Day 45: Zero (Saijō)
The view out of my window is more or less the same that it’s been for the past 24 hours: grey. Yesterday it was merely cloudy; today, it’s a little bit darker as the rain started overnight and hasn’t stopped yet. It’s fairly light rain, more of a Pacific Northwest vibe than a torrential downpour. Regardless: it’s good that I had two days booked here in the sleepy city of Saijō as walking today would’ve been a chore.
Originally, I had meant to climb Mount Ishizuchi today, but that didn’t happen for obvious reasons; no one wants to spend 5 hours on a steep, somewhat difficult mountain if the trail’s slippery and there’s no view. Plus, it’s about 4,000 yen in bus and ropeway fees to get up there and back, or about US $28 - that’s not great value if you saw the same view (grey, rain, fog) from there that you can already see for free from your hotel room.
So: what to do? Well, I happen to enjoy re-planning trips that I’m already on; yesterday, I had already started thinking about how to maximize the enjoyment of my last two weeks in Japan. There’s still some hiking to be done, but one of the planned hiking days was a day-long road walk through the city of Takamatsu with the only objective of visiting a temple that’s practically across the street from a train station; surely that’d be easy to ditch, right? So, one less hiking day. Of course, as with every minor change, that means other things don’t work: the Isamu Noguchi museum is only open the Tuesday and Thursday I’m in Takamatsu, so I can’t move that one day forward, only two; if I do that, then it means I do temples out of sequence and therefore have to cancel a hotel that no longer works, but that’s fine; it just means that one lodge has to be moved up one day (and I’ve emailed them; fingers crossed they can do that for me). And even if not, that just means I have to get a 4 pm bus back from T88 - that’s right, the final temple of the trip! - and then skip a 26 km walk down and over the mountains to T10, which might’ve been interesting - but I’m okay with skipping that as well.
So now (almost) everything is rebooked; the endgame of any pilgrimage here is to get back to where you started, and I’ll be doing that on the morning of Saturday, June 7. That involves going back to T1, which I visited on April 11; that’s 57 days total. Of those, 49 will have been spent walking and 8 of them resting and/or sightseeing - I mean, it would’ve been absurd to’ve come all this way and done nothing but walk! Completing the circuit also means more paperwork, certificates, stamps, and expense; of course, I’ll be happy to do all of that work because I’d like to hang a completion certificate on the wall next to my Moselsteig certificate + get the 89th page in my book marked with the stamp that says I’ve completed the journey.
Then, I’ve got three sleeps until the flight home, which leaves Osaka Kansai airport very early on June 10. There’s one final pilgrimage-related thing left to do: Kukai/Kobo Daishi is interred (or “meditating eternally” if you prefer) at a temple at Koyasan, the holy mountain outside of Osaka that he built (in the sense that he founded the temples there). It’s also traditional to visit him and say thank you for a successful journey; I had meant to do that as an overnight trip, but the only places to stay up there are temple lodgings which are very expensive as it’s become kind of a tourist hotspot - and I’m kind of done with Japanese-style hotel rooms, so I’ll stay two nights in Osaka, then spend that final Monday heading up to Koyasan, doing Temple Stuff (TM) yet again, and then heading to Kansai airport to sleep at a capsule hotel before my 6 am flight.
With all of that taken care of, I figured I should go visit a temple, LOL, so I did:
Built by Tadao Ando in 2000, it’s not open to the public, alas - but it was a pleasure to stand outside and admire the work. I imagine it looks amazing at night; you could just barely make out the interior through the wood and glass, but of course there’s no way to get closer.
After today’s temple visit, what next? Lunch would be good, so it was a bit of a walk to a nondescript part of town in the north with a number of business hotels, hypermarkets, and chain restaurants. I opted for Sushiro, a kaitenzushi or conveyor belt sushi joint.
Figuring this’d be my one meal of the day, I went all out and ordered pretty much anything and everything that looked good to me. There’s a small hot water tap at every table & a canister of powdered tea, so you can help yourself to that for starters. Let’s see: I had stuff like Hokkaido cured salmon sushi, French fries and ketchup, pumpkin tempura, a whisky highball, grilled eel, and a couple of plates of things like seared sushi, Taste of Hokkaido Trio set, and even a bit of abalone. All of that cost me the princely sum of about US $16, or what a single order of edamame tends to cost back home in California. To top it all off, I went across the street to McDonald’s and had another Grimace shake. I am feeling more than slightly full at this point in the day, but damn that was delicious.
On the way back to my hotel room, I noticed yet another covered shopping area type thing so had a look at that - also dead, just like Imabari, Nakamura, etc.
What else? Oh right, a train museum! This is the home town of the man responsible for the original shinkansen, so there’s a museum in his honor as well as some old train cars and such; one of the first shinkansen cars is here and it feels quaint - but I liked this very nondescript old JR car better:
And then I was more or less out of touristy stuff to do, so I went back to my hotel room, where I am now. Tomorrow’s still a bit up in the air; I think it will’ve stopped raining overnight, but it’s questionable as to whether or not Mount Ishizuchi is going to happen. If anything, I suppose I could go up just to ride the ropeway and visit the lowest shrine - and take the hiking poles along just in case magic happens and I feel like spending five hours going to the summit and back. If anything, there’s not much else to do tomorrow, I figure I might as well. I’m skipping the next 35 km or so of the pilgrimage trail as it’s all flat, all road walking, all the time - yecch - so that’s an hour’s train journey instead (or thirty minutes at triple the price). The real walking starts up again Monday morning, with the start of the climb to the highest temple of the entire pilgrimage.
Random notes: my GI tract continues to have the worst possible sense of humor ever & it’s annoying as hell, but at least this hotel offers free use of washing and drying machines, so I’ve got everything ready to go for the morning. Given that this has been a constant companion since I got here, I’m baffled as to why - I’m guessing it’s some combination of a Japanese diet with a lot of physical activity.
Looks like I’ve only got 3 traditional inns left on the schedule - it’s all Western style business hotels from here on out. I’m particularly excited to be getting back to a Super Hotel tomorrow night - the one at the beginning of the trip was a high point, hotel-wise & I’m curious to see if they’re all like that. If it’s as good, I’m also going to ask if they sell the pillows they use.