Echoes of Incense A Pilgrimage in Japan by Don Weiss

Chapter Thirteen, part 2

Again, Kochi

In the morning we visited Temple 36, Shoryuji, The Temple of the Blue-Green Dragon. The temple is on two levels, separated by a staircase that climbs 100 meters under tall trees, their branches touching overhead. The buildings floated in a sea of cherry blossoms, surrounded and overwhelmed by cherry trees in full bloom, clouds of white with a hint of pink. The pagoda, recently repainted in red and white, was perfectly set off by the delicate color of the cherry blossoms. Shimada-san and I spent about 45 minutes taking pictures. Then she went to catch a bus while Kayoko, Phyllis and I started climbing the trail.

Shoryuji is near the eastern end of a peninsula 15 kilometers long that parallels the southern coast of Shikoku like a thumb next to the fingers of a hand. When we cycled this stretch two years earlier and when I walked in winter, we took the road along the northern shore of the bay. This time, we took a trail that led to a scenic drive along the top of the peninsula.

The trail climbed steeply. I led the way, walking slowly, looking at the moss on the trees, smelling the moist earth, watching the large black butterflies that drifted past my head.

Kayoko followed close behind. She was just thirteen years old. She jumped from rock to rock, stopping, looking around, falling behind, catching up. Her face registered each sight, sound and feeling and her reactions showed her surprise, pleasure, puzzlement, and wonder. Phyllis followed slowly.

Kayoko and I conversed in a combination of English and Japanese. In class, she wasn't my best student, but she was pretty good. She had her mother's outgoing personality. She was always willing to try, even if what she said wasn't perfect. Her English was a lot like my Japanese. An exact translation of what we said would look strange, but we communicated.

The forest ended suddenly when the trail joined the road. For the next five hours, we walked along the road that ran just below the top of the ridge. We had a good view to the south over the ocean. The coast was broken into bays by long fingers of land. A few tiny villages sat at the bottom of the cliff, far below us. All we could see were houses clustered together and a breakwaters sheltering fishing boats. Other boats dotted the waves.

The sun shone in a cloudless sky. For the first time on the trip, I was a little too warm, and I was glad to see Phyllis enjoying the day, the warmth, and Kayoko's company. It got up to 22 degrees, definitely the warmest day of the year.

We got to the inn at 4:00 after a 30 kilometer hike. We both congratulated Kayoko, it was by far the longest she'd ever walked in a day. She and her mother went home by train the next morning. Phyllis and I had another long day in the sun. We had a nice picnic lunch at a shrine, then rested under a cherry tree in full bloom. Phyllis fell asleep and woke up dusted white from the falling petals.

Two days later, our friend Tony drove down to walk with us for a day. The day he drove it rained and I felt sorry for the farmers out planting rice in the flooded paddies. But the next day dawned clear and mild, a little humid, and we walked 25 kilometers. We stopped long and often for snacks, eating all the fruit we were given by local people, charmed by the sight of three foreign henro.

Tony had come to Japan as a student and stayed to teach English, marrying a Japanese woman teaching at the same school. I was always jealous of his good Japanese, though he too sometimes met people he couldn't understand very well. Walking with him was a treat for me. Not only was he good company (he knew the words to a lot of the same songs I did, so we sang our way along the road), but he also took the translation responsibilities off my shoulders. For the first time in weeks, I was able to forget about the map and the signs and figuring out the lunch menu. I just walked and looked and took pictures.

Tony and Phyllis each stopped a few times to check their feet. Tony wasn't used to so much walking and Phyllis' feet were still tender. I had gotten one small blister the day we walked in the rainstorm near Muroto, but that was my only foot problem except for the slight pain in my Achilles Tendon that I felt at each step. During the winter I walked in boots and my heels hurt. Now I was walking in running shoes and the pain had moved. But I was used to it. It was part of my pilgrimage. The pain finally went away about a month after I finished the pilgrimage.

The small inn where we stayed had hosted the four American college students I had heard about in the winter, the ones who had walked the pilgrimage a year earlier. There was also a 74-year-old Japanese man staying there for two nights. When we arrived, he hadn't yet returned from walking to Ashizuri and back, a day trip of 43 kilometers, a marathon. We saw him at dinner, a little tired-looking, but no worse than Tony, who was only one third his age.

Dinner was the sort of feast I got used to at Kochi inns. There was katsuo no tataki, fried chicken, potato salad, stewed vegetables, rice, soup, pickled vegetables, and one or two other side dishes. After dinner, we bought sake from a vending machine out front and sat up talking and drinking till ten.

The next morning, Tony took the bus back to where he had left his car and Phyllis and I walked down the coast to Ashizuri. At one place, the walking path left the road and went onto the beach and over some rocks. At high tide, with big waves, this part of the path would be unsafe, but now it was fine. I really enjoyed that bit of trail, crossing the beach, going between the rocks.

We stayed at the temple at Ashizuri Cape, Temple 38, Kongofukuji, The Temple of Everlasting Happiness. All the shukubo were now open for the busy spring season. It was crowded, but we had a small room to ourselves. I hurried to the bath to get in before the crowds of bus henro, but it had just been filled and it was too hot for me. I washed off at one of the taps along the wall and left later arrivals to deal with the 50 degree water.

After dawn service the next morning, the old priest gave a talk about the time he walked the pilgrimage. I couldn't understand a lot of what he said, but I caught some of it.

"During the War, nobody could to do the pilgrimage. After the War, I went as soon as I could, in 1947. There were almost no inns open then, and there was still very little food in some places. I didn't have a good map, and I kept getting lost.

"But people were very friendly, especially in Tokushima. Little children would bow to me and say, 'O-henro-san, the next temple is over there, past that little hill. It isn't far.' Their parents always gave me o-settai, money or food or a place to sleep. When I came here, to Kongofukuji, there was no hotel open. The priest's wife let me stay in their house. Now you are all staying in my house!"

After the service, we headed back to the inn where we had stayed with Tony the night before we walked to the cape. We stopped for lunch at a tiny coffee shop and ordered yakisoba (fried noodles with meat and vegetables). It took longer than usual to appear, but when it did, it came on a hot iron platter set in a wooden tray. The hot metal made the thick sauce bubble and the air was perfumed with soy and nori. It was the most fragrant plate of yakisoba I've ever had.

A few kilometers down the road, we stopped again, this time at the Paradise Cafe. I had seen this place in the winter, but it was closed for the month ‹ the owner goes to surf in Australia every year. The previous morning, we had passed by too early. Now, at last, it was open. We ordered a pizza and a Guinness for me, a cappuccino for Phyllis.

American posters covered the walls. Other decorations included fruit crates, Coca Cola signs, a used Levi jacket on sale for $300, surfing items, ferns, etc. Phyllis said the cappuccino was good. My pizza okay, and the Guinness was heavenly.

The next day we walked through the mountains where I had experienced snow while the sun was shining. In the winter, the fields had been bare and deserted. Now it was rice-planting time. Old men guided little walking tractors around the fields, planting. Old women followed behind, filling in the gaps by hand. All the farmers looked over 65.

At one house, we saw a group of children playing, watched over by a woman about 30 years old, the first young woman we had seen for hours. When they saw us, the children stopped their game, pointed, and shouted together, "Gaijin!"Foreigners! I turned around, looked behind me and asked excitedly, "Where? Where are they?"One ten year old boy pointed at me and said, "Gaijin!"I frowned and said, "Chigau!"It's a slang word meaning, "No way!"He looked puzzled and the young woman laughed out loud.

The inn that night, Tsubaki Ryokan, was a jewel, with fresh tatami mats, wonderful tea, and another typical Kochi feast. This time the tataki was cooked enough for Phyllis to enjoy it.

Katsuo no tataki is my favorite Japanese food. Very, very fresh bonito fillets are briefly charred on a fire of rice straw, then sliced about one half centimeter thick and served with chopped garlic and thin soy sauce. (Outside Kochi, cooks often substitute green onion for the garlic, a serious error.) When properly made, it's one of the true jewels of Japanese cooking. The fish is basically raw, but the charred outside provides a bitter counterpoint to the sweet, fatty flesh of the almost-raw bonito.

Dinner also included excellent sashimi, five dishes of vegetables and tofu, and baby squid simmered with yuzu. The rice served with dinner was the best I ever ate in Japan. When I complimented the owner, she thanked me very humbly. I asked what kind it was. She said they grew it themselves, in their own paddies outside the inn.

I enjoyed the bath too. It was an old-style goemonburo, a "cannibal pot"heated by a wood fire built underneath and stoked from outside the building. While I was in, a man outside the building shouted through the wall, "Is it hot enough for you?" and, though I said, "Yes,"added more wood to the fire.

The next day we crossed the bridge out of Kochi Prefecture. When I walked past this spot two months earlier, I saw the first blooming cherry tree of the year. That one was now all in green, but another bloomed ten meters away. It must have been another variety, but it seemed typical of Kochi, always in bloom. For me, Kochi is the land of spring, tataki, and cherry blossoms.

Published by Don Weiss (henrodon@gmail.com) -- All rights reserved. You may read this electronic copy on the web or print it out for private reading but no part may be sold or included in any work for sale except for short excerpts used for review purposes.All photographs and maps are likewise copyrighted and may not be reproduced without permission except for private, non-commercial use. Updated June 17, 1999.