May 19, 2025

Day 40: Dogō-Hojo

I’ll start with the good things: this morning’s breakfast was the best I’ve had on the entire trip - and the overall experience at the ryokan was probably the best I’ve had since Kyoto in 2001. Sure, dinner didn’t blow me away, but everything else did - traditional Japanese hospitality is a complicated thing that involves a number of small touches such as replacing the ‘work seating’ in your room with ‘rest seating’ while you’re at dinner (while also turning off the room lights and installing a different, softer light source that you can turn off from your futon), welcoming you to your room with tea and a sweet or two, and in this case, something extremely old-school: taking your picture at dinner and then delivering the printed film to you at check-out. I haven’t dared look at the pictures yet, but you can see how that sort of tradition is truly dead in 2025 but also incredibly charming as it reminds you of ancient times (B.i., before iPhone) and how hostelries used to really go the extra mile so that you could arrive home with great memories of your trip.

And now, the worst: today was 25 kilometers of suck, trail-wise. It was all road walking, almost all next to busy highways, and often on sharply canted road-edges or on degraded pavement (ouch). It started unpleasantly and didn’t get much better for the entire day; as a result, I somehow am hurting more than on any other day of the trip. Now, I’ve just had a fairly good supper with the largest beer I’ve ever seen, which helped, but man am I stiff, sore, and slightly cranky.

Before I continue, please allow me a brief interruption; last night, before supper, my friend Adam texted me from Cannes, where he was awaiting the premier of a film called PILLION, which was loosely adapted from a book of his, BOX HILL. If you haven’t read BOX HILL, well, I think might well enjoy it, especially if you’re gay, and even more so if you tend towards the bear, kink, leather, or BDSM edge of the spectrum. It was filming the last time I was in London; Adam declined to read the screenplay, understanding that it was the director’s prerogative to do whatever he wanted to with the source material after having paid for it, so he was going in cold to PILLION last night. How was the movie? Apparently really good - I went through a dozen or so reviews this morning, all of them positive. And hey, if that isn’t enough, it’s even got Jake Shears in it.

Anyhow! After breakfast, I packed up and slowly left, feeling guilty that an elderly lady was waiting for me with a shoehorn I didn’t need. (Oh, the Japanese and their shoehorns!). Right as I stepped outside, she came back with some candy for me as a present for the pilgrim - nice! I don’t like candy much, but you can be assured I thanked her profusely.

The first couple of hours slowly meandered towards the northwest corner of Matsuyama and then went further out into the countryside a tiny bit, weaving through rice fields and suburbs. This is what most of today’s trail looked like for the first couple of hours:

At some point I wound up going up a narrow country road; the sign said ‘straight ahead’ but all I could see was a locked gate, so I turned left instead. Suddenly, I heard a pickup honking behind me - the driver was gesticulating for me to come back, so he reversed until he got back to the turnoff, then motioned for me to go that way. I mean, how friendly is that? Turns out there was a small path not visible from the main road that took off to the left from the locked gate and that was where I needed to be. So thank you, farmer/pickup driver, for setting me on the correct path.

It was a short, steep uphill slog to get to the temple, where I was warmly welcomed by an infestation of what I assume were bees of some kind, thankfully not aggressive. Beyond that, though, was a lovely temple in the forest - and ancient urinals hiding behind the belfry. I ran into the Australian fella from a couple of days ago, the guy I assume is into Vipassana meditation, who chatted too loudly for my comfort and used a couple of words I wouldn’t use myself at a temple, but hey. Not my problem. He was friendly enough. Unusually, this temple’s offices were way back down the hill, so I headed back down the hill and got my stamp - and another one of those cheap 500 mL Coke cans. They’re really too big to be enjoyable; I kind of understand why I’d almost want to pay more for a smaller can, but those are a different vending machine company and not always available.

Anyhow, only 1.7 km to the next temple (and last one for the day), an easy flat meander. That one was small, homely, and comfortable. I noticed the Aussie guy had parked himself up on the platform surrounding the main temple and was (I assume) meditating, which struck me as frankly kind of tacky. It reminded me of going to Borobudur years ago with friends and watching a bunch of Aussie women doing stuff on top of the temple that I might describe as Instagram yoga influencer type nonsense. From my limited understanding of Shingon, or at least my experience at visiting dozens of temples here, not once have I seen Japanese people sitting in the lotus pose at a temple, especially not just to the side of the main image there. I… well, it really isn’t my place to criticize, and maybe it’s totally OK to do that, but it felt off to me.

Anyhow, one last stamp for the day. I took off my pilgrim stuff - ugh, so sweaty and gross. The pilgrim’s vest I have has got weird stains on it at this point that aren’t coming out in the wash - I assume the heat, sweat, and dyes in my backpack are doing something unpleasant there. I also feel better when walking without all of that stuff on - the hat alone is enough to mark me as a pilgrim, really, and the extra layer of clothing is uncomfortable. I checked the map - maybe another 14 kilometers to my hotel, and how bad could that be? Answer: Pretty bad. For much of the way, there wasn’t even a proper separate bicyclist/pedestrian path, just a tiny area along the road painted green, suggesting that it was OK to walk there. Eventually, the road met the coast, which was marginally better (the view out a number of islands just off of the coast was superb), but not much - and then it turned inland again. My fun meter was well and truly pegged at this point, so I put in the earbuds, stopped by a random supermarket to get a blueberry bun, and resigned myself to Just Doing It for however many more k.

Finally, I was at my hotel, a seaside onsen with a few guest rooms and no English speaking staff; although their online check-in process apparently charged my credit card the full price of the stay, the actual hotel is very offline so asked for me to pay cash, which I gladly did - I would’ve paid almost anything to just sit down for a while at this point in the day. Thankfully, my room turned out to be better than expected: a small Japanese-style room with a thicker than usual futon, but with an elaborate bathroom attached (again, not toilet - that’s small and by the entrance to the room), facing the ocean, with a small balcony, a sink, and then a proper bath with a sliding door, with the usual low shower + stool business as well as an actual bath set into the floor filled with nice, hot spa water and with a view out to the Seto Inland Sea, complete with a privacy curtain in case you’re worried about fishermen seeing your junk. That was frankly kind of wonderful and well worth the $90 I paid for breakfast, dinner, and the room. In fact, I’ll probably head back out there for one more soak before going to bed.

Dinner was surprisingly lavish for such an out-of-the-way place (Hojo is about halfway between Matsuyama and Imabari - which I’ve taken to calling Towel Town in my head for reasons which I’ll explain tomorrow - and it’s a fairly small place). There was beef, tempura, sashimi, some kind of rice with stuff cooked alongside it, pickles, and so on - and also an absolutely enormous beer. Best of all, I spent much of the meal watching a little girl play with cats; I was seated facing the window looking out to the sea & there was a patio there with a couple of (I assume) feral cats begging for food. The girl was probably 8 or 10 years old and was very intrigued by my dinner and beard; we had as rudimentary a conversation as I can manage, basically “Is that a cat? Oh! That is a cat. It is cute!” and then her Mom allowed her outside to play with the cats, who tolerated her antics in an adorable kinda way. So yeah. Cats! And a feast. And afterwards, a 100 yen massage chair for fifteen minutes or so. Hashtag living my best life, I am.

Random notes: Walked past a cemetery filled with Russian POWs today, which of course led to a Wikipedia rabbit hole - I didn’t know that Japan held half of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands as of 1945, but lost those in the last days of World War II. Huh.

Regretfully, I decided one block away from a ramen restaurant to just get an egg salad sandwich at Family Mart instead. I need to be better with taking a long mid-day break if possible; I think that’d be helpful when dealing with shitty walks like today’s.

Alternatively, though, you know, I could just not do stuff like today. In fact, the weather is supposed to go to shit the day after tomorrow - so hey, two birds, one stone. Time to take a train to ditch 3 hours of road walking, visit all of the temples in Imabari instead (bonus: I’ll walk by my hotel, so I can leave my backpack there!), and then be ready for the rain on Wednesday with my stamp book safely packed away and away from moisture. This means I can figure out other stuff to do on Wednesday, like visit a museum or a spa or maybe even a towel showcase. Towels!

Finally, the mystery plants covered in paper bags made an appearance today, the first I’ve seen in about a month. One of the bags was open - this was what was in it. Any ideas what this is?