady in a Honda pulled up and gave me a bunch of food (giving gifts is something locals have done for centuries - if you’re wearing pilgrim garb, it’s likely that someone might hand you an orange or what have you). In this case, it’s something like fish sausages, I think the Belgian said. I hope I remember to do something with those before they go bad… if there were only cats I could feed them to!
Non-Japanese pilgrims met so far, 1 Canadian, several Dutch, 1 Belgian, 1 Englishman, 1 Mexican, and what I assume were more than a few Americans on package hiking tours - and a couple from Oregon for good measure.