April 17, 2025

Day 8: Katsuura-T21

Last night’s dinner was ho-hum; I arrived later than the rest of the guests and was seated at the end of the table, which was (not unusually for Japan) too short for me to fit under it, so I ate dinner in silence (all of the other guests were Japanese) in an awkward position - the less said about that the better. Breakfast was a similar affair, until one of the younger Japanese offered me some tea, which was very kind of her. The hotel owner packaged two rice balls, dropped me off at the same place that I arrived at yesterday, and that was that. A fairly good stay; it would’ve been more convenient to stay in town, but there were no places there with online booking.

Today’s walk was essentially an M-shape: two temples, two mountains, two climbs of about 500 meters each. The weather was perfect for walking; for the first time, I only wore my wool T-shirt and nothing else. The new Salomon trail runners were more than capable, if a bit snug (blisters weren’t significantly worse after today’s hike, at least). The walk itself was one of those tough uphill chugs - it was only a couple of kilometers from the valley floor up to the temple, so I went slowly and just kept going. Views were good as well; it was a lovely late Spring day.

The first temple, Kakurin-ji, is special in that it doesn’t have a vending machine. Oh, and it has cranes everywhere, too, which was lovely; I think I saw some other pilgrims having their hakui stamped with a crane motif. I took the time to see everything I could, including a semi-hidden trail out the back that led to a mystical site, off-limits to everyone save for… the local telco. That’s right, mountain tops aren’t just for badass temples - they’re great places to build cell towers as well! I was also intrigued by the first female monk I believe I’d seen - oh, and it was also amusing that the traditional incense bowl was missing here, hidden instead inside of a metal cabinet just like you’d ordinarily find holding candles instead. Makes sense, it was pretty windy up there!

The path down was frankly just annoying: a couple of miles of steps. No matter how skilled you may be with hiking poles, there will be a certain amount of pain involved when walking down so many steps. Thankfully, I splurged about $20 to have my backpack driven to tonight’s inn, so there wasn’t too much on my back today.

At the bottom of the mountain, I was very happy to discover a lovely volunteer-maintained rest area - a large covered space with a concrete picnic table and chairs as well as an actual leather easy chair. Nice! I took the opportunity to relax for half an hour and eat my rice balls. Eventually, a couple of Bavarians happened by - friendly folks! - who were on a bike tour and we had a nice chat about how the trip is going. I think I’ll probably see them at dinner tonight, come to think of it, as they’re staying in the same inn tonight.

I was kind of dreading the 2nd mountain climb as the elevation profile was essentially the same as the first, just slightly longer and slightly steeper. Thankfully, the first couple of kilometers were an old farm road that was nicely graded and relatively fast - but then the steps showed up again. Ugh. Really not a fan of endless uphill steps in the forest, but I didn’t have much of a choice!

Finally, I reached a large wooden gate that I assumed was the entrance to the temple; I was wrong. There were still a couple of hundred meters’ uphill slog left to go, but then there I was, at the back end of the complex (visitors generally take an aerial tramway or ‘ropeway’ up from the valley floor; that arrives on the other side of the complex). I left my day pack near the vending machine and went about my spiritual business; it’s a fairly large compound, said to resemble Mt. Koya a bit, but I got it all backwards and wound up at the Daishi hall first, eventually arriving at the main hall. Overall, it was beautiful, but it sure felt like a commercial enterprise more than a spiritual one! There were tchotchkes for sale everywhere, which was slightly off-putting. On the other hand, the friendly monk’s calligraphy was especially beautiful - and as soon as he wished me goodbye, he went back to doing something on an iPad. Hey, for all I know, it could’ve been a Shingon Buddhist app like Heart Sutra Crush or something, right?

Nothing really left to do but pack away all of my pilgrimage gear and head down the mountain to the small town of Sowaka where I’m staying the night. There was a cheap udon restaurant in the lower ropeway station, so I killed some time by eating cold noodles - not bad, not great, but only $5. I ran into the German bicyclists at the hotel reception - hi Flo! hi Claudia! - and was offered a comfy chair to wait in until my room was ready at 15h00.

I used that opportunity to figure out a general game plan for tomorrow. If I were to walk directly to my next stop - a hostel in Hiwasa - it’d be well over 30 km and it’d take a serious amount of time & I don’t want that right now. There’s a train station very close to the next temple though - well, I have to take the ropeway back up to T21 first before walking a few hours to get to T22 - and that sounds about right to me, a nice long morning walk mostly downhill through the forests, but then I’ll skip the next 20 km which are mostly on paved roads and not that interesting. Instead, I picked up a brochure for Omatsu Daigongen, a shrine dedicated to cats; Omatsu was executed along with her cat many years ago and now it’s a sort of tourist attraction, I guess! Her cat’s name was Mike, which I’m guessing isn’t pronounced the way it looks to me. I figure that if I can get to the train station by 13h00, I can manage to backtrack to Cat City, get my cat on, and then still make it to Hiwasa and my hostel by 18h00 or so. That might mean I won’t get to try the onsen at T23 as dinner’s at 19h00, but at least I won’t have walked so much and I’ll get to see cats. Yay.

Random notes:

One of the joys of afternoon downtime in Japan is that there’s hopefully time for a bath before supper. Tonight’s inn, for example, has a large men’s bath with natural rocks; given that there are no showers in the rooms, only toilets, this is important!

The other great thing about free time after the walk but before dinner is that I can use that time to refine my plans for the next few days. In retrospect, I likely could’ve figured out a way to get to the cat shrine before taking a different trail up to T21, but alas, I didn’t. I’m also figuring out a way to take the hybrid train-bus called thing, the DMV or Dual-Mode Vehicle, to save myself a little bit of walking this Sunday.

At this point my favorite vending machine product has got to be cold barley tea. No calories, no caffeine, tastes great, is nice and refreshing.

Tomorrow doesn’t have any water for those first three plus hours… hmm. Guess I’ll have to figure something out as that vending machine at the top of the mountain was slightly more expensive than usual.

Just another couple of days and I’ll be standing at the Pacific Ocean coast! Unfortunately, though, that means a long few days’ walk alongside it without any temples…