Day 51: T75-Takamatsu
Before I begin, I should mention that I’ll be in Naoshima for the next two nights - that means no temples, no serious walking, and also no laptop computer as I’ll leave my pack here in Takamatsu, either at my hotel or in a locker at the train station. (I don’t want to schlep that thing around islands and museums for the next three days!)
It’s been a long day; I was up at the crack of dawn (just writing that reminds me of Tom Waits, but I digress) and still somehow only made it to this morning’s religious service with seconds to spare. I blame last minute costume changes after seeing what other attendees were wearing… it was an interesting service. That makes 3 of 3 temple services I’ll have attended; this was by far the least interesting of the three. Mostly, I spent the hour looking at the monks on the dais and thinking damn, I need a haircut. Their heads were shaved as mine usually is, but I figured it would be in poor form for me to interrupt the service and ask them who their barber is. Alternatively, I watched people stroll by - it eventually dawned on me that I was in fact sitting in the enormous Kobo Daishi hall at Zentsuji, a space not normally open to the public - and wondered why the hell that Danish (?) tourist and his wife were dressed like that and why he had left his AirPods in. Curious.
I say the service was the least of the three because it felt like a sense of musicality was lacking. The priest at Iwamoto-ji, T37, had a beautiful voice and accompanied himself well with the percussion he had at hand; the group at T75, though, had an ineffable feel of familiar with the words but not the meaning of them, somehow. In other words, they had no funk. And the first service, at T6, was a different thing entirely, with the best production values of all, but almost coming across as too contrived. But whatever: it was a fine way to spend the morning, and then I found myself following along and doing some other stuff, like throwing pinches of incense into a tiny fire and then wandering around a pitch black cave while chanting Namu Daishi Hensho Kongo/南無大師遍照金剛, which is something you hear a lot on the pilgrimage and which I assume basically means “Thanks, Kukai!” but which of course is something far more convoluted than that. (For starters, you’d have to google vairocana. Good luck with that one. As an aside, I do have a post brewing about my overall take-slash-experience with so-called esoteric Buddhism; in short, it feels like an endlessly recursive fandom that is so full of lore that it misses the point entirely, at least for me.)
Spoiler: the dark cave leads to a cute lil’ room painted in blue that represents Nirvana, or maybe a really well stocked Donki. Awww! And then we were done and asked to meet back in the dining hall for breakfast, which was still vegetarian but thankfully a bit more filling than dinner was. My GI tract was doing its usual completely baffling thing and decided it was time to raise a ruckus before breakfast was even done, which is how I managed to find the one washlet in all of Japan that was nonfunctional - and this being a traditional Japanese inn, there were no showers and the group bath was closed until 16h00, so hahaha, well, good thing nothing too bad happened in there, sigh.
ANYHOW. What next? Weirdly, the weather reports were entirely different in the morning than they were the night before, suddenly confidently stating that yeah, okay, it’s definitely not going to rain today, so… yay? I was kind of hoping for a day with less walking, but that didn’t really happen. Instead, I walked to the next two temples, took a train to the city of Marugame for some sightseeing, took a train to one more temple, and then one last train to my hotel at Takamatsu station.
The day got off to a great start when the very first Family Mart I visited had the towel that I wanted: side quest complete! Then, things took a turn for the comical at T76, when my crappy weed delivery purple lighter that I brought from home decided to somehow light itself on fire…
That was a surprise - I didn’t understand what was going on, why I was feeling pain, or why there was black sticky goo on my fingers, because duh, the plastic was melting. Oops. Thankfully, the woman running the temple’s supply shop thought it was hilarious, sold me a snazzy new lighter designed for candles and incense for 400 yen, and even threw out my old one. Then, it got even better: the temple’s monk, who had the vibe of a Kitaro-adjacent jazz hipster from Nakameguro, spoke flawless English and gave me a bookmark. You’re going to T77 next, right? he said; I answered, well, if my health is good and I don’t get hit by a bus, yes - which got the entire office cracking up. Damn, I miss having a sense of humor; it’s tough when you’re in a country where you can’t really be yourself that way. I do get the sense that Japanese have a wicked sense of humor, but it’s just (of course) that I have no idea what they’re saying. They were extra kind and gave me a boiled sweet as a gift and sent me on my way.
The walking was all moderately meh today - city roads, then quieter country roads, but never without people, buildings, and traffic. As a result, I decided I’d seen enough by T77 and resolved to just take the damn train instead. T77 was more-or-less nondescript, but the office appeared to be run by teenagers cutting class from school, albeit ones with excellent penmanship and casually friendly vibes. They gave me a small can of chilled pop as a present - score! - and then I made my way to the train station, which takes the prize for most annoying layout ever: to get to the ticket hall, you have to climb an enormous bridge that goes over the entire station, and then to get to the platform, you have to take a bunch of stairs down into a tunnel and back up again. Whee! At least I got to see a very special sightseeing train at the station - I’d love to ride it someday, but this wasn’t the day for that.
Only two stops to Marugame, a relatively big town I’d seen from the train yesterday & home to a tiny castle perched on top of a very big hill - but even more interesting was a museum founded by Genichiro Inokuma, a painter I’d never heard of before. It felt wonderful to just leave my pack at the station and wander around for a bit; his museum was beautifully designed and a lot of his work was exceptional.
Anyhow! I made it to the top of the castle hill quickly - look, Mom, no stopping to catch my breath anymore! - took a few pictures of the view, and headed back to the station ‘cuz the train to the next temple was gonna leave soon. I’d been to T78 the previous day, but now it was lunchtime and T79 was on the agenda in part because there’s a small restaurant nearby with a beautiful garden that serves… uh… well, you tell me what this is, please:
It’s late and I’m not going to try to explain that one, thanks. Annoyingly, I had a heck of the time finding the temple proper; once again, it was extra tricky coming in from the back, which feels like a Shinto shrine. In fact, the temple offices are kinda over there + the two Shingon temples are kinda hiding in the back of the Shinto precinct over there, which makes no sense. Plus, it definitely felt like summer was icumen in because what the fuck, mosquitos were showing up for the first time, grrr. Anyhow, I did eventually find everything, do the stuff at the place with the thing, and get a stamp. Then, back to the train station and wait a good long while for a train to Takamatsu with a dozen South Asians for some reason, some of whom were wearing kurtas and flip-flops and such, looking decidedly stylish and very much Not Japanese.
Once at Takamatsu station, my hotel was practically next door; checking in was no problem, although sadly they’d sold out of breakfast tickets for the morning (but there is a 7-Eleven in the building as well, so yay for that!). I had a couple of hours to spare before dinner, so why not go see the Edward Gorey exhibit at the local art museum? That was mostly interesting for some juvenilia of his, but otherwise not compelling. What was, though, was the collection of local art, including several pieces by Akashi Bokkei, another artist I was unfamiliar with, but wow, amazing stuff. Here’s a bad picture:
By then, the Belgian cub had woken up - he was exhausted from his last week of the pilgrimage - and we were ready for amazing pizza, so we went to the best pizza joint in town and were promptly told that no, we needed a reservation and that they were booked out. Damn. So we would up at a semi-crappy pizza joint where I had whitebait pizza for no reason as well as some seriously shitty Italian wine. Afterwards, he found a small, quiet bar a couple of blocks away where I enjoyed one glass of very expensive whisky, then called it a night. It was a long walk home; somehow, today was still 22 kilometers’ worth of walking, even if I took the train a fair amount.
No bonus anything today: I’m tired. Off to Naoshima tomorrow!