Day 42: Imabari-Miyoshi
Today was one of those odd days that happened only because there’s a massive trade fair in Imabari at the moment; when I had originally planned this trip, I had meant to have spent two nights in Dogo to give myself time to rest up a bit. However, that couldn’t happen because the hotel rates in Imabari doubled for the trade fair, so I had to scoot along more quickly than I wanted to, which in essence meant padding the schedule with extra time in the city of Iyo-Saijō, one more night than I had wanted to. As it turns out, this worked out fairly well because it started raining this morning before noon and it’s still raining right now.
Because I elected to skip a tedious road walk yesterday and visit almost all of the temples in Imabari instead, that left today radically shorter than originally planned, with just one temple to visit; that, I managed to get done literally five minutes before the rain started; right as I was putting my stamp book in its dry bag and sealing my backpack against the rain, it started to rain. From there, it was probably only another ten or twelve kilometers to my inn; I had pinged them earlier on Instagram (yes, that’s their preferred mode of communication, oddly) and they generously agreed to meet me two hours earlier, at 14h00, so that I could get out of the rain and just relax.
Breakfast at the JR Clement hotel in Imabari was pretty much the worst of the entire trip, alas. It was a buffet, but with bad coffee, no tea options, and a wide range of unappetizing slop. Hell, even the rice was making me think fondly of cooking Minute Rice in the 1970s. Yes, it was that bad. It was also jam-packed as the hotel was completely sold out for Bari-Ship. Not cool, man. After I gave up on eating, I retreated to my room, trying to figure out a game plan; the parameters were basically get to the temple before it started raining, don’t miss a train to get back to the train station I left off at yesterday, and don’t get to the inn before 14h00. There was no obvious way to do all of that, but at least I nailed the first part. While I was putting on my rain gear and sealing my pack, a Taiwanese (I think; Chinese-speaking, at least) pilgrim gave me a piece of cheese (huh), which made me think fondly of eating Easy Cheese straight from the can in the 1980s - that was odd. As far as I could tell - and as it turns out, I was sadly not wrong - the entire day was going to be tedious road walking in the rain. This led me to think of, well, death. Don’t misunderstand, not in a bad or gloomy way, but it did make me think of pilgrimages as a kind of death. Pilgrims here, for example, typically dress in all white, just as you would before your own burial (i.e., a shroud). And when you’re a pilgrim, you are in some sense experiencing what death might be like. You’re far away from friends and family, you’ve agreed to forego a number of pleasures that make life (at least for me) worth living (sex, companionship in general, ease, dolce far niente, etc.), and on the flip side, it’s likely that you are in some sense also dead to your friends and family - they’re going about their daily lives, but you’re somewhere else. Not there. And yes, it’s 2025, and it’s amazingly easy to stay in touch (believe me, that’s wonderful - I love getting random Signal messages, texts, emails, etc. from friends every day), but what if you were doing this hundreds of years ago, before telegraphs, say? Even if you could somehow manage to send a message, would it ever arrive? I’m old enough to remember sending airmail letters back and forth to my family in the 1980s; the pace of that communication was very slow indeed, so you had to assume things were going OK unless you absolutely had to make a long-distance phone call in case of emergency…
I suppose what I’m getting at here was on a day like today, with hours of dull, physically inconvenient road-walking in the rain, it somehow felt like I had absented myself from my usual life - which I suppose is kind of the point of all this, at least in part. You do get time to appreciate all of the things you’re missing out on. Matt - I hope you had an amazing 50th birthday. Flo - damn, hope you had a fantastic birthday too, and John, and Krish, and so many others. Adam and Aaron, congrats on your new shows/movies. Dan, wow, wish I could see the new car. Craig and Joe, sorry I wasn’t there to help you move in. That list goes on and on; the Facebook invites keep piling up, friends keep posting pictures from social events, and, well, Chris isn’t here right now, man. He’ll be back soon enough, though.
Four hours, give or take, between the temple - oh wait, let me look at pictures - hmm, no, too bland to warrant including one here - and the inn, so what to do? Well, there was a lacquerware production facility with a showroom (hmm, okay, not gonna drop a thousand dollars on that, thanks). And then eventually there was a michi-no-eki or roadside rest area that looked like a great place to hang out for a while. Six bucks got me the meal-of-the-day, which was fried chicken in a bland sauce with all of the fixins (rice, miso soup, pickles, etc.) and a warm, dry place to sit for half an hour. It wasn’t great, but what did you want for six bucks? Works for me.
Afterwards, a nice young woman took a picture of me standing outside, which I will not include here as the sight of me in rain pants is tragic indeed, especially as they’re now two sizes too big. (The overall effect is that of a senior citizen wearing elastic-waisted waterproof pants and Depends. It is not a good luck at all.) I bought a can of milky tea (I wonder if it’s oolong in there that makes that stuff taste so odd?) and sat in a picnic shelter for a good long while, steeling myself to get moving again; it was still raining, I was weary of road walking, but eventually I got back on my feet and headed out.
Thankfully, the pilgrim trail veered way from the main road and onto a smaller road that was much, much quieter:
I had used Google Maps to figure out a way to get to a convenience store before getting to my inn & then promptly didn’t pay attention to the map; I was just zoned out, lumbering ahead like a dazed bear in search of a Family Mart Earl Grey smoothie. I was in fact so zoned out that I missed the turnoff I had meant to take - not a big deal, it only eventually added half a kilometer - but hey. It was one of those days. There was almost no traffic, so little in fact that I may have just taken a whiz in the middle of the sidewalk because fuck it, it was raining and there was no one there to see it - well, until somehow, weirdly, a pilgrim coming the other direction came into view right after I zipped myself back up. As an aside, most pilgrims hike the pilgrimage route clockwise, from 1 to 88, but a few decide to do it backwards, from 88 to 1, which is especially tricky as there are no signs in the reverse direction. I don’t know what they’re thinking, but hey. I don’t know what I’m thinking half the time either.
Eventually, that empty road wound up in a very empty, mostly rural stretch south of the main city-ish corridor of houses and such that is all near the Takamatsu-Matsuyama train line. It felt odd - there were large buildings here and there, seemingly plopped down at random and possibly abandoned. How did all of this happen? I have no idea.
The rain started to really kick in; I had taken off my rain jacket earlier because it was more comfortable hiking in my wool T-shirt, and then I thought to check my phone to see how far away the damn Family Mart was. Whoops, you’re in the wrong place, so let’s just take a left here, get back on track, and then wind up at a small supermarket instead; I had a warm bottle of hoji-cha and a salt-lemon baumkuchen on a bench in front of a closed store with good protection against the rain opposite, waiting another five minutes before I could check in to my inn.
I am very pleased to say that Shikishima is in many ways just about as perfect as the Japanese ryokan experience can be; not only did they go out of their way to let me in early, but the building is a historic structure with plenty of charm, but in a practically 19th century way, not a run-down 1980s way - there’s a lovely garden out back, and they’ve invested in modernizing things in a very high end way (think spacious toilets with bidets, a first class shower room, and even a bicyclist-friendly dorm). Dinner was first-rate, they offered me a fork an knife, which I declined, and then expressed amazement that I was able to thoroughly demolish the grilled fish they served. There was a slightly older Japanese couple next to me at dinner; they didn’t get half the meat off of their fish that I did, to which I could only say “well, that’s why I’m as big as I am,” laughing. Throw in a well-priced bottle of delicious local sake and yeah, I am one happy Bear right now. The futon is far more plush than usual, the rain is still going but it sounds good, and I think it’s probably actually going to stop by breakfast time.
Given that I’m tired of road walking and that my fun meter is very well pegged at the moment, I’m thinking I’ll just take the train into town tomorrow, put my crap in a locker for 36 hours, and get back to a minimal day pack for tomorrow and the day after. I haven’t done that before, but if the weather forecast says it’s possible, I think I will. The next two days involve four temples, one notoriously steep hike (nearly 900 meters elevation gain!), and potentially even an ascent of the tallest mountain in western Japan, which is yet another 1,000 meters unless I can successfully figure out a way to get the bus from halfway up the mountain. So: adventures ahead - and then Saturday will be a zero as it’s supposed to rain like crazy then. It does feel like summer is more or less here, just well ahead of schedule; the heat, humidity, and rain sucks, but you know what? I can work around all that. If anything, it’s the perfect excuse not to beat myself up and walk every last kilometer of the pilgrimage from here.
Random notes: The roadside rest area had stickers for every single temple on the pilgrimage that mimic the highway signs you see pointing to them, but at 440 yen each… yeah, nope. Too much for too little. On the other hand, the selection of Imabari towels was delightful and man, I wish I had room in my pack for some of those. I’m very tempted to outfit our house with new bath towels, but I won’t have time to visit their Tokyo store on the way home, sadly.
I did find a can of Pepsi Refresh Shot today. Verdict: okay, but it’s got the same caffeine as a regular can of Pepsi, just in a can one-third the size. Kind of a silly thing, but hey: now I know.
No wildlife sightings today save for a lame cat that ran away quickly. I continue to be disappoint at the lack of cats on Shikoku.