Day 54: Naoshima-Takamatsu
I woke up this morning after a poor night’s sleep in Naoshima; the island has become wildly inexpensive in the 9 years since I was last year, which meant I was sleeping in a hostel. Those sorts of things work fine if the guests are all Japanese - they have cultural norms around making noise, having loud conversations, etc. - but nope, the guests were all Westerners and didn’t think it was a problem to hang out outside their rooms and have loud conversations. Sigh. At least it ‘only’ cost me the same as some of the nicer rooms on this trip at around US $55 a night, including a breakfast of instant coffee and one slice of toast with margarine.
I don’t feel like saying too much about my two days on the island; I attended the grand opening of the new art museum on Naoshima after a fashion, waiting in line to get in while Tadao Ando, Soichiro Fukutake, and other people I did not recognize were holding a press conference in the café, closed to the public. The building is lesser Ando; it is entirely serviceable as a museum, and the opening exhibition was stellar. Pannaphan Yodmanee’s piece in particular blew me away - the only thing that caused minor eye-rolling injuries was an enormous Takashi Murakami piece partially created using AI, which was too cute by half and v period annoying. The one major fail here is that the entrance to the museum is essentially a parking lot, which is wildly out of place here; even worse, the bus stop for the museum is such that although you would want to immediately turn left and walk to the front entrance which you can see, there’s a guard stationed there to make sure you don’t, because there is one single house on that road that presumably is annoyed by visitors and/or now being surrounded by a museum and parking lot. Instead, you have to go around to the parking lot and walk up from there. The overall effect is lame; it feels like you’ve just parked at Aldi before suddenly finding yourself in Muji instead, or something.
Other museums were the same as they ever were, albeit far more expensive now and with enormous crowds, with plenty of Europeans, Americans, and Chinese as well. It was frustrating at times; the less said the better. A special shout out goes to the Australian ballet something or other who got into the Chichu museum an hour before everyone else… and then they started allowing us normal folk in, but forgot to actually open the gate, so although the website said ‘only 8 people per entrance slot’ it was mobbed from the get-go. Thankfully, I’d been there before so was able to sprint to the James Turrell piece and experience that until they kicked me out. (The Aussies, on the other hand, got to hang out there for as long as they wanted to, according to their guide. Sigh. Rich people, right?)
The main reason why I’d detoured to Naoshima was to see the Apichatpong Weerasethakul piece that went up last year. I went twice: the Friday evening showing was badly marred by two elderly Americans (they felt like, I’m guessing, a World War II survivor and his personal assistant) who sat themselves down into what turned out to be part of the floor with a video projection; they didn’t care or move when no one could see it because their expensive linen pants weren’t a good screen. About fifteen minutes into it, they started talking to each other; then, they started checking their watches, which lit up brightly every time they did - and finally, they got up and left about twenty minutes in, which caused more disruption because it was still daylight outside and the room was dark because, well, video projections. It frankly sucked. Fuckin’ boomers, man.
I went back Saturday night for the same thing again, this time with a very well behaved audience, including a handsome bearish kinda guy from Hanford (he was wearing a Fresno hat, so I had to ask about that) and a couple of friendly Americans who, in the best American style, had no idea what they were getting into but were just happy to be there and to experience something new. Those three folks almost made up for the geriatric assholes from Friday night.
There was also a very good pizza, an excellent lunch at the Chichu museum, and two very proper, expensive cocktails (it costs $6 just to sit down before ordering anything, sadly typical of Naoshima these days) that were still cheaper than proper cocktails back home. Plus, a visit to the sento just like last time - always a treat.
It’s Monday now and I’m back on the island of Shikoku, back in the same hotel that I stayed at the night before the boat to Naoshima. I’ve been keeping my eyes on the weather for days; although the forecasts have often been wrong, I’m now back in that fun ‘everything says Tuesday is rainy’ mode. When I woke up this morning at 6 am, I made a split decision to catch the first high speed boat back to Takamatsu instead of spending a third day off the trail; it’s kind of funny, but there’s a museum on the island of Teshima that we almost got to visit nine years ago, but I’d made a mistake with the schedule and got us there five minutes after they stopped admitting new visitors. These days, they sell out of all of the conveniently timed tickets too quickly for anyone to snag one, so you’re almost always stuck going late in the day, which means hours-long waits for boats (they typically run in the morning and late afternoon to coincide with school and/or working hours) - so faced with a very long day with long stretches of doing nothing other than waiting or being on boats, I thought, well, I didn’t come here to be on vacation. I came here to walk a pilgrimage, so I really should be doing that, right?
So I got back to the hotel before 8 am (yay), got my bag from storage, rearranged everything for pilgrimage mode, changed my shirt and underwear in the lobby toilets, put the bag back in storage, and got on the train to head back to Yasoba station; I had meant to pick up at T79, walk to T81, then T82, and then to T80 and from there maybe even all the way to T83. I grabbed an iced coffee and a couple of pancakes, got on the train just in time, and was off. However, a few minutes later, my GI tract started doing its usual thing… uh oh. So, for the second time this trip, I’d bought a ticket to Yasoba and got off the train before then. T80 is right next to a different train station; T80 presumably has toilets, and another alternative in my mind was always to walk T80-T81-T82-B19-Montbell instead. So, off I went.
The one thing I had forgotten to take along was my ‘grave-visiting box’ - it’s a large-ish plastic case that holds candles, incense, and a lighter. Oops. T80 thankfully had an enormous selection of that stuff (and was also the first temple I’d seen that charged an entrance fee of 200 yen, huh). They didn’t have the candles I wanted, so I got some cheap, crappy ones; they also didn’t have the incense I like, so (surprise) I got some cheap, crappy stuff instead. And I now am the proud owner of two very weird looking not-cigarette lighters, designed for candles and incense. Man, I hope TSA doesn’t throw a fit about those. They aren’t torch lighters, they’re just… weird. Anyhow: the monk there was friendly, I got my stamp and did my business, and then I also did my business in what has to be the least modern toilet block I’ve ever seen in Japan. (Sure enough, there was a fundraising drive on; for only 30,000 yen, you too can have your name on the new, modern toilets they’re hoping to build later this year.) I also discovered that the incense I bought, some lavender stuff for 300 yen, is the worst smelling thing since Fabuloso mixed with durian. Plus, it’s hot purple so it also looks wrong when set in an incense corral (or whatever those things are called). Mortifying!
Once all of that was done with, it was out the front door, couple of lefts, and then up the hill, passing a derelict love hotel and a bunch of gravesites on the way to the forest. This trail… was not fun. I now understand why doing T80-T81-T82 is a bad idea; not only is it historically anomalous (back in the day, the route was T81-T82-T83-T80-T83-T84 apparently), but it also means that you lose almost all of the elevation you gain and it’s an annoyingly steep incline up the hill form T80. So, kids: do NOT do that. T81 was the first temple with loudspeakers playing music and announcements (and an entrance fee to boot), giving it a fun North Korean holiday camp kind of vibe. Not a fan!
And then finally, an actual historical trail, from T81 to T82, back up the mountain but with a more agreeable incline this time, and then a surprise set of stairs at T82, this time going way down and then way, way, back up again, probably just cause it looks badass. There was also an interesting thing going on with the main temple; as with B4 and a couple of other temples (but very few), there were side rooms/corridors with a bunch of stuff in them, including lots of places to offer incense - don’t tell anyone, but I probably got rid of half of the box of smelly lavender incense here, hehehe…
A tiny Asian lady turned to me at the stamp office and ASKED ME WHERE I WAS FROM in the loudest possible voice; I didn’t need to ask here where she was from because I already knew based on that along (well, that and her lushly bearded Asian companion). Thankfully, they left so the background noise went down to Japanese levels again; it was a peaceful spot, the only bummer being that I’d lit so much shitty incense that you could smell it a hundred feet away.
At this point, you would ordinarily turn southwest and start the walk to T83 (assuming that you’d walked T80-T81-T82 as I did), but I was thinking it’d be more amusing to visit a bekkaku temple instead, especially as it was only about 15 minutes away from the sole Montbell in Kagawa prefecture. The trail down was in fairly poor shape, but at least it was a trail for a while and not a busy road. B19 was much, much larger than I was expecting; I didn’t put on my pilgrim garb there, but I did make a donation and buy yet another towel (seriously, no idea what I’m doing with all of these towels!) for some reason. I also ran into the same backpacker-type European dude for the third time on this trip - he’s got some kind of wild braiding going on, I think in his beard. Seems chill, but also happy to be on his own time, so it’s a smile of recognition and then let’s continue onwards, shall we?
Montbell was in an enormous shopping center that felt all kinds of crappy, stranded out in the ass end of the Takamatsu suburbs, surrounded by a bleak, indifferent parking lot with extra bird shit for good measure. I was hoping to finally get something to eat, but every food court option somehow made me even less hungry seeing it, so: Montbell. Yes, they have a Takamatsu-specific shirt, but it’s printed on a white T-shirt. That’s a no thank you from me, alas. But I did want to buy the correct hiking pole bag (I’d bought one for non-folding poles by accident in Matsuyama), which I did; I was going to spend Montbell points to do it, but that wound up taking 15 minutes because my Montbell club member card is a weird one: it’s from the Portland, Oregon store (which doesn’t exist anymore), so not every Montbell Japan employee knows how to deal with it. It’s not a problem in Tokyo - they see them relatively often there, I guess - but out here in Shikoku, good luck! To the store’s credit, they did figure it out with the internal IT help desk and they were good-natured and laughing about it, so I now have my poles in a perfectly-fitted bag for free. Yay! And then, on the way to the bus stop, I saw a few more restaurants - all of them would take too long, but not McDonald’s; my iPhone joined their Wi-Fi automatically, I sat down, ordered on my phone, and within two minutes was served a cheeseburger with egg, fries, Earl Grey iced tea with milk and sugar, and a Grimace Shake (woot!). Sadly, they’re out of the proper Grimace Shake cups, but I’ll take it given that they’re already gone from most shops. This was only my 2nd McD’s burger on this trip & was way better than the gloopy teriyaki nightmare from Tokushima.
Then, a bus ride back to town, which stopped across the street from my hotel - and which I could pay for using my Suica (stored value) card, which thankfully still works (unlike my Nomad eSIM, which hasn’t worked since the calendar clicked over to June… not to self, open a ticket tonight). Check-in was a breeze, I got a great room on a high floor and breakfast tickets, the public bath was relaxing, I did my laundry, and then I had my first ramen of the trip across the street, which was a dumb move in retrospect because eating ramen with the beard I’ve currently got attached to my face is impossible. I had just washed that shirt and now it’s more splattery then Slasher season 2. Whoops. And then the way back to the hotel, I stopped at the 7-Eleven in the hotel and picked up a fine bottle of wine to end my evening:
I am kidding; I did buy a bottle of wine, but not that one. And man, this is exactly the kind of thing that tariffs are gonna kill: California wine is competitive here because it’s reasonably priced and has cultural cachet, but when our government makes it expensive and undesirable because of how our politics are viewed overseas, that ain’t good. I really hope that doesn’t happen, but given that there are Chilean and French wines on the shelves here as well, it seems easy.
So! That’s it for now. 6 temples left to visit; tomorrow is likely rainy in the morning, but I have a 13h00 ticket for the Isamu Noguchi museum; I’ll try to work some walking in around that, weather permitting. The dry bag did its thing today; it didn’t rain on my very much, but the all-important stamp book is perfectly dry.
Random notes: A bunch of teen-aged boys yelled SANTA CLAUS! at me at the mall, but they about died laughing when I roared MERRY CHRISTMAS! back at them. I swear, it’s almost kinda awesome being around kids here - they’re respectful, polite, and also cool enough to tweak their elders in a friendly way.
I sure hope the American family on the boat to Naoshima figured out what they were doing - it can be tricky figuring out what to do and how to do it there. At certain times of day, there are two boat companies operating two boats to two ports, one on either side of the island, and if you don’t have some kind of game plan, you might find yourself extremely confused. Props, by the way, to the bike rental companies who are making a killing renting bikes; they’re not super useful because the island is small & if you can manage walking ten minutes at a time and if you have good planning skills, you can work with the local buses (sadly two different ones; they kind of sync up, schedule-wise, but not always), but it is crazy complicated.
Speaking of the bus, I unsuccessfully ran after one hoping it’d stop at the bus stop down the block; it did not. It also didn’t help that the people standing at the bus stop were not putting two and two together watching me running behind the bus; if only they’d realized I wanted to catch the bus, a simple head nod probably would’ve gotten the bus driver to stop. But nope, didn’t happen. Also: not cool to schedule RING OF FIRE, the Weerasethakul thing, to end precisely 60 seconds before the last bus for 2 hours pulls up just out front. (It’s only a 20 minute walk to the main port from there, though.)
The ‘loveliest tourists of the day’ award has to go to an utterly delightful couple from the UK that I chatted with a bit walking from the Lee Ufan museum back to the House Museum; they’d just gotten married last year but had to delay their honeymoon a year & were obviously thrilled to be there. Honorable mentions: to every family with a child and a stroller on the bus for just going for it, being super polite and trying hard not to inconvenience other bus riders - but man, I loved seeing that one mom holding her kid in the aisle (nowhere to sit!) with her husband holding the folding stroller. They were determined to see themselves some cool stuff and they were doing it. I loved that.
Finally, one thing I don’t understand is this: why don’t people use lockers at museums? I starting taking pictures of the (free to use) coin lockers at museums on Naoshima; in every case, every locker was free, but half of the visitors were toting huge, unwieldy day packs. Even worse: some people had unfinished bottles of pop or water or what have you, so the museums would hand out transparent vinyl handbags that you could tote them around it. Seriously: why not just tell people to use the damn lockers? Safer for the artwork, more convenient from everyone. And yeah, given my size, I’m used to being thwacked by people’s luggage in galleries, but that isn’t the point here: for no money, you can improve your own museum-going experience and reduce the likelihood of damaging something. So why not do it?